What's this? Evidence of sufficient play-testing, no predatory microtransactions, and actually being fun? All of this from EA? Yes siree. You'd be forgiven for thinking that publishers had forgotten that games are supposed to be fun, but here we are, a game released in 2022 that honestly made me remember why I play video games, and here's why.
First of all, the thing that attracted me to the game; the art style. I'm a sucker for cell-shaded graphics, so combining them with gorgeous, neon-like light trails and smoke effects, was love at first sight. Although I'm hardly one of those people who reckon that graphics define a game (gameplay is still king in my book), having something so unqiue and attractive to look at for my 31 hours in Story Mode helped keep the game fresh.
Okay, it looks good, so how does it play? Well, like in many previous NFS games, you're tasked with doing a wide variety of events to get better cars, all of which is linked to a story of sorts (although this is a racing game, the story isn't all bad, but let's be honest, who cares about the storyline in a racing game?). The game is laid out chronologically in weeks, with the qualifier event for the next car class being on each Saturday. Days are split into afternoon and night; different events are available at different days (and at different times of the day), so each day does feel fairly different. Complete events to earn cash, upgrade your cars, win more races, qualify for the next class, repeat four times until you beat the game. Sounds simple enough, right? That's because it is, but that's no bad thing.
The basic ingredients are all there, but the gameplay is what really hooked me. The events themselves are sufficiently varied (and the days sufficiently different) that I honestly kept coming back to this game as my daily source of seratonin. Street races, drift events, outrun the cops, time attacks, you name it; you won't be left wanting, and it's all part of the fun as you tear through the streets of Lakeshore. Just doing that is entertaining in itself, with superficial features such as the way cars look and sound to the way motion blurs the camera really adds to the street racer vibe. Consider the Forza-beating levels of car customisation (seriously, Google what you can do to the Plymouth Cuda) and fans of older NFS games will be very pleased indeed.
I'll admit, right now this review could be summed up as "so far, so very Need For Speed," but what separates Unbound from older titles (appearances aside) is the difficulty (hear me out). A lot of racing games, particular older ones, really struggle to regulate difficulty, with AI often being rubber-banded, incapable of avoiding crashes, unaware of the concept of grip, or outfitted with ridiculous cars (either too fast or too slow), but Unbound strikes a good balance. Across all five car classes (B, A, A+, S, and S+, in case you were wondering), I found that if you didn't have a competitive car (not just in terms of raw speed, but also in terms of handling), then you would really struggle to consistently win (even on Normal difficulty), which is entirely fair in my opinion. This is especially prevalent in the B and A classes, where cars tend not to be grippy, so you'll waste valuable time (and often crash) as you skid around and try to get used to the game's handling (more on that in a bit). And trust me, you really don't want to be skidding around unecessarily, as you can only restart an event a limited number of times throughout the ENTIRE day (3-4 times in total, depending on where you are in the game). At first I though that was a massive inconvience, but the truth is, while I found the first half of the game a bit tough (due to the aforementioned shortcomings of relatively crap cars), the latter half of the game was anything but. By the time I had a decent S-class car (for context, events are locked to a class), it became pretty easy to win so I didn't have to worry about cash (you get more if you win events) for the last two in-game weeks or so of my playthrough, so I guess the difficulty evens itself out over the course of a playthrough.
So, any complaints? Honestly, not really, as long as you go into the game accepting that it's not going to set the world on fire or break any new moulds (but then, it really doesn't have to). I suppose my real issue was with the handling, as, coming from too much time playing Forza, I found it to be a little inert. That's hard to explain without actually playing Unbound and then a sim racer back-to-back, but the best way I can describe how cars handle in Unbound is "drift or don't drift." Many cars will push into understeer if you don't activate a drift (by tapping the gas or brake buttons), which would be manageable if you actually had an idea of when a car will push into understeer, so for tighter bends it feels like your options are "understeer" or "oversteer/drift," with the in-between being difficult to define as even the grippiest cars can be easily made to drift (and therefore made unstable) by the aforementioned button presses. You tune into it; some cars are happy to drift, others you'll want to slow down in plenty of time to take corners as flat as possible, and thankfully you can adjust cars' tendencies to do either to a reasonable extent with upgrades.
Otherwise, now that this game has depreciated in price, I'm even content with the amount of time I got out of Unbound; 31-and-a-half hours is really good going for a single-player racing game experience, especially one in this day and age where we're so used to games being barren upon release.
In short, this game almost feels like a blast from the past. Those, like myself, who have happy memories playing NFS Undercover and Burnout Paradise, will find that Unbound looks really cool, you can goof around in crazy-looking cars to your heart's content, and above all, is enjoyable at its core, which is what gaming is all about.
