GameSpy: Free Agent: Need for Speed World

GameSpy's Free Agent is your advance recon into the world of free-to-play games. His mission: jump into a free game every week and put in some gaming hours to see how much fun can be had without spending a cent, then try out some paid items to see if they're worth the asking price. This week, he gets behind the wheel of Need for Speed World to see how far he can get on a free tank of gas.


No Money Down

Need For Speed: World attempts to lure you in with the gratis stuff before going all used car salesman on your ass. The initial free download includes access to World's entire world (a combination of NFS: Most Wanted's Rockport City and NFS: Carbon's Palmont) and enough in-game cash to buy a modest Tier 1 starter vehicle. In my case, that was a 263-horse power Mitsubishi Eclipse GT that looked sprightlier than it performed.



Vehicle-wise, NFS: World features over 125 muscle cars, tuners, and exotics, but almost none of these high-end machines can be purchased with in-game cash. If you want a genuinely hot car — even for a short-term rental — you'll have to plunk down your credit card and spend real money in EA's online store.

So I progressed through sprawling and attractively-rendered urban environs in my free Eclipse GT looking for pick-up races (against AI or live opponents) and police pursuit scenarios. NFS: World offers a Free Roam mode where you can tour around to your heart's content but, apart from a mildly diverting Treasure Hunt offering, there's bugger all to do here. Your only shot at real action is to pull up the map and teleport to a sprint, circuit race, or police pursuit event.



After a few hours, I realized that my starter car — despite tens of thousands of dollars of performance upgrades I'd dumped into it — still didn't measure up against many of my paid competitors. You may get lucky and draw some similarly disadvantaged opponents in pick-up races (with so many players there's always some newbies in the mix), but when that Porsche 911 Carrera materializes alongside you at the start line, about all you can do is gnash your teeth and hope for a podium finish.

Along with the frustrating pay-to-win car superiority, NFS: World leveling quickly becomes a grind. The more you play and produce successful results, the more experience points you earn. As you level-up, you can unlock new events and vehicles but you'll also have to re-invest your winnings into car upgrades if you hope to stay remotely competitive. I upped my XP to Level 4 in my first few hours with the game before hitting a wall where subsequent promotions came achingly slow.

Insert Coin

Speedboost is the key to NFS: World's better rides. For instance, if you spend $14.00 for 3500 Speedboost points, you can immediately convert them into a 500-hp Dodge Viper SRT-10. Want to take a Lamborghini Murcielago LP 640 for a spin? That'll set you back 4600 SB points (about $18.50). Of course, you can stick with your free car and try to win enough in-game cash to either upgrade it with new performance parts or supplement it with faster makes and models, but the game is rigged to make that very difficult.



Roughly $80 in real-world cash for... one car.

Moving from a beginner E class car — my Mitsubishi Eclipse, for example — to a slightly faster D class Audi RS4 was going to set me back $600,000 (and the resale value of my customized Eclipse was a paltry $37,000). That kind of in-game coin can take weeks to earn so, if you're the competitive sort, that $14.00 Viper starts looking better and better.

The temptation to pull out the credit card and come back at Porsche Guy with a sleek Audi R8 or Corvette Z06 (only available through Speedboost, aka, cash, purchase) is compelling and therein lies the issue. Pulling that kind of Charlie Sheen move might earn you some instant, not-overly-expensive gratification (as I write this, the R8 is on sale for $8) but where does it end? If you start going crazy you can rack up a few hundred dollars in garage inventory in no time.

Free or Flee?

Compare the cost of buying cars you actually want to drive in NFS: World to one of the boxed retail Need For Speed games and their hundreds of included cars (Undercover is now $10 on Steam, while Hot Pursuit and Shift go for $20), and this "free" game suddenly looks expensive. It's pretty basic math but addictive personalities with more money than sense could easily lose sight of that in their relentless pursuit of speed. I had a few Charlie moments of my own while playing but, thankfully, my idea of "Winning!" was to keep my wallet in my pocket.

Porsche Guy can't make the same claim.

Spy Guy says: Amazing how some free-to-play games have advanced the sub-genre so far, namely Team Fortress 2 and League of Legends, while others continue to insist on relying on pay-to-win schemes. Getting major performance advantages with paid items should be unacceptable.

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