This is a long term player's review of a popular online racing game.

User Rating: 3 | Need for Speed World PC
By socratesgs | Review Date:
This first thing you have to remember is that this is an EA product. Like everything EA does, profit is their number 1 goal. The cars look good, the graphics are nice, but once you pass the superficial you can see start seeing all of the problems. There was a time that I stopped playing for a year because the problems were so bad. This was during the beta stages of the game and I figured it was still too immature and I was right. Time skip a year & there are lots and lots of improvement and lots and lots of other problems. Things that get fixed are the threats to their income stream. Anything else, does not get fixed. The servers have issues on a weekly basis. You can tell because you will have one of these following common problems:

1) Instead of seeing your last driven car when you start the game, you will see the Lamborghini Tensor (a rental car) for each of your drivers. Clicking "Enter World" will take you to car dealership. DON'T BUY! It may wipe out all your existing cars when you restart the game.

2) Your "Rep" bar will appear full and you will not receive any rewards for finishing events (Races, Pursuit, Team Escape, and Treasure Hunts). You can tell this is happening before you enter a race by putting your mouse over the "Rep" bar and seeing if the rep goal for the next level is a 0.

3) Lastly, but the most common issue. The game will just crash after clicking on "Enter World" or during any event you are in. Or you will be stuck on a loading screen for an event and have to ALT+F4 to quit & restart the game. Sometimes is will just crash once; other times you can find yourself restarting the game after every other event entered.

Those issues are pretty big, but they aren't being addressed. Couple that with a poor quality netcode, a partially working in game chat, a cornucopia of intermediate to minor bugs with a lot of cars, and the hordes of cheaters that come from poorer countries and you have a game that can sometimes aggravate you more then it can entertain.

The game is completely salvageable if the developers took some time and fixed the problems outlined above and some of the many issues that users complain about on the forums. That along with using a third party anti cheat program like punkbusters (just like their older & much better sister game Battlefield Heroes does) will improve the game AND their revenue stream to new heights. Unfortunately, the support forum has long since been abandoned by the developers and only a few users regularly try to help out those in need where they can.

The sad thing is that I am too vested in the game to walk away completely. Hopefully this review will save some people. If you are like me & already vested in the game, feel free to challenge me to a race, or partner up with me in a team escape. My NFSW game name is the same as my Gamespot name. Happy gaming!

Other Helpful Reviews for Need for Speed World

Load Comments (0)