If that wasn't enough to make you steer clear of this horrible video game idea, or if you'd like a little more elaborate description of why it's an awful game idea, then you know; click the read more link.
I don't have much good to say about this game. Everything that could said to be good about the game could also be said to be good about every other Need for Speed game (or any other street racer game for that matter). Everything that is unique to World is either A. poorly executed, or B. a regression to the franchise.
They only improvement I can think of would be that vinyls are now placeable with the mouse. You click them and stick them. No more moving them around one pixel at a time with the joystick.
Let's get back to that nitrous. There are two main ways to make money with a mumorpiga. You can charge a monthly fee, or you can setup a store for items to use in the game (popularly called a "microtransaction" system). Within the microtransaction system you have three subsets; often a mixture is used. First you get them to trade their money for your special currency so you don't have to offer refunds (EA has chosen to call this buffer currency "speedboost"). Then you can sell items that last a certain amount of time and then the player must buy them again (like buying a gun that costs four dollars for ninety days). Or you can sell large items that are permanent (a ten dollar horse). Or, lastly, you can sell cheap one time use only items like potions.
Need for Speed World has gone for options A and C of the micro-transaction trifecta. They will rent you special cars, and they sell cheap gimmicky powerups (amongst those'd be nitrous). I'll clarify "gimmicky" later. There is nothing inherently bad with the first choice. The special cars allow you to trade money for a very powerful, yet temporary car. Newbies might complain that this allows rich people to play better, and to them I reply "DUH! It's called marketing.". Powerups also allow you to race better in exchange for money, but can be unlocked randomly for free. It's a good system for the game they've chosen to make. I don't think powerups belong in a street racing game, but I'm still going to hold off explaining that part.
Then they add something I have never seen before to their monetary plans. From what I understand you pay a twenty dollar one time fee in order to, get this, unlock the ability to advance past level twent. I think there's something like fifty in game levels to rank up through. So it's shareware with microtransactions. People already consider EA to be money whores. I have no idea what they'll say after this. Honestly though I still think it's a good payment system for the game they've chosen to make. If only they'd focused more on the game instead of how to make money from it. I said at the start of this wall of text there was nothing good about the game, and now here I am complimenting it, so let me say that the payment system is not part of the game.
Okay now, as a mumorpiga, there must be skills. NFSW has these. You can upgrade how well you use powerups. You can upgrade how sensitive your radar is. You can upgrade how fast your cooldown meter fills after a police chase. You can unlock an ability that makes you go faster if you're in second place in a race. And so on. I absolutely despise this. Racing games are to be about racing skill. You attempt to make it around the track in the quickest route possible. You do this by driving well. Not by grinding to make meters go up. And here we go with powerups: you also don't make it around the track faster by shooting an unavoidable laser beam at the car ahead of you, or magnetizing him so traffic rams him. This is why I make a very specific point of separating kart racers from real racers. Real racers (like what NFS has always been) only care about your driving skill and how well you've tuned your vehicle. Kart racers care about how lucky you were with random powerups and how well you time using them. Any driving skill takes a back seat to that. Need for Speed world is a kart racing mumorpiga so driving skill is virtually eliminated through a combination of the fact that how long you've been
Now, not only do we have the gimmicky powerups like traffic magnet, or the one that bounces everything away from you, but they've taken essential gameplay features such as nitrous and turned them into powerups that must either be bought with real money, or won (randomly) from winning races. Ugh.
What about freeroam? Surely that must be fun in a mumorpiga. Well guess what? The scenery is *LITERALLY* (and I mean that in the most literal way. Not that phony "literally" people have begun to use for exclamation) a copy/paste of Need for Speed Undeground. Seriously. Go compare if you can. I'll just wait here.
Secondly, most of the fun in a free roam multiplayer driving game comes from being a jerk to other players. When you get two players in a game where they can drive anywhere they want in a big city, they're going to want to wreck into each other. In Need for Speed you have the added police chase fun factor. Do something bad, and split before the cops show up. Then laugh out loud when your friend gets busted. Co-op police chases maybe too?
Well that would be fun, if they hadn't totally screwed up free roam as well. For starters all the other players are noncollidable. Secondly when you get in a police chase all the other players disappear and you basically get locked in your own instance of the game world. Lastly the cops will no longer come after you for driving offroad, hit and runs, speeding, or anything other than ramming into them. And they must be asleep at the wheel because if you ram into them at anything slower than 60, they will not care! So instead of what you'd expect from a free roam driving mumorpiga, you get wasted opportunities and a huge let down.
Last words; this is mario kart with a larger map, free roam between races where the other players, for all intents and purposes, don't exist, plus the grinding for experience of a mumorpiga, and prettier graphics.
To be honest I'm not sure we're even technologically ready for the game that they were hoping to make. I think they aimed too high.
(On the other hand I feel really good about Need for Speed Hot Pursuit)
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