TB: Four years have passed since Criterion Games delivered their first open-world world racer, Burnout Paradise, to a lot of head-scratching praise. They kept their patented high-risk racing mechanics intact, but many were confused and turned off by how poorly streamlined the experience was. Racing fans sometimes just want to jump behind the wheel to race and not bother exploring an open city or being forced to drive across a map to reach a starting line that a simple menu would have made more readily available.
After nearly three decades of NFS games, here's a list of the best Need For Speed titles that have ever been released in the past years, ranked by The Nerd Stash.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted debuted in 2005, with the Xbox 360 version being the first then next-generation title in the franchise.
This game was awesome! I remember reloading my save if I didn’t get the pink slip from my blacklist rival
Paul writes - "EA know a good thing when they see it, and for multiple years November was Need for Speed month. In a break from the usual routine, I'm going to be looking back at two games here, released in 2005 and 2010 respectively. The earlier game is Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which has the distinction of being one of the very best in the franchise. The second game comes from 2010, and is Need for Speed Hot Pursuit; which I'll talk about just as the Remastered version of the game has hit the stores."
I completely adore this game! In fact its probably my favorite racing game. I recently dusted off my xbox 360 to play Most Wanted 2005. Still a great game, though I do not remember there being such horrible performance. Like massive frame-pacing issues. screen tearing, latency. If any game ever truly needed to be remastered, it this one for sure!
My god, Burnout Paradise is the best in the series. Had hours and hours of fun in that game, I even own it on two platforms. This is a spiritual successor but isn't quite as fun. It's still damn good and I'd personally give it an 8.5.
I'm in the same boat as you. Loved Paradise so much. I'm not a big racer fan, and don't know much about cars, but love Criterions games. And this is no exception, I personally like it more than Paradise, I would change nothing. I do miss the stunt runs though. And I miss the old crash events from Revenge. I really want a new Burnout, honestly.