With racers, I'm a lot more familiar with arcade and cart/kart tracks
than with any of the more hardcore series. And while I know Need for Speed has always been about straddling a middle ground between arcade and
sim, I honestly haven't played as much of them as I'd like. But at a
recent pre-GDC event, EA brought me by to try out its latest, PC-only
racing MMO, Need
for Speed: World. And with its more casual-friendly bent,
non-hardcore racers like myself should be able to easily get in on the
action.
Long-time fans of the franchise should be able to effortlessly ease into
this installment. NFSW includes maps from Need for Speed:
Carbon and Need
for Speed: Most Wanted. And the three race modes are standard for
the series: Pursuit, where you flee perusing A.I. cops; Circuit, where
you race laps around a track, and Sprint, where you see who can get to a
designated waypoint the fastest. But that's where the similarities
start to fade. All the powerups in the game, including NOS, are
single-use consumables; which you can earn and buy through completing
races. You can toss a temporary "magnet" onto racers in front of you to
make other cars slam into them, or use a ramming ability to push through
groups of opponents. Altogether it's a like a mix of open-world, Burnout: Paradise racing and Mario
Kart-style arcade sensibilities.
