It's no secret that Need for Speed has been struggling for years to regain its former glory from the Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted days. But from everything we've learned about NFS Unbound so far, it sure looks like this one could be the hit title from EA that could restart the players' passion for the long-running franchise.
With recent games like Gotham Knights and A Plague Tale: Requiem running in just 30 frames per second, gamers (myself included) have started to worry about where the gaming industry is leading us. The entire debate between 30 and 60 fps has even been trending on Twitter, and for good reason. Until the latest generation of consoles, meaning PS5 and Xbox Series X|S, there was no need for 60 fps because video games were just starting to enter the realm of photorealism, and no one was concerned with refresh rates.
After the current generation hit in 2020, almost every major title has been running at no less than 60 frames per second, which makes the gameplay very fluid. But when you have games like Gotham Knights that look worse than Arkham Knight from 2015 and still can't reach 60, people start noticing the performance drop. This is no small issue, because barely a month after Gotham Knights was released, it was already discounted by 40% on some digital stores. This sort of price drop means disaster sales-wise.
After this entire debacle, developers soon started to post on social media that their games will be running at 60 fps. This is just like the Battlefront II scandal when devs started to share news like "our game will not support microtransactions" after the entire thing blew up in the press. That being said, this brings us to our story of the day, which is about how well NFS Unbound will run on consoles and PC. Fortunately, only good news awaits us.
On PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X, the game will run at 4K/60 fps. On the less powerful Xbox Series S, it will run at 1280p/60. No further details have been provided about the exact resolution on PS5 and Series X, meaning that it could run at native 4K (3840x2160), or at dynamic 4K where the resolution will drop in certain conditions to maintain those smooth 60 frames per second. However, from my experience, anything above 1440p upscaled to 4K at 60 fps is more than enough. And that's IF you have a 4K display.
On the PC side of things, the minimum requirements provided by EA say that you should have at least an AMD Ryzen 5 2600, or Intel Core i5-8600 processor, 8 GB of RAM, and an AMD RX 570, or Nvidia GTX 1050 Ti graphics card. These are respectable requirements for the lowest threshold, but if you really want to enjoy the game with everything turned up, you'll need better specs for your PC.
Photo: EA
For the recommended requirements, EA says you'll need at least an AMD Ryzen 5 3600, or Intel i7-8700, 16 GB of RAM, and an AMD Radeon RX5700, or Nvidia GeForce RTX 2070. These aren't the cheapest components around, but if you want to run any new game properly on your rig, you can't do so with components from 10 years ago.
Now that we got the requirements out of the way, let's see what steering wheels will be compatible with Unbound. The list says you'll need one of these: Thrustmaster T300RS (PS5, PC), Thrustmaster TX (Xbox, PC), Thrustmaster T150 (PS5, PC), Thrustmaster TMX (Xbox, PC), Logitech G29 (PS5, PC), Logitech G920 (Xbox, PC), or Fanatec CSL Elite Racing Wheel (PS5, PC, Xbox). Only remember to connect the steering wheel before launching the game, and assign it to your user profile.
As for the launch times, the Standard Edition will be out on Dec 1 at 11 PM PT, and Dec 2 at 7 AM UTC or 8 AM CET, while on EA's subscription service EA Play and EA Play Pro, it will arrive on Nov 28 at 11 PM PT, or Nov 29 at 7 AM UTC, or 8 AM CET. Just keep in mind that on EA Play you'll only have a 10-hour trial, while EA Play Pro grabs you the full Palace Edition.
