YMMV / Need for Speed Unbound

• Animation Age Ghetto: Some players did not like the inclusion of the animation-inspired effects and cel-shaded characters, claiming that it clashes with the realistic visuals.
• Annoying Video Game Helper: Tess is this in spades; she is even far more annoying than Ana Rivera. While at least Ana tended to talk about things related to the game or car culture in general, Tess's dialogue tends to be peppered with things that will most likely be irrelevant to the player, like recounting the (fictional) reality shows she'll be watching or asking the player to bring her food or drinks, among other things. She also inherited Ana's role of giving the player her two cents in case they get busted by the police. However, this may be intentional, as even the player character gets exasperated with her on more than one occasion and will tell her to get to the point.
• Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Prior to the Vol. 2 update, the Ferrari 488 Pista became infamous for being used as a B-Class by a majority of players online car to obliterate you, as fitting it with a 5-speed gearbox technically downgraded it to B-Class but still left it insanely broken.
• Critical Dissonance: Unbound's critics vs. userbase rating seems to be best summed up as "one step forwards, two steps back":
  • For the Metacritic userbase, the PlayStation 5 version has a noticeable edge over the Xbox Series X|S version and the PC version, with the PS5 version being a 5.9, the Xbox version at 5.4, and the PC version at 5.0, with user review breakdowns for the latter two versions showing a near 50-50 split between positive and negative reviews (slightly more positive reviews for Xbox and slightly more negative reviews for PC; the PS5 version has twice as many positive reviews as negative ones).
  • Also in Metacritic, while critic reviews praise the game as a major step-up to its predecessor, the userbase reviews on the other hand are more critical, as many criticize the game for various reasons, such as various aspects of the game being derivative from Heat, finding the story cringeworthy and confusing, lack of innovation to previous NFS games, the Cel Shading art style and the driving effects, despite looking cool, being deemed unnecessary. Some more drastic user reviews even go as far as consider it to be the worst NFS game in the franchise.
• Demonic Spiders: Harlow of all the racers of The Lake, especially her appearance in Week 2. Majority or players would have a hard time beating her in a race due to the fact that her C8 Corvette is too OP, as well as the Fake Difficulty. Harlow's driving skills make her look like she's playing a video game set in easy mode.
  • Lyric during Week 3 is also difficult to beat for many of the same reasons that Harlow is.
• Disappointing Last Level: The Grand is supposed to be "Lakeshore's ultimate street racing challenge" with $1,000,000 as the grand prize. Turns out it consists of four short and simple races. That's it. Nothing too special or epic, and thanks to the $200k Buy-In, you only wind up winning $800k. This letdown is even more pointed when one considers that the Outlaw's Rush was also a multi-race challenge but it had more complex races mixed with offroad racing and unexpected twists, which looks more worthy to be the considered the "ultimate street racing challenge".
• Esoteric Happy Ending: The "happy ending" is quite questionable to many players. Sure, all is well again between the Player Character, Yaz and Rydell, but Alec is still out there (being backstabbed and getting bankrupted by Tess notwithstanding) and most importantly, Tess is still out there, having won from betting on The Grand, and still free to continue her betting ring. The last seen of her is even asking someone for a ride in a similar manner to how she met the player, leaving the impression that she could easily sucker the poor schmuck into being her Unwitting Pawn like she did with the player before.
• Game-Breaker:
  • By no doubt, the Bugatti Chiron Sport is the fastest car in the game, as it is capable of reaching 261 mph without any modifications. As long as it's tuned for grip, it can take corners at insanely high speeds with ease and even outrun the competition, even on Intense difficulty, making this a must-have to your collection.
  • Another alternative is the Koenigsegg Regera, which may not be as fast as the aforementioned Chiron (its top speed clocks around 245 mph), but it offers a faster acceleration. Even after the Regera's stats got Nerfed following a January 2023 update, a proper build would still hold its own.
  • Need an S+ Class car without grinding millions of dollars for a Regera or a Chiron? You can make an overpowered S+ car while saving lots of money with the classic 1976 Volkswagen Golf GTi. Fit a V8 engine swap and with Elite upgrades, you can put these hypercars to shame thanks to its broken stats. This sleeper would be classified to be OP to many players, that it is given the name "S+ Killer/Hypercar Killer". As the result, the majority of the community are using the 1976 Golf in multiplayer.
  • With Vol. 6 added, the Audi R8 is an absolute monster that simply trumps S+ Class with its phenomenal handling. The car proved its mettle for being extremely grippy and incredibly stable during drifts, making it a very robust car in various scenarios. Despite not having the top speed and acceleration as par as the aforementioned Chiron and Regera, it makes up for its godly cornering capabilities, allowing the car to turn quickly without losing lots of speed. Simple put, the R8 is essentially the Le Mans Quattro of Unbound!
• High-Tier Scrappy: The infamous "B-Tier Pista", in which the Ferrari 488 Pista, despite being an S-Class car at stock, could be downgraded to B-Class by just simply fitting it a five-speed gearbox, making it ridiculously overpowered for the latter class. A majority of the players took advantage of the exploit, allowing them to dominate races by a huge margin, causing lots of disdain from the community, especially newcomers of Lakeshore Online. The later Vol. 2 update would end the B-Tier Pista exploit by limiting the car to be downgraded to only one level below the one it has at stock.
• Hilarious in Hindsight: Hot Pursuit Challenges, a mod for Most Wanted (2005) released in November 2021 (roughly a year before Unbound) essentially turned that game's Challenge Series into a championship series similar to the one in Hot Pursuit 2, and its final race was named "The Grand Marathon". The street-racing championship Unbound is centered around is named The Grand. Looks like someone at Criterion must have played the mod.
• It's the Same, Now It Sucks!: A few fans have claimed that Unbound feels like pretty much the previous entry, Heat, due to having almost the same car lineup with little to no new customization options (and a few even removed) for each of the cars, as well as copying the same formula as its predecessor with not much variation to it, with the few details the game actually adds like a larger city and brand new cars in post-launch updates making it feel more like a Mission-Pack Sequel at best.
• Memetic Mutation:
  • BROKEN PISTA/B-TIER PISTA^note The Ferrari 488 Pista, despite being an S-Class car at stock, can be ridiculously downgraded to B-Class without losing its power with certain parts (such as a five-speed gearbox). While its top speed will be drastically decreased, it still maintains its acceleration, and as such, it is exploited to be an overpowered B-Class car as it can easily dominate races by a huge margin. Thanks to its unbalanced stats, many players would take advantage of this exploit and often obliterate newcomers playing online. It was later patched in the Vol. 2 update, which limits the car to be downgraded to only one level below stock, thus ending the exploit.
  • "SOMEBODY SAID HEEEY, WE WANT SOME MOOO-NEY..." ^note The soundtrack is the most oft-criticized part of the game aside from the graphic effects and Art Shift, due to being considered by most players as unfitting (Heat's soundtrack was also criticized for similar reasons). The song most often pointed as guilty of this is "Money" by Rico Nasty feat. Flo Milli (which plays during the cutscene of Yaz announcing the Grand), which features this chorus.
  • Keep expectations low ^note Due to the disappointment of previous major updates, which lacked content, items many didn't wish for or items that should have been in at launch, this was the community's response in expectation to its future major updates, starting with Vol. 3.
• Narm: Unbound's story is meant to be serious and engaging at the same time, but according to many players it doesn't quite stick the landing on that regard, with a point of contention being the sub-plot about pretty much all the racers opposing the city's crackdown on street racing, but whereas in the mid-2000s tuning era most characters looked like rejects from a Fast & Furious movie, which would align with such a premise, here most characters look and act like social media influencers or fashionistas, which undercuts pretty much all the bite from them. The dialogue also is meant to be funny and captivating, but ends up being cringeworthy, annoying and nonsensical by a majority on a game that's supposed to be focused on illegal street racing, with many players claimed that the conversations during races sound less like the Casual Danger Dialogue that they appear to be intended to be and more like family members talking in a dinner table.
• Older Than They Think:
  • This is not the first time Need for Speed has made a game with a cartoon-themed art style (see Spiritual Successor below), with that distinction going to the Wii- and Nintendo DS-exclusive Nitro. Speaking of Nitro, it also featured something similar to Unbound's Driving Effects in the form of Driving Tags (which basically involved painting the surroundings during a race if the player reached first place in a symbol chosen by the player).
  • Speaking of Nitro, If you thought Youmna is the first Muslim driver in the franchise, think again. There was already a Muslim racer from the Arab World, and that would be the rich arrogant Emirati top racer, Jawad. Omar would also count since Egypt is a country known for practicing Islam.
  • Buy-ins, which require you to pay a small fee before entering a race, were previously used in High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed. Not to mention it (and the bets you can place against a certain opponent) has been used outside Need for Speed before, like in the Juiced games or street race missions in Grand Theft Auto: Vice City.
  • The Vol. 4 in-game update description claims that the Porsche Taycan Turbo S is the "first electric vehicle to join the Need For Speed™ roster". There has been electric vehicles in past NFS games, such as the Tesla Roadster from Most Wanted (2012) and Nitro, with the latter being in its concept form. It seems that Criterion must have forgotten their research, including their own game history, as they were the developers of Most Wanted (2012).
• Scrappy Mechanic: The Driving Effects, one of the features in the game that spices the gameplay with the Rule of Cool. Some players didn't like the effects and would rather wish to play the game without them. There was no in-game option to turn off or remove driving effects in full,^note the closest being the "Cloaked" effect, which removes some of the effects and leaves the tire smoke black until the December 2023 update announces the "Original" driving effect, which removes all the cartoon-y effects in favor for realistic tire smoke.
• Spiritual Successor:
  • While Need for Speed (2015) was intended to be this as per Ghost Games' insistence, this game is the closest there is to a proper Need for Speed: Underground 3. Not only is Lakeshore remarkably similar to Atlantic City, but the overall urban aesthetics paired with the emphasis on, well, the underground racing scene (on top of the return of the Mitsubishi Eclipse GSX, which hasn't been seen in a mainline entry since Underground 2) and the improved customization lends itself to the closest equivalent of experiencing the Underground era of Need for Speed on the Ninth Generation of games.
  • For some people, Unbound is basically Nitro for the Ninth Generation gaming, due to sharing similar cartoony anime-like aesthetics, character styles and similarly large variety of car roster and customization, though the cars are less cartoony here.
• Surprisingly Improved Sequel: Critical Dissonance with the userbase aside, Unbound appears to have overall been received more positively critics-wise than Heat (due to the game basically being Heat but in a bigger open world), or even all the Ghost Games-developed games, of which depending on one's criteria, reached its peak with either Heat or Rivals.^note Heat was developed by Ghost Games alone, while Rivals was a co-production between Ghost Games and, appropriately enough, Criterion Games, the developers of Unbound. As its highest, Unbound was nearly 8 out of 10 for the PlayStation 5 version on Metacritic. While still not close to beating the high points of the Underground duology or Most Wanted (2005) (or the 2010 Hot Pursuit developed by Criterion Games themselves, which went into a vastly different direction than the former two), it is agreed that it is a big step in the right direction and having Criterion as its primary developer was EA's best move to keep the franchise rolling.
• Tainted by the Preview: Whenever there is a major update announced, the reaction from the majority of the player base ranges from disdain to outright ire, as it only adds just one brand new car (which usually is a car nobody did ask or wish for), and a few custom cars that were actually bonus cars recycled from Heat or can possibly be done via customization and wrap editor.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!:
  • The Art Shift towards implementing cartoon graphics and effects in the gameplay, while not exactly new to the franchise (being present to varied extents in Carbon: Own the City, Nitro or the Nintendo-platform versions of The Run), was the last straw to some players (and most certainly to those who didn't play the aforementioned games), as they considered them purely cosmetic and absolutely unnecessary to an NFS game.
  • Vol. 4 adds the legendary cars from Heat; Eddie's Nissan Skyline GT-R R34 from Underground and Rachel Teller's Nissan 350Z from Underground 2, plus Joe's Polestar 1 from Heat itself. The reason many players aren't happy with them, however, is that said cars are now locked behind a paywall, whereas in Heat those cars were obtained for free by simply completing objectives.
• Visual Effects of Awesome: The reveal trailer managed to win a majority of fans who were skeptical of the game's visuals following rumors made as part of the game's leaks, with many comparing them to Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse (whereas the rumors simply were that they were "anime-like"). Come the actual game and not only does the finished product look even better than the pre-release footage (as it should, all things considered, but Electronic Arts had cultivated a reputation for releasing Obvious Beta games), but the actual car models themselves have been given some much-needed tweaks to their overall detail, making them look even more breathtaking than they already did in the prior three games.

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