There was a time when Need for Speed was as guaranteed a Christmas number one spot as a TV reality show winner in the pop charts. Before there was Forza Horizon, all festivals and physics, there was this. A Fast and Furious analog with spoilers on its spoilers, every year exactly the same super-accessible arcade racer about underground tuner culture and corrupt cops. And we didn’t care that it was as formulaic as the aforementioned contest winner’s carefully selected Leonard Cohen cover. Until one day, finally, we did.
grew too big and popular to sustain itself. The sales were too good for EA to start tinkering with the formula, but the yearly releases over-saturated us with beamers in widebody kits and stories of betrayal told exclusively through the medium of checkpoint races. The world that emerges into, then, has changed. 2019’s was the franchise’s most convincing attempt at reinvention for years, but it couldn’t nudge off its mighty throne. Nobody can bridge the gap to Playground Games’ behemoth right now. So this new needs to be something totally distinct to succeed in the genre.
