E3 2015 - Need for Speed Hands On

Last year was the first year in a while that we went without a Need for Speed game, something that most people honestly did not realise and while the world keep on ticking around the team at Ghost Games were hard at work building up their vision and now having had a chance at E3 to play it, I can say it's a good way of looking at things.





The game is built around 5 different ways of achieving success and each will provide a challenge different from the rest. The E3 demo I played, shown above as well, had me customising my car to suit my driving style, which is drifting, so I had everything set to loose, but not super loose as I still wanted to be able to keep the car straight. We were given 2 minutes in the garage to customise our cars to how we wanted, which included adding spoilers and paint schemes and then it was open road time.

The race we were dropped in was a point to point, after which we would be given a choice of 4 more events to take part in, or we could go for a free drive, which is what I decided to do. You are scored on 5 methods of driving, Skill, Speed, Drifting, Destruction and Outlaw, meaning if you keep the car at high speeds for longer, you score more points in the speed group. Out of the 8 racers that were in my group, I came first in two of the groups, Speed and Destruction and then first overall, I actually made it into a final comp, but sadly could not make it back for it.

Driving the car around was really smooth, using the handbrake to perform tighter turns was quite interesting, as doing so from full speed usually meant I missed the turn and then barrelled straight into an oncoming wall, car or truck. Thankfully the car came equipped with NOS which meant I could get going again fast, which I think is where my wins came from, trying to be fancy and crashing and then using NOS to get speed again.

My time with the game was short, as most things are at E3, but I enjoyed my time with it. The game did not feel different at all, it felt normal, which was something I liked. It has some cool new additions, but the core of the gameplay is exactly what Need for Speed needs to have and from the moment I started racing, everything just clicked into place.