Need for Speed™

I have a soft spot for arcade racers that let you spend forty minutes in the garage before you even touch a race, and NFS 2015 scratches that itch harder than almost anything else in the series since Underground 2. The customization here is genuinely the headline act: body kits, performance parts, a handling slider that lets you tune between grip and drift on the fly, and real-world tuner brands like RAUH-Welt Begriff and RTR Mustang lending the whole thing some authentic car-culture credibility. If tweaking suspension geometry and slapping a new wrap on your Subaru BRZ sounds like a fun Saturday afternoon, this game has a hold on you. The racing itself is a more complicated story. Five event types keep things from going stale - drift competitions, circuit races, point-to-point sprints, time trials, and Gymkhana events all show up across the open world of Ventura Bay. The problem is the drift system demands a fully reconfigured build, so if you have been pouring REP into a speed-tuned car and suddenly hit a drift-heavy mission block, the game gives you almost no feedback that your setup is the issue. Rubber-banding AI is another persistent annoyance; graze a barrier and you will drop three places in a heartbeat, but somehow ghost back to the front a minute later when opponents mysteriously fumble. It is inconsistent in a way that feels unfair rather than challenging. The always-online requirement is the biggest practical problem in 2026. You cannot pause mid-race. A dropped connection kicks you back to the login screen. The AllDrive system allows up to eight players to share the open world, which is a cool concept, but the multiplayer online population has thinned out considerably since launch, making the always-on mandate feel more like a punishment than a feature. There is no split-screen and no local co-op, which rules it out completely as a couch-night option - something I have to flag for anyone hoping to use it as a party racer. Controller support is solid at least, and the PC version added manual transmission and steering wheel support that the console launch was embarrassingly missing. The live-action story cutscenes feature five crew members - Spike, Robyn, Amy, Manu, and Travis - each tied to a real-world automotive icon like Magnus Walker and Ken Block. The acting lands somewhere between campy and unwatchable depending on your tolerance, but it is easy to skip past once you know the story beats. What you are left with is a neon-soaked, perpetually nighttime city that looks genuinely cinematic, wrapped around a progression loop that rewards patient builders and punishes anyone who ignores the tuning system. For the price this typically sits at now, the car customization depth alone earns it a look, but go in with clear eyes about the online-only friction.

Riley · Scout Team

Sports & racing

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