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The races in Unbound are located on the city map and during the first ten hours pay abysmally small amounts, which means that you will struggle, like a fool, to scrape together enough money to be able to upgrade the turbo, or the brakes. It's now a matter of scraping together a few scraps, buying an old car and starting from scratch, again. At the start of the game you play as a mechanic and racing driver in a street racing world, and right off the bat during the intro you and your boss are betrayed by your colleague Jaz, who with his new "crew" steals all five of your racing cars including the one you built in the opening 30 minutes.
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Unbound takes place in a fictional version of Chicago (where they borrowed a couple of famous places and then used their imagination to a large extent to create a game world with both urban environments and surrounding country roads) called Lakeshore. The Swedish developer Ghost Games had high ambitions for the game series, but all of their attempts ended in me feeling really bored, and by 2015 I had lost my desire for everything Need for Speed.Īfter three days with Unbound, however, I can sadly do nothing but state that this is not at all the game that Need for Speed, as a game series, was in such desperate need of. Tired games that lived on old merits and that contained annoying car physics, lifeless monotonous game worlds and very little of that exciting spirit and enthusiasm that the early games boasted. The Run, Rivals, No Limits, Payback and Heat were all mediocre. 2009's Shift was also a favourite as was the remake of Hot Pursuit that was released in the fall of 2010 but after Shift 2: Unleashed, my feelings really started to take a turn. I played the sequel quite a bit and enjoyed 2005's Most Wanted, too.
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The following year EA knocked out Need for Speed Underground and it still stands as one of the best racing titles of all-time according to yours truly. I really enjoyed High Stakes (1999), loved Porsche Unleashed (2000) and adored Hot Pursuit 2, which was released in 2002. For me, it was the gateway to the game series and the start of a long-lasting love. Gorgeous, lightning fast, challenging, expansive and atmospheric with fantastically nice cars and a really smooth driving experience. I was almost floored by how amazingly cool it was. I remember the first time I played Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, in the fall of 1997.
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