Need For Speed World (Part One)

After weeks and weeks upon weeks of featuring games of nearly the same genre, I've decided to try out something different...to sorta spice things up a bit. And so for this week's featured game, its not gonna be any fantasy-styled or sci-fi themed mmorpgs but instead one that is a spin-off from a popular car racing video game franchise, Need for Speed.

Need For Speed World essentially revolves around having a player race, in a car, either against AIs or with/against other fellow players (depending on the race modes) in an attempt to earn more cash/parts to upgrade their existing cars and to purchase better ones.

Although the game does have an in-game world for you to roam about in and explore, it is more like a "lobby" kind of world that does not actually have a defining gameplay meaning to it...more like for sightseeing or as a practice area for you to get accustomed to your car.

So within this "lobby" world, you as the player can drive around in your car and go through all the major roads, nooks and crannies that this game world has to offer as well as crash and destroy certain specific building/structure types.

And even though this whole world area might be filled with AI cars and other fellow players, you will soon realize that only those AI cars are actually "solid". The other player-controlled cars are instead ghost-like entities that you can chase but never touch (at least not in this free roam world). Nonetheless, you can still interact with them of course, like chat or adding them as friends.

Since this free roam world is pretty much one HUGE game lobby, you will naturally find that there lies all sorts of "hotspots" throughout (like as shown below).

Basically, these "hotspots" serve as nothing more than an entry point for you to participate in a race course that is built specifically about the area where the "hotspot" is located. Well to be honest, if you run the course a few times, you should ought to notice that it is made up of the major roads and minor paths of that area (as found in the free roaming world) except that certain parts of the area might be cordoned off and is impervious to the racers but still allows certain AI cars to pass through, like regular "traffic" type cars and police cars (found in "Pursuit" and "Team Escape" races).

Additionally, you will have to note that these "hotspots" also have their own set of racing rules as well as class restrictions (what sort of car you can use for the race) which are hard-coded into it and so there is not much of a freedom for the player to fine-tune anything that is related to the race course. The most that you can do is to choose whether your gonna race alone against AIs or with other players in multiplayer mode.

Anyway, after selecting a particular race course to run in, you will mostly be shown to some sort of queue/waiting zone to be matched up with other players who happen to be looking for a race. Else, you will be immediately sent off to the starting zone for the race.

And from this point onwards, I guess that I shouldn't need to talk too much more apart from a few minor details about a typical race in Need For Speed World (NFSW).

• Perfect Launch
  
  
  
  Towards the start of every race, during the countdown, racers have an opportunity to perform a "Perfect Launch" much like the one as shown above.
  
  
  
  To achieve this perfect launch, all the player needs to do is to rev up the engines of the car such that it falls within the green zone on the RPM meter (upon the countdown reaching zero).
  
  As far as I know, what it seems to do is to make the car accelerate "faster" than normal (for a split second or two). However, the regular rules of engagement still applies...so if some other car manages to block your path or crash into you, you will still lose the advantage given to you by the perfect launch.
  
• Powerups
  During the course of a race, players are also given the ability to use all sorts of various powerups to help them in winning the race.
  
  
  
  These powerups may vary from giving your car a quick boost in speed (Nitrous), helping you catch up to race leaders when you lag behind in a race (Slingshot), lengthening the race to buy you more time (One More Lap) to even hurling nearby traffic at opponents so that they may crash (Traffic Magnet).
  
  But do note that you may only bring up to four types of these powerups for any particular race. Furthermore, some of these powerups may be useless depending on the race your participating in. Like for example, "One More Lap" cannot be used in situations which do not require the racers to run rounds (don't have laps).
  
• Race Rewards
  
  At the end of every race, you will usually earn some cash, some reputation as well as a chance to pick a "random" reward card which usually contains some upgrade parts, extra cash, powerups of some kind or something like that. But from what I've heard, the reward is usually predetermined upon the end of a race so it doesn't really matter which card you end up picking, you'll get the same reward.
  
  As for the cash and reputation, its needless to say that the more participants there are plus the better your placing is amongst them, the more cash and rep you will earn. Although I might have to mention that these two things aren't really "needed" that much within the game.
  
• Durability
  
  
  
  Unlike the typical "car durability" that your thinking, the one where damage is sustained when you bump/crash/wreck your car and how it would affect the car's future performance until it is repaired, this durability that we have here in NFSW doesn't quite work that way.
  
  Instead, it is merely a "linear" decay of some sort whereby the amount lost (at the end of a race) would depend upon the race mode. If its a drag race, 2% of your car's durability would be lost. If its a regular sprint, circuit or pursuit, you would lose 5% durability instead.
  
  And on top of that, this loss of durability is totally independent of how many times you crash your car during the race, what sort of car your using to race nor how roughly you've handle it. Not to mention that I could see no correlation of the durability (at the start of a race) to how well the car performs during the race...at least not until it reaches 0%.
  
  (FYI: Cost of repair is $150 per 1% durability. You may repair the car at the "Safehouse".)
  

Next: NFS World (Part Two)

Posted in: Need For Speed World