Hond

I used xp-Antispy to cut off the telemetry back in the day.

Thing is NFS kinda also died because they couldnt perfect the mechanics around driving in over a decade. Heat was good and enjoyable enough but far from perfect. Then Unbound straight regressed in that department. Driving physics are very hard to get right.

But even then you have track design, balancing, AI opponents, career structure, lobby systems for online play, rewarding clean drivers etc.

Especially ai drivers and a good multiplayer component are IMHO still unsolved problems.

Like Forza Horizon has pretty much the driving physics figured out since 15 years. For all intends and purposes they are near perfect for the subgenre of realism they chose to occupie. But the track design was pretty mediocre and only got a lot better with FH6 this year. Drivatars on the other hand are less engaging and more annoying they ever were. Careerstructure is still worse than the first entry in the series. Online is still a mess with huge possible improvements.

Wreckfest is a game with really good driving physics, rock solid netcode, dedicated community servers, interesting risk and reward mechanics because of the ecouraged crashing and dirty driving. But it has a narrow focus on fictional and a bit over the top folk racing. With the ground work they laid out with that engine they could have pivoted to eg rallying or touring cars to achieve pretty different gameplay. Instead we got more of the same again with Wreckfest 2 in early access with drip fed new content. Its still a good succesor with tons of improvements.

But the indie scene also shows that there is still tons of innovation possible. Inertial Drift with the two stick drifting mechanics which got copied rather midly by Screamer this year. Yelloe Taxi goes Vroom showed us that you can have a car based 3D platformer.

Idk, the original Doom with a modern engine port with mouselook still is relevant and a really good game but new FPS games with fresh mechanics release every year since then even though you mostly walk around and shoot enemies in the face with light puzzles sprinkled in.

You forgot Undercover, which is understandable. But that game is worse than The Run.

I played every mainline nfs and thats a bit unfair. The golden era certainly started to end with Most Wanted. But they really tried to have some kind of new spin or gimmick in almost every title.

• Carbon: Autosculpt, Canyonraces, fast paced drifting
• Prostreet invented the festival racer for better or worse. Top speed runs are still insane and werent matched ever since by any game
• Shift 1 & 2 were Gran Turismo/Forza at home but atleast avaivable on PCs.
• The Run was framed as a race through the entire country and had those enviromental desasters.
• the criterion games were a weird burnout/nfs mix.
• Payback introduced offroad races and story missions
• Heats campaign with seperate incentives at day or night

I’m not saying all of these games or features were bangers. But you cant deny that NFS underwent constant changes.

Sad to see the franchise go. With NFS gone the big budget AAA arcade racing genre is almost dead. Forza Horizon still exists but its the same game with a different map for over a decade now. Mildly hyped for Clutch in the next year though. It could be something fresh again after a long time.

After the mild desaster of Unbound they invited tons of youtubers and tried to listen to the community. It could have gone really well for the next entry. But tbh i rather see NFS dead than suffering through yet another entire decade with only mediocre releases.
I loved Heat despite all its issues. But that was 7 years ago… And the only nfs title i really enjoyed since 2011(?).

The best NFS game in recent years was the Prostreet Pepega Mod. Yeah, its a meme mod but the gameplay additions were fire and its just so much fun.

Goodbye NFS. Its probably for the better

Is that Opera GX, the gAmInG browser?

It would be so fucking funny if B&H could play with 22 players because of some airbud like loophole in the rulebook.

I feel like it is in human nature. Its in most of us. But basically all of us encounter this only with video games. Like incremental games were the numbers most go up and it is deeply satisfying even though a lot of them have a deeply disturbing meta-subplot going on while you progress through absurd numbers. Had the same feeling with the ye old Sim City titles. At the start you might roleplay as a “good” virtual mayor but at some point you probably reach the point where you are going to plane entire neighborhoods to build high-rises with fake water-access to min-max your economy on the limited space you are given. The games are already abstract to begin with but with time the abstraction layer gets to the point where you try to game the given rules of the designer.

I’m no expert. But i feel like Zuckerberg managed to reach that point in real life. Basically unchecked by the rules of society he does whatever the fuck he wants to play a perverted meta-progression of life.

Eh, tbh i’m pretty weirded out by most of the anime culture/fandom as well. I pretty much blocked anything anime on the fediverse because i dont want to see it. But the anubis girl didnt even register as anime for me. Even if it did it would be 5 seconds to block that image with ublock.

Anyway, i hope this will be the last time i post about how i dont like certain aspects of anime because nobody gives a shit.