Thoughts after about four hours of the it's-not-quite-as-free-and-no-strings-attached-as-I'd-like-but-it-is-at-least-a-demo:
I am neither over-the-moon-ecstatic nor seriously disappointed, which, being that this is a NFS game, means it's fairly alright thus far. It's got the online infrastructure of 2015, the gameplay of Payback and the risk/reward mechanic of Rivals. It's solid, but unspectacular. That's a TL;DR if I ever I saw one.
About the other things:
- Handling model: Not too fuzzed about the switch to grip personally. My problem with the ones found in previous games has more to do with how clumsy they felt and unbalanced they were rather than "hurr-durr brake-to-drift is bad because wHeeL sUPporT" or whatever, but at least this one feels ever-so-slightly less "this handling model is so fundamentally broken it's practically begging for you to crash and put it out of its misery". You can still drift in a more grip-based car, but it will definitely slow you down. Which I'm mostly fine with.
- Customisation: Functions exactly as you'd expect, but has a few neat tricks up its sleeve. Spaces in license plates and white-walls, for instance. Can you believe it only took Ghost four years to think "so we've got this huge amount of classic American cars, maybe we should add the most popular modification for those? Also maybe we should stop blacklisting spaces in license plates lol". It does, for some reason, also have police stickers, which, according to my rules, means at least one car can be modified with actual whee-whoos.
- Setting: Aside from being heavily reminiscent of Undercover (probably a given when one considers how both are set in knockoff-Miami) and the obvious bits of Burnout Paradise (and I'm not going to stop saying that because it's true, thank you very much), it's.. meh. It's there, but it doesn't really do anything. It's got barely anything in the form of traffic, too. And before people start shouting "NFs dOEsN't nEEd TraFfIC", I'm not asking for GTA V levels of gridlock - however spectacular that would be - but it would be nice to occationally have more than two traffic cars on screen at once in locations other than the freeway. This is supposed to be a metropolitan area. It's not doing too good a job at selling that right now. At least you can indeed drive on the beach. Was it so hard to answer that question?
- Character things: Tried to make a knockoff of exactly the character you'd expect. Worked out to a "good enough". Proceeded to not really care. At least they've thought about it more than R* and Ubisoft did, so you can always change if you so desire.
- Soundtrack: ..I guess I'm supposed to say it "fits the setting"? All I really have to say about it is that it's like Undercover but with way less variety. Which I shall keep repeating is a particular shame considering the neon-heavy style of this game with a colour palette consisting mostly of blues and pinks, set in a knockoff-Miami and that's not only brought back the
Infernus/Torero and Cheetah Countach and Testarossa (the latter making its first appearance for 25 years - that's right, they've brought back a car that was last seen in the original for this very game!) but also specifically branded the fuel stations "Outrun". I refuse to believe I'm the only person who's still a little.. miffed about this. Then again, this is Ghost, I guess they had to miss a golden opportunity somewhere, and this one at least has an easy fix.
So there's a first: this might actually be the first Ghost game that doesn't have any glaring, game-breaking issues. It's nowhere near as daring as one might have hoped, but it might just be the first instance of Ghost having made a "decent" game. How's that for a plot twist?
In other news, I somehow decided getting into a heat level 5 pursuit was a good idea in a barely-upgraded Mustang. Somehow I escaped by falling into a body of water and having the cops follow me. Not quite sure that's intended, but I'll take getting to the rep cap in the first night. Which, of course, you hit before you get to any of the *really* interesting cars. Oh well.
Oh, and because posting a photo from your thing is fashionable as always:
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Yes, that is exactly who you think it's supposed to be driving exactly what you think it's supposed to be. This is why you don't let me make a custom anything.
So I guess the last six hours or thereabouts shall be spent on exploration and general mocking about. I've got a couple of questions I'd still like to find an answer to, but
actually playing the game has left me mostly positive thus far. It's almost as if letting people try things for themselves does a better job at selling good things than just telling people about it. I'm fully aware of the multiple levels of irony in that, but if even Fancypants McJokesalot over here is being positive, take it as a sign: it can't be all bad.