Your car’s damage models in real time, adding to the appearance but not affecting much in terms of its handling or speed. I found myself peering at the screen at first, trying to determine whether the video was in fact computer-generated, because of the natural presence of my personalized ride. The storyline video is full motion, campy but well-performed by actors with a self-aware smirk, and it integrates graphics (notably, your car) with those videos in an absolutely seamless way. Sometimes it happened when players joined the game sometimes it seemed triggered by nothing at all. Sometimes many cars were with me on the road sometimes I was alone. I did note some framerate stutter at high speeds, but was unable to reliably predict when it might happen. I spent a lot of time at the start just taking screenshots of cool vistas. But they definitely make up one of the most enticing features of this game. You get no cockpit view in this Need for Speed, and it’s always nighttime (more on that in a second), so after a while, the graphics won’t enthrall you as much. In motion, things start to break down, and with all the water and splash effects and windshield damage and whatnot, some parts of the background begin to look blurry. The trees themselves didn’t look too impressive, but their reflections dazzled. In a number of scenes, I stopped to watch the reflection of trees moving in water.

While this game doesn’t devote the lavish, overwhelmingly loving attention to car models that Forza does, the combination of car and background frequently stuns - or at least pieces of it do.

Image Credit: Heather Newman What you’ll likeĪll those screenshots and video you’ve seen of Need for Speed so far? They’re real.

Need for speed 2015 cars beaten list