EA haven’t been too coy about the fact that a new Need for Speed game is in development, having mentioned the franchise on several occasions through financial meetings and with a blog post back in May explaining why developer Ghost Games would not be rolling up to E3 this year with a game reveal, but that the game will be coming out this year.
It seems they’re finally ready to pull the sheet off and show the world what they’ve got. EA have launched a countdown for a new Need for Speed game reveal, which is ticking down to 3PM BST on Wednesday 14th August.
Here’s what is looks like just after 11AM today (in case you can’t figure our what a countdown looks like):
Need for Speed Payback was the last entry in the series, launching in June 2017 to a muted reception. The game tried to take the series’ now standard open world form and meld it to a new action film story, clearly inspired by the popular The Fast and the Furious film series.
We awarded it a 6/10, saying “Despite it’s flaws, I still found Need for Speed: Payback quite a likeable arcade racer. Just having a narrative sets it apart from the other, more serious offerings this year, even if it’s not delivered with much panache. Sadly its attractive visuals, and alternate take on the genre, can’t disguise a gamut of poor design decisions, some of which serve to make the enjoyable racing less than enjoyable.”
Since then Ghost Games have been very quiet, but in May their blog post revealed that they’ve been hard at work on a sequel to celebrate the series’ 25th anniversary. At the time they wrote:
Are you going to hear more about the next NFS title? Yes. Is it being released this year? Yes. Will we be doing anything in June? No. It’s as simple as that, but we wanted to give you a heads up before you started asking “where are you?” Our goal is to deliver a truly memorable high-speed entry into the 25 years of NFS, rather than a series of promotional events. The game matters most – a sentiment we bet you share with us.
So what will the latest game be like? Will it be a return to the series’ heyday with the Underground series? Will it still be open world? Will there be a forced story mode? We only have a couple of days to wait before we find out!
Source: NFS
camdaz
“25 years of NFS” considering I’ve played every single one, it makes me feel old.
Whatever they have in store I hope it’s worthy of the 25 year anniversary.
Dominic Leighton
There’s still room for Need for Speed – I kept going back to Payback, but I’m really hoping for something special this year.