Exhibit A:

nfs games up to and including MW 2012

These are solid, enjoyable entries in the series. Peaked with Underground 2 and MW 2005, but the takeover/acquisition of Criterion pumped new life into HP 2010 and MW 2012.

Exhibit B:

nfs games released after MW 2012

These are dogshit. Heavy dlc, meh progression, horrible to play on a keyboard, stupid upgrade systems (cards? cards? are you retarded, EA?), always-online, shitty online servers, horrendous physics, so arcadey that they make actual arcade racing games look desirable.

You'll note that this game is in the second group.

I got it as a gift a couple weeks ago, they paid $10 for it, which I was holding out for >$5 to buy myself; it's actually better than the last iteration, but not by much. That game - heat - I thrashed on at launch and 6mo later, and when the premium or whatever edition dropped to like $1.25, I finally bought it (10h demo before) and honestly, I want my $1.25 back. Here, $5 for unbound is about right, near the upper limit.

If they hadn't killed Criterion (the reboot is in name only, the talent jumped ship with the forced merge), nfs might be awesome still. They have to do a metric fuck-load to save this series. I have almost every game, I'm a massive fan of the series... But for the past decade, it's fucking dogshit.