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Another mirrored post from my Cohost! Be sure to follow me over there if you want to see more.

So I originally didn't have any plans on picking this game up as I have generally avoided all the entries in the Need for Speed series released in the past decade due to the generally negative impression I had heard from multiple folks. But I decided to bite the bullet shortly before this game's release as I had heard a few people talk about it positively. I played around 6 and a half hours on stream yesterday and honestly ended up feeling kinda bummed out by the end, even ending the stream an hour earlier than I would usually.

First of all, one of the people I saw talking about this game described it as "an arcade racer more than a sim". This is definitely true, but should have honestly been a warning to me, as I know full well that AAA publishers are seemingly afraid of making a racing game too arcadey nowadays. As such we're left with a mid-point, still relatively grounded but twitchier and featuring boost mechanics, but with drifting that is less intuitive and fun to do than a full on arcade racer. I generally don't have an issue with this as long as the games don't have you engage with the lackluster drifting at any point. But a lot of games do, and Unbound is know exception, featuring both drift events and point based gymkhana-like events called "takeover", as well as it being one of the main ways you can fill your boost meter. So far the game thankfully hasn't locked progression behind being good at those events yet (like what happened with GRID Autosport which resulted in me dropping the game) but I am dreading the point where it potentially does.

The boost meter in this game is actually two boost meters: a blue one that slowly fills while driving in the oncoming lane or completely filled by driving through a gas station; and a yellow meter that fills faster by drafting, drifting, or taking out cops, and is split into three sections that can each only be used when they're full and completely empty after a short time if you don't use them or keep them topped up. I am not particularly a fan of the boosting in this game, as I think it feels unnecessarily complicated while simultaneously not feeling as effective as it normally does in other games.

At the start (post prologue) you are given 5 days (split into a day portion and night portion) to compete in a limited amount of events to gain enough money and a fast enough car to qualify for the major race at the end of the week. The game does that thing I've seen some other racing games do where they limit the amount of times you can restart a race (cause I guess trying things again more than a couple of times is considered cheating or something, I don't know) but it goes even further by limiting you to 4 restarts not per race, but per half day, meaning you effectively have to ration out your ability restart across multiple events. In addition you can't redo any past events, meaning that if you're struggling a bit for cash you're kinda shit outta luck. Doubly so if you end up getting caught by the cops, as instead of being given a fine like in other games they instead confiscate the entirety of that half day's winnings. I fortunately haven't had that happen to me yet but that definitely seems like an unusually severe punishment for a game like this.

Those are really my major gripes so far. The story seems fine but I haven't played enough to say much about it. The graphics look great on PS5 and the cartoony character models and vehicle effects are a neat change to what they've done previous. The soundtrack is largely inoffensive with a couple of tracks that I do enjoy. The vehicle selection seems good at first glance. Overall though I can't help but feel kinda disappointed with what I've played so far, as I was hoping it would deviate more from the other most recent entries in a direction that I'd find much more enjoyable. I regret picking it up at launch, as there are definitely other games released recently which I would have enjoyed my time with more. I will probably play some more at some point, but with me still working my way through Pokémon Scarlet and with multiple other games on my backlog, I'm not exactly in any rush to do so.