For me it's a tough call. However I've made videos, so judge
for yourself.
NFS1/NFS1SE - I never owned these, so I can't speak for them.
NFS2/NFS2SE - In simulation mode, braking distances are long enough
to be reasonably realistic. If you don't start braking soon enough,
you end up off track. NFS2SE made a slight change to the physics
of NFS2 by including the effect of going uphill (slower) or
downhill (faster). Some changes to car specs as well, in NFS2, the
Lotus was the quickest at Mystic Peaks and about the same as the
McLaren F1 at Monolith Studios. In NFS2SE, the Lotus is still
fastest at Mystic Peaks, but the F1 is faster at Monolith Studios.
NFS2SE added one track, Lost Resort. The replay system was good.
A lot of these tracks were converted over to NFS4 - High Stakes,
but in spite of NFS4 speedometer reading higher speeds, the lap
times were quicker with NFS2SE, I don't know if this is a scale
issue or speedometer issue. NFS3/NFS4 have the opposite efffect.
Sample videos:
http://jeffareid.net/nfs2/n2selr.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs2/n2semp.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs2/n2sems.wmv
NFS3 - Hot Pursuit. Change to arcade physics. Added pursuit events
where you run from the cops or you are the cop. Replay system
is good.
NFS4 - High Stakes - NFS3 on steroids. Lap times are quicker on the
same tracks from NFS3, but the NFS4 speedometers show slower speeds,
the opposite effect of converted NFS2SE tracks. This was the first
racing game with host based online racing (versus TCP/IP) and stats.
Arcade physics, there's more lateral grip then longitudinal grip.
Cornering hard slows a car quickly so that you can appoach the 90
degree bend at Hometown at high speed and slow down in a very short
distance by cornering hard and braking. It's quicker to take off if
you wiggle the cars. Going airborne or even a light scrape slowed down
a car dramatically, so the key to good lap times was clean laps, often
through narrow "shortcuts" with the throttle and steering wheel pegged.
The car tuning features to adjust peak torque, downforce, and grip were
nice, but you couldn't use them for career or online play, so they
were essentially useless. In addition to good replays, NFS4 also
had a ghost mode, where you could save a run and then race a ghost
of your car from the run in a later race. As with NFS2 to NFS5,
replays are controller input based, while the ghosts were telemetry
based (positional updates). There were also night and weather mode
options for races. This was the first NFS racing game with
a fairly long career mode. The range of perforance in the cars was
large, from the slowest class B cars like the BMW Z3 to the very
fast AAA race cars like the McLaren F1 and Mercedes Clk GTR, each
of which was faster depending on the track. One wierd physics bug,
conering speed is reduced less with quick pulses of steering than
with smooth steering, so game pad players can get quicker lap times,
but otherwise, the analog controls work fine (unlike NFS6).
http://jeffareid.net/nfs4/n4cr.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs4/n4aq.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs4/n4dc.wmv
NFS5 - Porsche Unleashed - Physics are more realistic, but exaggerated.
The 1995 turbo 911 all souped up pulls about 3g's in corners. The race
cars, especially the 935/78 (Moby Dick) and GT1 were detuned in both
power and relative grip compared to the 911's. The game and real life
specs for the 935 show it could go from 0 to 60mph in 2.8 seconds, but
in NFS5, it takes almost double this. The add on parts and car tuning
parameters could be used for both career and online play. The tuning
parameters were buggy though. Front downforce only slowed the car
down. Rear downforce kept the cars from going airborne, but didn't
affect cornering grip at all. Toe in/out displays properly on the
cars, but all it really does is adjust the front grip bias of a
car to make it less/more oversteery. The ghost feature from NFS4
is gone. A lot of cars, and two career modes, evolution and
factory driver. Unlike NFS4, bouncing off walls in NFS5 allowed
faster lap times.
http://jeffareid.net/nfs5/n5cswz.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs5/n5nmwz.wmv
NFS6 - Hot Pursuit 2 - A big step backwards in the series. Apparenlty
the first console game in the series, as it seems the game is oriented
to steering with gamepads. Smooth analog inputs often result in severe
oversteer. It's best to pulse the wheel as if you were using a game pad.
The cars aren't really steered, they are oversteered in order to turn.
Replays are gone in this game. Onboard (cockpit) view for racing is gone.
The slightly faster and better looking cars you unlock during career mode
can't be used online. Turning always slows down a car, even if it's one
of the most powerful cars in the game in a lower gear; apparenlty just
cheap physics that reduces engine power when turning instead of
implementing tire scrubb losses. The cars look great on the start up
screen, but aren't rendered that well during a race, and if you race
bumper cam view, you only see your car at the start of a race. The
scenery is nice though. I didn't put a lot of effort to get good laps
but the videos do show the scenery:
http://jeffareid.net/nfs6/n6cc.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs6/n6fw.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs6/n6io.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs6/n6nf.wmv
NFS7 - Underground 1 - A big improvment in graphics, if you're computer
is fast enough. The demo and the initial version 1.0 (still on your
cd-rom if you re-install), being a poorly implemented port from a console
based game, didn't use PC based timers and just ran as fast the system
would run it. Instead of a + 1 minute lap at Market Street, with graphics
turned down, you could run it in under 37 seconds (first video below).
Later they over-compensated, and the result is lap times on slower systems
were faster than lap times on faster systems; if the game got behind,
it simply skipped events that normally slowed down a car, like landing
from a jump, scraping a wall, or just turning. The circuit tracks are
short, lap times range from just under 40 seconds to just over 60 seconds.
They added a drag and drift modes. In career, traffic cars looked cool,
but proved to be a nuisance, causing a player to often restart a race too
many times. Again, bouncing off walls results in faster lap times, on
some tracks you never lift on the throttle, and just use the walls to
take tight corners. Almost all tuner cars. The RX7 was the fastest overall
car, but the Miate was close, and the 206 was faster on some tracks,
so it wasn't a one car game (unlike NFS7). The online points system
only rewarded wins, and points were maximized for 10 lap races, so many
players ended up just running 10 lap races at their favorite track, and
this resulted in a high boredom factor.
Original version hyper mode lap:
http://jeffareid.net/nfs7/n7msfst.wmv.
Normal laps:
http://jeffareid.net/nfs7/n7os.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs7/n7s.wmv
NFS8 - Underground 2 - Big improvment over Underground 1. More tracks,
with more variety. Some circuits are very short, while others are
reasonably long. Added Outrun, Sreet X (parking lot racing with a lot
of grip), and URL (normal type race tracks) modes. You can view replays
after a race, but can't save them. For most events, the Toyota Corolla
is the fastest car in the game, as it has the best cornering speeds.
240SX is best for drag, and GTI is most popular for drifts. So for
most players, it's a one car game. Career mode has a storyline, but
this stops about 1/3rd of the way through and doesn't return until
near the end of career. Traffic is there, but there aren't cars
crossing your path as in NFS6. Online points system rewards points
for all finishing positions, and number of laps doesn't matter, so
there is a lot more variety in online play. One bug is a lot of
disqualifications in drift events, which can be solved by running
these events with collision off, but few players seemed to be
aware of this. If you took off too fast in drag races using
the 240SX, you could get disqualified as well.
http://jeffareid.net/nfs8/n8or.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs8/n8nor.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs8/n8ob.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs8/n8sx.wmv
NFS9 - Most Wanted. Was supposed to have a good replay system, but this
got dropped before release, so no replay feature at all. Back to exotic
cars again, and daytime racing. Drag racing in career and online involve
memorizing a pattern of traffic, and the required lane changes needed.
In offline mode, you can use speedbreaker to steer normally at least,
and in slow motion in order to evade the traffic cars.
Pursuit mode is a bit different than NFS4, if your speed drops below
30mph, a timer starts off and you're busted if you don't get your
speed back up again quickly. Apparently to make it easier to get
busted, the walls grab onto the front end of a car, slowing it down,
and making it near impossible to steer away. Speedbreaker slows down
time, increases a cars weight, grip, and steering, so it helps
quite a bit in pursuit mode as well as just improving offline lap
times. Online mode includes a peformance matching option that is
always on for ranked games, and many players turn it on for unranked
games as well. With peformance matching on, all cars are re-tuned
to about the same peformance as the BMW M3 GTR, but the result is
they are tuned a bit slower than the BMW M3 GTR, so it ends up being
the fastest car with peformance matching on. With peformance matcing
off, or in offline mode, the Porsche Carerra GT and the Lotus Elise
are the two fastest cars, significantly faster than the BMW M3
GTR, for example, about 5 to 7 seconds faster at Rockridge and Union
sprint track. Performance matching turns online racing into a
single car, reduced peformance experience, taking away from the game.
http://jeffareid.net/nfs9/n9rule.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs9/n9rupgt.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs9/n9c68h.wmv
http://jeffareid.net/nfs9/n9c69.wmv