Criterion in the driver’s seat with Need for Speed – Video Games Feature
The Need for speed (NFS) franchise has been handed over to Criterion by EA after the success of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit by the same developer which came out in 2010 and was considered a breath of fresh air by fans and critics alike.
The Need for Speed franchise was one of the most popular racing franchise of its time with hit trendsetting games like NFS: Underground, NFS: Underground 2 and NFS: Most Wanted.
The series however took a turn for the worse after the game NFS: Carbon which was considered by many a rehash of Most Wanted. The main cause of this was EA’s strategy aiming for yearly release of the NFS games. This led to the franchise changing developers
every year which resulted in poor quality games.
Electronic Arts did have some success from their take on Racing-simulation, instead of the arcade style that NFS games usually go with, they released NFS: Shift. This game was praised by the fans and the critics alike but the sequel was met with average
and subpar reviews.
The gamers felt that NFS: Shift 2 Unleashed, didn’t really add much to the original game and felt more like a rehash and/or downloadable content packaged as a retail $60 game.
EA then turned to Criterion, the developers of the famous Burnout series for consoles, to develop Need for Speed in 2010. Criterion came up with a revamp of Hot Pursuit which was well met with racing game fans around the world. NFS: Hot Pursuit has managed
to move around 4 million copies since launch in 2010.
EA, impressed with the results, announced another Criterion Need for Speed game this year on their Electronic Entertainment Expo (e3) press conference. This time Criterion is planning to remake another old hit NFS: Most Wanted.
From the footage and the trailer released so far, the new Most Wanted seems to be similar to Criterions own game Burnout Paradise. Many gamers who had the chance of playing it on the e3 demo show floor stated that the game is a spiritual successor to Burnout
Paradise, which is actually great news for racing fans. Burnout Paradise was received really well by the critics and fans and did quite will in the market.
EA announced yesterday that it had picked Criterion to watch over the NFS brand. Does this mean that there won’t be yearly NFS games as only Criterion will be developing them or will there be other development teams working under Criterion to bring out a
NFS game every year?
Apart from the Need for Speed games, EA has also announced that Pixar is working on a Need for Speed: Most Wanted movie. Seems like EA is really trying to get the most out of their franchise, but their last endeavour didn’t fare so well with the fans and
the critics.
Need for Speed: The Run which was a racing game with an action story slapped on to it with Quick Time Events (QTEs) for game-play outside of racing. Naturally the fans were not amused even though the game was running on DICEs’ Frostbite Engine 2 which the
developer created for Battlefield 3. Good news is that EA seems to have learned their lesson from all the failures and the NFS brand is now in the safe hands of Criterion games.
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