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Need for Speed Unbound for PC Reviews - Metacritic
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Need for Speed Unbound

 PC
Need for Speed Unbound Image
Metascore
72

Mixed or average reviews - based on 14 Critic Reviews What's this?

User Score
5.8

Mixed or average reviews- based on 119 Ratings

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  • Summary: START AT THE BOTTOM, RACE TO THE TOP. The world is your canvas in Need for Speed™ Unbound. Prove you have what it takes to win The Grand, Lakeshore’s ultimate street racing challenge. Across four intense weeks of racing, earn enough cash to enter weekly qualifiers, beat the competition, andSTART AT THE BOTTOM, RACE TO THE TOP. The world is your canvas in Need for Speed™ Unbound. Prove you have what it takes to win The Grand, Lakeshore’s ultimate street racing challenge. Across four intense weeks of racing, earn enough cash to enter weekly qualifiers, beat the competition, and make your mark on the street racing scene while outdriving and outsmarting the cops. Pack your garage with precision-tuned, custom rides and light up the streets with your unique style, exclusive fits, and a vibrant global soundtrack led by A$AP Rocky and AWGE that bumps in every corner of the world. Express yourself to the fullest with the freshest new art styles and signature tags that represent what you're all about. With separate single and multiplayer campaigns, this latest edition in the Need for Speed™ franchise from Criterion Games™ delivers hours of electric, adrenaline-pumping action.

    • Graffiti comes to life in Need for Speed™ Unbound with an all-new, unique visual style that blends elements of the freshest street art with the most realistic looking cars in Need for Speed™ history. Access a brand-new toolkit of high-energy visual and sound effects to express your driving skills, including Burst Nitrous, a new boost tactic that delivers a dizzying rush of speed.

    • To get to the top, you gotta take risks. Choose how and when to put it all on the line, pulling huge drifts on the street, outdriving the cops, or placing side bets with your own earnings against rival racers. Time is money, so find the fastest way to earn enough cash to enter the weekly qualifiers and make it to Lakeshore’s ultimate race, The Grand.

    • The more you race, the more you build heat. While the cops pile on the pressure, you gotta make tactical decisions using new escape mechanics to take control of the chase. Do you outrun the cops, battle them head on, or hide out in Lakeshore's underground? Run these streets and you’ll reap the rewards.

    • Pull up to a Meetup and show off your unique style with hundreds of cosmetic items to choose from, including exclusive gear from some of the world’s most pioneering fashion innovators. Extend that look to your ride, transforming your cars with unique wraps and cutaways for the ultimate legendary custom. And when you take first, don't forget to stunt on the competition with your own personal win poses.    … Expand

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Need for Speed Unbound - Risk & Reward Gameplay Trailer

Critic Reviews

Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 8 out of 14
  2. Mixed: 5 out of 14
  3. Negative: 1 out of 14
  1. Player 2
    Dec 8, 2022
    83
    NFS Unbound is another step in the right direction for the veteran racing franchise. Always challenging, always intense and always fun, Unbound is a big return to form.
  2. Launcher (The Washington Post)
    Dec 5, 2022
    82
    Need for Speed Unbound handily straddles the line between realism and fun, making it one of the best racing experiences of the year.
  3. Gamersky
    Dec 8, 2022
    81
    Need for Speed: Unbound can be regarded as a very special work by every means. It combines street racing and police chasing together, using comic-style visual effects and exciting music make people addicted to every corner of the city. Although it has obvious problems with difficulty control and currency system, this does not have much influence on the game experience. When I drove all kinds of modified vehicles with cool paint roaring on the streets of Lakeshore, all the troubles in my heart were swept away along with the roadblocks ahead.
  4. MGG
    Dec 8, 2022
    75
    Need for Speed Unbound surprises with its graphic style inspired by street art. But the characters look really cheap. The cops are a bit too sticky, so the title offers an appreciable challenge with an efficient risk-reward concept, and a great soundtrack. We would have appreciated less limited winnings on the races to quickly buy real cars, as well as being able to play with a cockpit view, but that didn't stop us from enjoying driving, with the desire to go back each time.
  5. Inverse
    Dec 13, 2022
    70
    Despite its flaws, I found myself always craving one more race; I could drive faster, customize my car better, and drift in even cooler ways than before. While not perfect, Need for Speed Unbound is the best the franchise has been and years — and hopefully a sign of even better things to come.
  6. GameSpot
    Dec 5, 2022
    70
    Unbound is unlikely to emerge from the shadows of the genre's most popular games.
  7. GamingTrend
    Dec 12, 2022
    45
    Need for Speed Unbound is an arduous experience, and not one I’d recommend if you’re looking for an arcade racer. The only good aspects are the refined handling system and the aesthetic customization of your cars, which is really brought to light via community creations. However, this experience is quickly overshadowed by the boring open-world, a meaningless collect-a-thon, unbalanced AI, and some of the cringiest story and dialogue I’ve experienced. It’s The Room of racing games.

See all 14 Critic Reviews

User Reviews

Write a Review
Score distribution:
  1. Positive: 30 out of 65
  2. Mixed: 3 out of 65
  3. Negative: 32 out of 65
  1. JudasWick
    Dec 4, 2022
    10
    Gooooooooo oooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
  2. FreemanLVA
    Dec 10, 2022
    10
    I just registered here, to leave my opinion. I'm so called veteran of the NFS series, my first game was "Porche unleashed". My opinion thatI just registered here, to leave my opinion. I'm so called veteran of the NFS series, my first game was "Porche unleashed". My opinion that this is the best NFS game ever made. Great adrenaline gameplay, street racing atmosphere, good AI, this game has many interesting mechanics (race management, heat control, rivals u t.d) This game is challenging, some races ends with your scream in finish line. Every racing events brings you emotions. Cool idea with cellshading in game. It's looks original and looks like street art. Good combination of street racing,street art and hip-hop . Game looks fresh and original, great idea. Cool looking city, city looks more alive and has more interesting logistics than in Heat. Awesome job Criterion. P.S. I think all the comments about NFS Heat supremacy is "Ghost studios" workers comments =D Unbound is better in every way than Heat.… Expand
  4. Mighoet
    Dec 3, 2022
    9
    I must start saying I've played all the other NFS games, and Unbound runs well, it is fast, the camara shake enhances the speed sensation,I must start saying I've played all the other NFS games, and Unbound runs well, it is fast, the camara shake enhances the speed sensation, although is quite different from Heat, cleaner, I like it, Unbound is way more raw, direct, no fumbles, but the dialog is a bit cringe (zoomer like), I do not like many of the player models, and the clothes are subpar, driving is a-ok, works for me, challenging, but not impossible, control of the car is clearly tied to your ability to let go of the throttle, maneuvering feels nice, love the garage, love the city, the lighting, the car models look good.… Expand
  5. Gumdrifter
    Dec 8, 2022
    6
    Not a terrible game, but not a great game either. It's somewhere in between.
  6. ADV90
    Dec 10, 2022
    1
    Terrible cartoon effects. I have no idea what they were thinking with this game. Progression and vehicle unlock system is horrible. I cannotTerrible cartoon effects. I have no idea what they were thinking with this game. Progression and vehicle unlock system is horrible. I cannot believe how they have messed up the NFS this badly. I have played every single NFS title and thoroughly enjoyed each title (some more than others) however, this game isn't even worthy of the title NFS.… Expand
  7. MadGamerReviews
    Dec 13, 2022
    0
    Worst NFS game in the series. Every aspect of the game is designed to steal your in game currency and keep you broke. You have to pay a buy inWorst NFS game in the series. Every aspect of the game is designed to steal your in game currency and keep you broke. You have to pay a buy in fee to do 99% of the races, which most of the time is more than the profit payout if for the race (pay 10k to win 14k, so only a 4k profit if you win 1st place). There's limited restarts IN A SINGLE PLAYER GAME so if you can't get the perfect line every race, eventually you'll be forced to give up and you lose money. Betting higher ranked Ai will win you a lot of money but they rubber band hard AF so you can't actually beat them....so you lose your bet money (I've seen Ai on Easy difficulty be 100 car lengths out front of every other racer). If you bet someone lower than you, it's chump change, so betting is basically useless (I didn't even use the betting mechanic the first 15 hours of my playthrough because of how useless and rigged it is). The entire game is rigged. The exact same cars are always in the exact same positions in every race. The yellow/blue 350Z is always in first place, the 270Z Datsun is always in second place, the SS Camaro the African guy drives is always in third and so on. This is 100% every race. It's statistically impossible the Ai can get the same results every race unless they're coded to be in those positions. That's clearly rigging races coded into the game.

    Then you have to pay to upgrade the shop you're in, when you don't own the shop, just to get better parts. Why? I don't have to pay a shop IRL a $100k shop upgrade fee just to get them to order me a new turbo that I still have to pay for. It's just one bad money sink mechanic after another. The game constantly keeps you broke so you can't progress faster than it thinks you should. I've got almost 20 hours in the game and I doubt I've made $300K, overall. Again, this is a single player game with no way to cheat other IRL players. There's no way for you to ruin anyone else's experience, so why are there so many player limiting mechanics that clearly do nothing but hinder YOUR enjoyment/progression?

    Plus, everything you do in the game requires you to convert your safe money into heat money. The buy ins for races get payed back out as heat money, so the mechanic does nothing but make sure you constantly have money you can lose to cops busting you or the game freezing/crashing since heat money has not safety mechanic or "save" without banking it at the garage. Sounds normal, like Heat did night mode, except that the game is a buggy, glitchy mess that hasn't received a single bug fix patch since release and, if you just so happen to have a game crash or freeze...you lose 100% of your heat money. You will have a crash every session and it's random...so there's no way to prepare for it. This entire mechanic does nothing but punish the players. In my last two session I've lose around $70k because it crashed twice (once both sessions). I've constantly had to give up and turn the game off out of frustration because of crap like this. What's the point of spending 1 hour+ just to lose 100% of your progress every single time you play the game? You can't just go to the garage and bank it for safety because going to the garage is how you progress the day to night (you can no longer switch manually). You can't go to the garage and then leave back to the same day session you were just in. There's also a limited amount of time each in game week you have to collect the big buy in for the Saturday race that progresses the story. So, inevitably, you have to stay out and risk the game crashing in the hopes of making enough money to progress the story. The game is truly, genuinely not fun.

    The icing on the cake is how bad the story is and how terrible the dialogue is. 90% of the dialogue lines are written by pre-teens in middle school. "Yo, homie G-dog pimp, What it dizzly-do? Wanna skizzert down to the race spot and slap up these foos? YEEEEEEEEEEAAAAAAAAH!!!!!!!!!!!!". Every line in the game is like this. Also, the Ai racers only have two voice lines and they same them every race...for the entire race. "Oh, you're good...I'm gonna pass you. You can't have my money, I'm gonna take your money" repeat 40 times per races for 200 races. Not exaggerating, not joking. It makes me want to turn off voice in game, but why would I want to play a NFS game as a silent film when the subtitles are still the same cringe lines?

    I hate this game. I cannot overstate how much I mean that. It's down right laughable how much better Heat is than this absolute dumpster fire.    … Expand
  8. Logccmong55
    Dec 4, 2022
    0
    Trash game not worth it anime game made for weebs 70€ for this BS u cant even disable the effects + copypaste of Heat

See all 65 User Reviews

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#27 Most Discussed PC Game of 2022

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