Need for Speed Unbound

The venerable racer returns in zoomer regalia

- PHIL IWANIUK

THERE WAS a time when Need For Speed was a guaranteed chart-topper. Before there was Forza Horizon, all festivals and physics, there was this. A Fast and Furious analog with spoilers on its spoilers, every year exactly the same super-accessible arcade racer about underground tuner culture and corrupt cops. And we didn’t care that it became as formulaic as that other long-running bestseller, Call of Duty. Until one day, finally, we did.

Need For Speed grew too big and popular to sustain itself. The sales were too good for EA to start tinkering with the formula, but the yearly releases oversaturated us with cars in widebody kits and stories of betrayal told exclusively through the medium of checkpoint races. The world that Need For Speed Unbound emerges into has changed. NFS Heat in 2019 was the franchise’s most convincing attempt at reinvention, but it couldn’t nudge Forza Horizon off its throne. Need For Speed Unbound needs to be something totally distinct to succeed.

Enter the new art style. This is an old franchise stepping out in its finest zoomer haircut and puffer jacket, hoping to find traction with the TikTok generation through a dramatic change of visual direction. It might seem like an incidental touch, but the anime-inspired smoke plumes and metaverse-ready avatars in Unbound are a statement of intent for such an established series. When you drift around a corner and light up your tires a cartoon miasma appears. Painterly neon lines whizz around in circles beside your tires during burnout and your car sprouts a pair of graffiti wings when you hit a ramp. This from a game that’s stuck to the same plot about double-crossing street racers and psychopathic law enforcement officials for two decades.