Wild car chases with the police, illegal street races with tuned cars or simply hitting the road, cruising and pimping your car in the local garage. Sounds familiar. Need for Speed World (or Need for Speed online) is obviously trying to live up to his single player prequels.

NFS World is trying to establish a link between the typical elements of the former parts of the franchise  with typical MMO elements. We gave the game a try and took a look if this mashup is working out.

Getting started…

First, you need a car, of course. You start with  25k cash but the first 20 grand  are rapidly invested in one out of four cars (Mazdaspeed 3, Nissan 240SX, Toyota Corolla GTS or Mitsubishi Eclipse GT). The basic Cars vary slightly in their specs but you haven’t got any advantages just by getting car A instead of car B. The remaining 5k can be saved or invested in a new paint job and some vinyls. That you can’t effort a Lamborghini Gallardo for 20k should be quiete reasonable even for trustful old ladys. It is the usual MMO business. You start with some lousy items and your goal is to loot and buy the high end stuff additionally to the improvement of your skills.

Game Basics

The so called “Reputation Points”  (that are equivalence to the usual exp) are getting collected due to the pursuits where you are evading from the cops and by destroying police property as hard as you can. Alternatively you can gain your Rep by some challenges vs NPCs or other players. For accomplished missions you earn besides the Rep some additional money and draw cards. Draw cards can enable free Power Ups.With the achievement of  a new driver level you get new skills, new cars, further customization and extra town parts as well as access to new  races and race types.

The driver skills are subdivided in 3 categorys: Race Skills, Explorer Skills and Pursuit Skills. These are quite important e.g. earn more Rep in races you’ve won or gaining more top speed.

Gameplay

After you bought your car you instantly hit the road. Either you start cruising through the town to get to know it a little better or you start at one out of three possible races you find on the map. It is your choice if you want to challenge NPCs other Players. The Player versus player races make you earn more Rep but they are way harder to win. At least in the Beta the time you have to wait for a multiplayer race is within a half and 5 minutes and you are challenging 3 to 7 players. Negative aspect in these races is that players between level 1 and 20 can attend so the equal opportunity is very restricted due to higher lvld cars and skills.

And so it happens often that the best players are way ahead and you are driving the rest of the circuit alone or with one or two opponents. This is really not a pleasure and you get very fast bored by the missing action. Also annoying are the circuits in the beginning which are very similar. Variety would be welcome.

Without the knowledge of lines and shortcuts on the tracks it is possible that you are frustrated and far behind without the chance of getting any kind of closer. Since there is no system that balances the skills and lvls in the races this (really!) is a pain.

Beneath lap based races and sprint races there are supposed to be drag and checkpoint races like in NFS:Drift / Most Wanted but we haven’t seen any of them so far. Included are the pursuits with the police you start by hitting a police car on purpose or by mistake.

You are getting points by colliding with the policecars or destroying them completely. Additionally the wrecking of other cars, environmental objects, the breaking through police barriers are gaining Rep. In the begining this is quite easy but it can get really challenging. If you get hounded by one police car on the start you soon will see yourself confronted by more persecutors, heavy ATVs, blockades and nailbets when the pursuit is progressed.

The NPCs police is also quite smart, trying to push you off the street, brake you, or make you surrender by colliding with your car. You don’t need to be afraid of other players, while having a pursuit. There is no collision which is pretty boring and not useful to get you in the right mood.

The challenge is to escape really quickly even if you are surrounded. There is a bar  at the bottom of the screen that gives you the information wheter you get caught soon (thats when the red bar is full) or not and you get away from the cops (blue bar is filling). Best way to get away is to hide in one of the alleys or hideouts in the city. When the blue bar is filled you have a cool down phase, in which you shouldn’t be spotted. You won the challenge if you hid successfully through that time. If the cops catch you, you don’t get Rep but a nice fine.

Powerups / Shop

You have the chance to get yourself 4 different sets with 4 chosen Power Ups and to use them in the races or pursuits. This abilities you can buy or win are limited in use but they help you in races to  get a distance between you and opponents by using nos. In pursuits, the advantage of using the powerups, is that you can break through barriers lot easier, as well as is it repairs tires after hitting a nailbed. It looks like you can buy yourself some powerups with RL money in the ingameshop, but this feature isn’t implemented yet.

Beta

Betastatus in NFS World really means beta. In the latest build we found some graphic issues, textures disappear, cars are flickering or just appear out of nowhere. The game crashed various times, especially when we switched between desktop and game.

Graphically the cars, shadows and reflections are nice to look at. Landscapes and buildings whereas are looking very unvital and washed out. Antialiasing and further settings are unfortunately missing, which gives the general impression a negative note.

Next to the graphical errors there are some more odds and ends that are a little annoying. The car is jerking or stagnating when you approach which creates a very strange handling. In general, the collisions are comparable with the other NFS parts. If you enjoy to wreck you car and put it in thousand pieces. This is not for you.

The developers have a lot of work ahead before they can release the game.

Summary

Beneath races and pursuits, the latest beta is lacking of gameplay features. The town is fast explored and is just suitable for skirmish with the police and posing with your car.

So, we couldn’t help suspecting that Electronic Arts just wanted to jump on the MMO train with a franchise with a few added mmo features. That is actually a good idea, but the implementation should be a proper one and sophisticated.

NFS World does not contain the content to bind players over a longer period. You are at a certain point asking yourself where the benefit of the online game is. There have been up to 8 person races in the multiplayermode of the former NFS games. Singleplayer content as well. Even the LvL and Skill elements are less online than rpg elements and at the most a nice gimmick.

There is also a complete lack of Story. No side you have to choose, no important events you witness or create. There are also no jobs or challenges or ingame events beside the usual races that could be something like a motivation for the game. The idea remains that you have seen everything in the prequels. There is not a feeling of MMO with an associated community. There is content missing that connects lots of players at a certain point.

Those who like the NFS franchise and don’t mind that there is (except for the skillsystem) nothing new, can give it a try, since its for free. Those who look for a MMO alternative that binds you over a long time should keeps their hands off the game.

Footage

Need for Speed World screenshot gallery

Need for Speed World videos

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