I liked the demo. I'm keeping my pre-order.

Played some this morning, here is what I told a friend who asked:

The live action cinematics are terrible and unskippable. Poor man's fast furious.

Steering is tight which allows crazy arcade drifting which is cool. Arcade racer like always.

Tons of options for car customization.

Teleport option on the map if you don't feel like driving to event.

I can see it being short but that's ok with me. Every racer does not need to be forza or grab turismo. Reminds me of nfs the run. So far I like it.

Thanks for the feedback. Sounds right up my alley.

Played some more last night. 2 hours in and I am level 13 and 17% game completion. 5 trophies at 10%

Now I can skip cut scenes, so now the game consist of answering the phone, getting a mission, clicking the map, hit teleport and race. Having a blast with it so far.

Some more reviews are coming in and it doesn't sound great. 2/5 from Giant Bomb, 70 from Game Informer, 63 from IGN. So far it has a 73 on metacritic. Looks like I'm waiting for a sale .

It's better than Rivals, but it is not one of my favorite NFS games. And the current technical jank on the XBO version sucks. Hard.

What is this glitch you speak of?

The Xbox One version stutters at random points the entire time. It's like the whole game is streaming from a server. What's weird is that it didn't happen at all on the first day of the trial, but has occurred every day since.

Imagine trying to pull off a drift and then suddenly the game is moving at 1 fps.

Ugh... I just read on gamefaqs.com about the graphics and the ridiculous rubber banding. I hate games that make a challenge out of bogus AI.

Here's an example of it:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/C2B9Bj4QK5A" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

And here's something dumb that happened to me:

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/0bpLNP44uE8" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Do you think those stutters are a result of the always-online connection requirement?

There's probably something server side that's causing it, yes.

Need for Speed has always had ridiculous rubber banding tho, so I don't see how that is still a complaint. If you spun out and ended up in last place every race, people would bitch its too hard. Personally I think its a thrill to catch up at the last second and win.

Someone at Kotaku can't drive for shit. That's more bad drifting and braking too hard than anything. There was no perfect drift in there as stated in the description.

Are the same problems popping up on the PS4 version as well?

Not for me, and I am playing on PS4. Appears to be Xbox only.

Well if it's always been shitty then I guess more shittiness is a good thing.

Put 2 more hours in last night, Level 21, 25% of game done.

I'm about halfway done and if I'm being honest this game is a total mess. Everything about it is regressive: the map is straight out of the original NFS underground, the rubber banding is worse than everything short of Mario Kart 64, the mission structure and urban culture the game is designed around are straight from 2005, it's perpetually twilight, this pseudo Twitter network they've inserted into the game, these non stop live action cut scenes with actresses that make CW actresses all look like Meryl Streep, etc. The thing that's really killing it for me though is the lack of actual races and the race routes being overly simplistic and generic. This is the first entry in the series I haven't been fond of since that PS2 era one with Josie Maran.

If your a NFS fan pass or wait til it hits the $20 mark.

To be fair, the time setting makes sense to the culture. Dumbass street racers do their dumb street racing stuff at night.

Lol. You are correct sir.

Have you ever played a game so dumb, you couldn't stop playing it? That's how I feel about NFS. Picked it up from the library yesterday and have been playing it all morning. The cut scenes look like a high school project, the AI are dirtbags, and your teammates are dumb as shit. Yet I can't stop playing. They have some bonus going on for the weekend, an extra 30% rep bonus, which is completely breaking the game in a wonderful way. In less than 4 hours, I'm level 29 with 35% game completion. I have a 800 hp Ferrari and when playing events where you have to stay with your teammates, is nearly impossible. I fly past them, then try to slow down, and they crash into me. The positive thing is the game looks pretty damn good and haven't run into any frame rate issues on the PS4, so that helps. I rented the game for 5 weeks, but pretty sure I'll have it done by next weekend.

I guess I'm done with this one. Hit about 70% complete in about 10 hours. I'm no longer getting missions from anyone in my crew. So I'm not sure if the game glitched out or if there is something I'm missing. Oh well, it was dumb fun while it lasted.

So I fired this one up yesterday and while I'm early on in the game, it's still a good mix of fun / challenging. That said, I did my first drift race where you must come in 1st or 2nd to move on... so I'm drifting around this damn track and there are about 10 other cars on the map not racing against me, but actually driving AT me. WTF is this? I assumed it may have been other real Live members... but no, it's just some dumbass AI doing their own thing and making it impossible to pass this race.