Recent reviews by Once

100%

Please play this game

After reading some of the other reviews for this game I am convinced people don't understand many of the design decisions of the game. Here are some of the common ones and why I think they are wrong. This game has a ton of style and the music choices are great for that underground theme. The story feels like it was cut short to force a resolution which ends up feeling forced, but that's not why I bought a game about racing. In the same way I don't play Street Fighter for the story I don't really care about this games story from the start.

Game is Grindy
Yeah its a hyper focused game regarding a single them, what did you expect? GTA6? racing game full of going fast to get paid to buy parts. The game does a great job of creating different ways of doing this. Between Races, cop chases, and several different "world events" to do while driving to the next meetup location. (removing fast travel from a game that has these kind of world events and is literally about the mode of transporation you use is such a great decision) Rewarding all of these actions with longer term reward of being able to afford more cars IS the reward, as it's relatively easy to max out each car. Not all of them have to be be as fast as possible either, and rewards different cars for different tiers.

Game is reused assets from heat.
Sure, but it's not like those assets are bad or detract from the rest of the experience. if you are looking to buy this game after not playing NFS before or a long time I think this is a bad excuse. "Persona 4 used assets from Persona 3 therefore Persona 4 is a bad game not worth your money"


something about complaining about JDM culture not being a bigger impact and why the sports cars.

nfs always had those luxury cars some some people like them. If you don't want to drive them you don't have to as every car can be upgraded to any tier. Yeah it would be neat to see something like the supra or 86 but it has a TON of tuner culture cars included. Drive the cars you want or do some races to have the same car in multiple tiers like I do.


I have even seen people complaining about the ability to bet extra money on races. I think this stems from some people blaming the game for their own lack of critical thinking. "im pretty good at racing games I played X Y and Z 10 years ago where the AI was simply garbage at the game + rewards for nearly anything" if you want to zone out, play a game and no matter how hard you try gain some kind of reward for Macro Progression (this game still has BTW you just restart the week if you didn't collect the money in time you just have to do the bare minimum and read in front of you. Game forces you to interact with it, is that not what a good game is?


I think its a cool system to allow risk / reward and brings extra tension to racing that otherwise wouldn't be there. If you hate thinking I can see why you wouldn't like this mechanic or the limited reset options

Limited Resets per day
No I also don't like resetting every race because it's optimal to get first every race, and with the fear of losing money with bad placements. Having a small safety net is nice for unexpected mistakes / crashes for a whole day adds a level of macro decision making that is very engaging. this manifests like "do I reset now or save the try incase I mess up in a higher risk race". this also leads to situations on the weekly money goal of "oh boy it's crunch time I have to take these risks" is exciting and good game design.

Not only will you likely not get first / high placements when you start the game, but it forces you accept the result and move on to another race keeping the game fresh. it gives you a reason to want to get better at the game, making it more engaging.

Early access really do mean early access, not a massive amount of content in the game yet but everything so far has been incredible. Highly recommend if you liked the early Thief series the game is inspired by.

Our father which art in neutral, hollowed be thy frames. Thy oki come, thy mix be done in midscreen as it is in the corner.

it's alright

It's Mid

Game is fast and fun. Rollback is amazing.

Normally not a story based kind of person, but this is one of the best RPG's I have ever played while im 3 hours in. Great stuff!!

I think this game used to get a bad rap. But honestly since coming back to it in 2020 after playing numerous other Fighting games, I have a new appreciation for the game. the barrier to entry in this game is surprisingly small, and the skill ceiling very high. other games like Tekken or DBFZ you need to remember combos/block strings in order to even play.