First Impressions: Need for Speed: Welcome back old friend

I know I harp on EA often, and not without good reason mind you. However, there was a time I loved their games... well, two in particular. Burnout 3: Takedown, which I still maintain to be one of the best party games I've ever played (yeah, you herd me Mario Party). And the Need for Speed series, especially Need for Speed Underground 2. One of the best gaming memories I have from when I was a child was when me and my father would boot up Underground 2 on the PS2, spend the afternoon building a car up from scratch and once we were done, sending them to the "City loop" track (I can't remember the name), and racing them to see who was the better driver... let's just say there's a reason why Burnout 3 was a fairer challenge, though I did get better. However, I haven't really followed the Need for Speed series as close as my father has, and even then he doesn't play it that much now. I loved watching him play Most Wanted and Undercover, but that was about it. I was going to do the same with this one... and then I saw E3...

One thing you should know about Need for Speed, no one cares about the plot. The plot's there to give you missions and races. Which is pretty much all you're doing in this game: Going from point A to point B, doing races, outrunning cops, and getting better cars to do the same thing. Its a mix of arcade racing and realistic racing games. Now I don't know how that will hold in this day and age, however it'll still have its audience.

One of the things I enjoyed about Underground 2 was the overworld. I completed races to unlock more areas to drive to more so then anything else, and I'm glad to see that back here. Basically this Need for Speed is a fusion of three others. The car customization from Underground 1 and 2, the pursuit from Most Wanted (and maybe Undercover, I don't know if you can drive Police cars as well) and the overworld of Carbon, one I have no experience playing, but I have seen in action and it looks like it was well designed... at least according to memory. Those alone have sold me on this, if the entire world is unlocked at the start, then I'm sold...

Unless this ends up suffering from some of the problems I have with the industry at the moment, and with it being EA, I wouldn't be surprised if it did. I hope not, but I know there's a chance of it happening. I'll see you all soon for another game: Shantae 1/2 genie hero.

Yes, today is literally an experiment, I hope you like the flood of content, but don't expect this to be often, I'm not that crazy.