Favorite Need For Speed games?

[swaaye]

I've been returning to old NFS games that I had great times with in the past. For me, that's mainly NFS 3 Hot Pursuit and 4 High Stakes. I really didn't like where they went with Underground and the newest games are definitely not my thing either. I really enjoyed them as exotic car arcade racers, although I can understand why they would want to take the franchise in a fresh direction after all these years.

What are the opinions of the NFS series among you folks? Any other NFS 3/4 fans?

 

[Bludd]

Porsche Unleashed/2000 and Most Wanted are my favourites.

 

[bitwise xor]

I loved NFS3: Hot pursuit. I think the only racing games I played before that were lotus spree and outrun for the amiga, but because of nfs3 I get a new racer every couple of years now.

After that, the only NFS game I bought was underground, but I never really got into it. I own Rallysport Challenge and then Grid and like both of them a lot, aside from Grids often ugly over-done smeary/bloomy/blurry 'next-gen' low-def high-def look.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

NFS2 and NFS4 are the best (I preffer 4 over 3 because of the damage, for the rest they are almost the same).

 

[Davros]

6 hot pursuit 2
4 high stakes
5 porsche 2000

 

[digitalwanderer]

NFSU, I can't get enough of it.

 

[Richard]

Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted.

Underground 1 was also quite good.

 

[swaaye]

I own Rallysport Challenge and then Grid and like both of them a lot, aside from Grids often ugly over-done smeary/bloomy/blurry 'next-gen' low-def high-def look.

Yeah, I'm also a Rally fan. Top Gear Rally, Rallysport Challenge 1/2, DiRT, Flatout. Basically I get into rally and exotic arcade/sims. I haven't picked up GRID yet as I still have to beat DiRT and Forza 2 some day.

Going further back in time, I was a Rad Racer player (NES). Grand Prix Circuit on PC from Accolade. Top Gear on SNES.

 

[Davros]

for those of you missing the old nfs style games Davros recommends Testdrive Unlimited - arcade racing done right...

 

[swaaye]

Yup. I play it.

 

[tongue_of_colicab]

Is that game any fun without a wheel?

About nfs, I played nfs4 so much the cd actually melted. I orignally had a copied version and at that time I had a p2 350Mhz and it kept reading from the cd all the time and I was playing it with my friend for hours at a time and at some point it just froze and I took at the cd and you saw this really big dark weird looking spot on it. Bough the game after that. Weird thing was though that the bought version had problems with 2 player mode in the same keyboard. For some reason 1 player wasnt able to throttle and steer at the same time making it alot less fun.

 

[Davros]

its mucho fun with a forcefeedback wheel - you should get one

 

[deeFive]

Most Wanted and NFS4 (i had them on pc and console at the same time!)

 

[Jedi2016]

Hot Pursuit 2 on PS2. That's the last game I feel truly captured the essence of what the NFS series had always been up to that point. This was the last game before they decided to change it up and went with the Underground series and onward, ever onward, into mediocrity.

At the time, I thought it was because they were losing their foothold on the racing genre due to Gran Turismo, and wanted to switch to something different in order to market themselves as a different type of game than GT, and thus avoid competition with a decidedly superior product.

Since then, although I've played several of the recent NFS games, I just haven't enjoyed them nearly as much as I did the older ones, and although I've since sold the newer ones, I still pull out HP2 every now and then.

I do agree with Davros... Test Drive Unlimited does have that same sort of "feel" that the old NFS games had, which is completely missing from the newer ones. I've put huge amounts of time into that game, and although I don't play my 360 very often these days, TDU is what's usually sitting in the disc tray when I do power it up.

 

[hoom]

Test Drive III
Nothing beats those good old days of sitting at my Dads flatmates' PC driving the California coast line in stunning 256 colours with real triangles & midi soundtrack

Oh & the joys of oldschool anti-piracy tech -> a cardboard code wheel

 

[DigitalSoul]

NFS Hot Pursuit, High Stakes, HP2 and Most Wanted. Have them all for PC.
High Stakes I can't seem to ever get running properly on XP.

 

[swaaye]

It's too bad that the PC/Xbox/Cube version of Hot Pursuit 2 is rather boring IMO. I've never played the PS2 version of it, but apparently it's basically a different game. It was developed by a different company.

Test Drive Unlimited was made by the Porsche Unleashed folks, btw. I have it on PC (first played it on 360) and it is nice with 4X AA and AF at 1920x1200. An open world arcade racer with showrooms you can shop at is just too cool. The game can be had for like $15 these days.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eden_Games

 

[Davros]

/slaps swaaye for criticizing Hot Pursuit 2 possibly the best one in the series

 

[trinibwoy]

Porsche Unleashed hands down. All others are pretenders.

 

[swaaye]

/slaps swaaye for criticizing Hot Pursuit 2 possibly the best one in the series

bah. I've been playing NFS 3,4, HP2 lately. 4 is the best I've played, bar none. The damage modeling, the championship mode design, 3D cockpit view, etc are just great. Hot Pursuit 2 doesn't even have a dash view.

I like the tunes of NFS 3 best tho. I've been reading up on the artists to composed for these games and realized that the guys who did the remixed UT3 soundtrack did several NFS games. Rom Di Prisco in particular. I am a fanboy of electronic music in games. IMO, Rom did a great job with UT3. Too bad the game bombed.