Need for Speed™
Ready to own the streets? Get behind the wheel of iconic cars and floor it through Ventura Bay, a sprawling urban playground. Explore overlapping stories as you build your reputation – and your dream car – and become the ultimate racing icon.
Need for Speed™ is a racing, multiplayer and driving game
developed by Ghost Games
and published by Electronic Arts.
Released on June 04th 2020 is available only on Windows
in 9 languages: English, French, Italian, German, Spanish - Spain, Japanese, Polish, Russian and Traditional Chinese.
It has received 21,937 reviews of which 15,349 were positive and 6,588 were negative resulting in a rating of 6.9 out of 10. 😐
The game is currently priced at 29.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Need for Speed™ into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Need for Speed™ through various videos and screenshots.
Requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- Requires a 64-bit processor and operating system
- OS *: 64-bit Windows 7 or later
- Processor: Intel Core i3-4130 or equivalent with 4 hardware threads
- Memory: 6 GB RAM
- Graphics: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 750 Ti 2GB, AMD Radeon HD 7850 2GB, or equivalent DX11 compatible GPU with 2GB of memory
- DirectX: Version 11
- Storage: 30 GB available space
Reviews
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
First things first - this is a drifting-focused game. Don't bother trying to tune a car for handling to take corners with proper racing lines; the physics just don't allow cars to rotate enough to make turns that are sharper than 30 degrees without ripping the handbrake. Second - the main story is exclusively told via live action, unskippable cutscenes. Some are mercifully short, others annoyingly long. The acting is decent enough, but becomes stilted and awkward once they directly address the cameraman/player. I'm 95% sure Manu and Spike are gay lovers, and that Amy died or something since I no longer get her quests by the time I got to level 40. Thirdly - I played this game exclusively with a Logitech G920 wheel, and I had to rebind pretty much every key since none of them were appropriately recognized. (By default, clutch was throttle, throttle was brake, and brake was clutch) Circling back to handling issues, the wheel input often "desynced" from the steering ingame, with much less steering output than expected for a few moments before it would "snap" back to being what you expect, most times putting you into a wall. The steering output is also terribly limited at high speeds, which is fine for many of the freeway corners but necessitates handbrake turns on otherwise very gentle corners. Manually shifting with paddle shifters is extremely slow when you need to quickly change through multiple gears, and in most cases, you have to wait a full second before you can shift again, which makes downshifting for tight corners or recovery from a severe slowdown an absolute bear. Not to mention, if you initiate a drift and downshift, often times it doesn't downshift and instead of sliding out and doing sick drifts, you just straighten back out into a wall because your car can't maintain wheelspin in 6th gear. Fourth - The walls and guardrails are extremely unpredictable in that sometimes you slip right off and keep going at speed, sometimes you slip off and keep going at 30 mph, sometimes you get pulled into the ground and nearly stop, and sometimes you get absolutely murdered by a static pixel. (the '32 Ford is especially terrible with getting murdered by guardrails and walls) Fifth - The transmissions and their gearing is arbitrary and strangely connected to the modifications you do; The starter mustang I chose went from 5 gears stock to 6 and now 7. I'm a tad disappointed that the block and cam upgrades don't increase the rev limit, but I guess it was easier to program a transmission that magically gains gears as you make more power. Sixth - The map is cool and detailed, but suffers from a problem NFSU:2 did that I call "literally never dry." It's always raining, just rained, or about to rain. It's also always nighttime. Why make a killer paintjob if you can barely see it while you're roaming around? Seventh - Vehicle details do exist, but certain stats like weight aren't readily available. The only direct mention I could find on a vehicle's weight is in the description for the Lotus; "It weighs under 1000 kg." Even the most expensive car in the game is described as "lightweight," but there's no real mention of how much it actually weighs. It doesn't even tell you if a vehicle is FWD, RWD or AWD. Eighth - Sometimes during drifts, your car will break the laws of physics and noticeably speed up by nearly 30mph in a very short time. I noticed this most often when I'd initiate at around 70 mph and suddenly in the middle of my drift, I'm going 95 and about to say hello to a guardrail. Ninth - The drift challenges you can do in the overworld are points-based and you're limited to just one slide per run to score. That's all well and good, but if you so much as rub your ass hair on the walls, you gotta do it again because... reasons?? Oh but don't worry you can slam into another car, probably killing a family of 4, and you're just fine, no need to do it over here's your points. TLDR; If you're looking for realism, keep looking, you won't find it here. TBH this game is barely worth it and I got it in a pack with PVZ Garden Warfare 2 and Unravel for like $5
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this game is really hard to review because while the majority of things in this game are just straight up terrible the world is like no other modern game. I would give it a play through on sale If you like the night time and rainy world but beware that the game is always online and there is no offline patch. another annoyance is that every time you switch networks the game tries to launch origin instead of the updated EA app. If your playing with a "modern controller" (aka any controller that is not the original Xbox one controller) your going to need to go into the game files and remove all of the wheel settings because for some reason it registers controllers as a wheel basically making every button accelerate and brake at the same time and the menu button maps are not mapable with in game UI. the game crashes infrequently at random points that I can only assume is from it failing to load the world properly. I fixed this by either playing in windowed mode or by changing graphics settings depending on the location. for the game play it is ok if your just playing through the story but when you get higher horsepower cars and into prestige mode the handling model starts to shows its flaws really bad. the lack of consistency is very frustrating when you can't position your car how you want and the amount of different ways the game screws you over is ridiculous not to mention the AI racers suck at driving and end up crashing into you or traffic all the damn time. I can't name everything wrong with the driving because there is too much but a standard turn goes like this, your car fails to initiate a drift so you pull the hand brake to start sliding you hit a car while sliding giving your car 10X more speed tangent to your original velocity vector before hitting the car forcing you to hit a wall and after the drift the car becomes unresponsive for half a second so you pull the hand brake to turn again but your car has different plans and decides to drive perpendicular to where the wheels are pointing and the cycle repeats. and every single turn has slightly different messed up things about them so one solution for a turn may end up costing you a race with the others.
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The fucking EA app sucks, but when the game works its fun, EA app 0/10, game 10/10
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Get Ready for a Wild Ride... After You Fix Your Controller If you're using an Xbox controller, brace yourself: you're about to experience all seven circles of controller hell. Expect countless community posts, tutorials, and config tweaks before you can make this game handle properly. But once you’ve got it sorted, oh man, does NFS 2015 deliver. The underground vibes are spot on, with gritty, neon-lit streets that pull you right into the world of illegal street racing. The gameplay is tight, responsive (once you fix that controller), and keeps you fully engaged, making every race feel intense as you push your way to the top. And the soundtrack? An absolute banger from start to finish. Each track feels perfectly selected to match the intensity of the races, whether you're drifting around tight corners or flooring it down the highway. It's easily one of the best in the series. When "I Am Rock" hit, I nearly threw it back to my Most Wanted days, but that track is just the icing on the cake—every song elevates the experience. Once you're cruising with perfect precision, the only thing you'll be thinking is 'Totally worth it.' And for those stuck in controller hell—[url=https://steamcommunity.com/app/1262540/discussions/0/2287213008810259844/#c2439210059715065783]here’s how to tweak the config to finally make the ride smooth (this worked for me)
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"Anyone can buy a fast car. The real stars build one from scratch." NOTE: I have played every Need for Speed title up to this one, with the exceptions of the very first game and Most Wanted (2012), without touching any of the newer ones post-reboot. As such, I feel my opinion is valid without comparing it to newer iterations. Also, RIP Ken Block <3 This particular Need for Speed represents a reboot of the franchise. The focus here is similar to (most of) the recent titles preceding it: car customisation, tuning/upgrading and pursuits (without the over the top nature of Hot Pursuit). You begin as a nameless, faceless and voiceless entity in the game world, trying with your group of friends to get the attention of a handful of icons with whom they identify most strongly. This introduces some distinct styles/disciplines into the game, ranging from purely speed focused, to style (e.g. gymkhana) to all-out pursuits. To lend credibility to the premise, all of the icons in the game are real life figures, including Ken Block to whom this game will always stand as a tribute. Often positioned as "Underground 3", that comparison is valid in many areas. It shares many of the characteristics of Underground 2: a (mostly) open world you can roam at your leisure, a list of cult cars you can customise and tune more or less to your liking (although perhaps not quite as extensively), a wide variety of race/event types etc. There are some notable differences however. As mentioned above, this game has police pursuits in it and cops can be encountered during races as well as while cruising the open world (although they will only pursue you if you are in violation of the law, e.g. speeding). The car roster, while similarly broad, includes exotics as well as the more traditional tuner cars - Ferrari/Lamborghini/Porsche all make an appearance here, amongst others. It is important to note however that the customisation does not extend to all cars: for example, there is very little you can to do the Ferrari F40. While it is understandable in some aspects, in others it is baffling if not outright irritating. This game is also far more structured in terms of having an actual end goal: being recognised by the icons and becoming an icon in your own right (Underground 2 does have a goal, but it is far more vague than it is here). Need for Speed marks the return of FMV and all interactions with your friends (obviously real life actors) take place from a POV camera. Some of the acting is quite good, but some of it is comically overdone and a lot of it is cringe worthy; there is also an obscene amount of fist bumps for no apparent reason as well as gratuitous Monster placements in game. That being said, the FMV sequences do their job of telling the story and connecting you to the world. Even though the game takes place at night and it seems to be perpetually raining (or at least wet), the graphics still hold up really well and this is certainly one of the better looking entries in the series. Sound design, particularly the engines, is also a strong point of this game and is far better done than expected, which lends a hand towards immersion. This is either helped or hindered (depending on your perspective) by the garage space: you can only have 10 cars at a time, anything else and you will have to sell in order to make space. While some will feel that this creates an attachment to your cars rather than having a "get them all" attitude, the artificial limitation can be frustrating at the same time. With all of this being said however, there are some glaring (major?) issues with this game: [*]ONLINE ONLY. A largely single player game is online only. You cannot pause the game at all, and once the servers go down the game will be unplayable. You have the option to switch to a solo session without other human players, but you still require the initial online connection. [*]Tying into the above - servers are constantly going down for maintenance. It is frustrating to be playing and seeing constant messages which require you to quit back to the menu and begin a new game. [*]Phone calls are your method of interaction with the other characters outside of the FMV sequences. By and large it works - but it is really annoying when there is a call every five minutes, doubly so when you cannot pause. [*]The physics are really janky - problematically so when there is a fairly large focus on drifting. The two available "presets" are grip and drift - grip should really be called understeer since that is all it does. This can be remedied to a degree with mods (more on that below). [*]Crash cam is entertaining for the first hour or so - but beyond that it becomes very tedious. This is made worse by the physics and the fact that you can apparently have a massive accident from the most innocuous of collisions. [*]The fact that the clock does not stop as soon as you hit the finish line is incredibly irritating - not a massive issue for a normal playthrough, but it becomes a big problem in Prestige Mode (more on that below). Prestige Mode deserves its own paragraph: this is unlocked after you have finished the main storyline and is seemingly intended to function as end-game content. The premise is simple: run the campaign/storyline missions again, only this time with heightened requirements for medals. As others have noted, it seems they took the top 0.1% of players, recorded their times, rounded to the nearest second and set those as the gold medal benchmarks. I applaud and appreciate the idea as it gives you something to chase and is in a way a validation of skill level, but it is incredibly frustrating when you are not chasing seconds, but tenths or hundredths to meet medal requirements. This is compounded by the timer not stopping when you cross the line: there were numerous occasions (mostly on the sprints) where I was just meeting the time, but due to the timer still running, I fell short by hundredths; this is incredibly frustrating for already difficult objectives. Prestige Mode also promotes a meta in essentially needing two cars: the Porsche RSR for races/sprints, and the Lamborghini Huracan for drifts. It is unlikely you will succeed with other vehicles. For mods, there are two I would recommend (this is what I used): [*][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/needforspeed2016/mods/53]Need for Speed Remastered [*][url=https://www.nexusmods.com/needforspeed2016/mods/34]Unite NFS15 Contrary to appearances, these two mods can be used in conjunction and compliment each other quite well - my suggestion is to use the handling model from Remastered as well as the various available graphical presets and include the other options from Unite. This will dramatically improve the game's handling model and help to resolve some of the gripes with the physics. This is a tough one. When the game gets things right, it feels pretty good - but in so many ways, it is mediocre and you are constantly left wanting with a feeling that it is almost, but not quite, there. If you enjoy more casual racing games with a focus on customisation/tuning or are a fan of the franchise, Need for Speed is probably worth picking up - just don't expect to be blown away by what is on offer. Played on Windows 11 x64. I had plenty crashes during my time with this game, but it is possible that the problems were caused or exacerbated by the mods in use. P.S. Spike deserves to be hit in the face.
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Last Updates
| Steam data | 17 November 2024 00:06 |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 19 January 2025 09:50 |
| Steam price | 22 January 2025 20:25 |
| Steam reviews | 21 January 2025 17:47 |
Online players
243
Developer
Ghost Games
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Release
04 Jun 2020
Platforms