I stuck with my (eventually fairly monstrous beneath the paint job) bright pink Honda Civic for as long as I could, license plate "AWFUL," garish transfers all over, as I'd become rather attached to my self-made horror. Thankfully, leveling up is a breeze-play for three hours and you should easily be at level 20, rolling around in a powerful machine that'll see you through until much later challenges, at which point you can chuck all the money you've got at a tricked-out Murciélago.
And I'll have more on that workshop space in a couple of paragraphs.)Īlternatively, you can take your escalating cash pile and splash it all over a new, sportier, sexier mode of transport-there are what feel like hundreds of cars available ( checks the number it's actually only 51), and any one of them can be yours if you have the readies and you've put in enough work to reach a level that unlocks certain models and mods alike. (It's OK, though-damage is only ever superficial, and can be popped back into shape instantly upon going back to your hub garage. Be prepared for impacts once you tweak your vehicle of choice into reaching some properly high speeds. The impression doesn't last, as very occasional instances of asset pop-up break the illusion, and the various shades of grey that make up road, central reservations and sidewalks rather blur into each other, making high-speed turns tricky as it's not always obvious where smooth tarmac ends and vertical concrete obstacle begins.
From a distance, this doesn't look like a video game at all, a compelling facet of its presentation further enhanced by the inclusion of full-motion-video cutscenes.
Most of those times occur within the first hour of play, when Ghost's almost photo-real rain-slicked streets, always crowned by night time skies-you'll be waiting an eternity for the sun to come up over the east side of Weid Canyon-still feel fresh to your fizzing retinas. Which isn't to say that Need for Speed isn't a very attractive game, because at times its Frostbite 3-generated visuals are astounding. I've never been to said real-world city, but I have played a shit load of Grand Theft Auto V, and if you forced me to declare one of these two virtual versions of the City of Angels as more impressive than the other, it'd be Rockstar's Los Santos I stuck my thumb up for. It's an analogue of Los Angeles, loosely. The game locks you into a relatively expansive open-world city by the name of Ventura Bay, an American West-Coast sprawl of industrial complexes, snaking mountain lanes, downtown high-rises, and waterside condos. You can't drive all the way to Wales in the new, rebooted Need for Speed, another Ghost Games production for publisher EA, following the Swedish studio's celebrated work on 2013's Need for Speed Rivals.