The “Stop living in the past” argument is stupid.

“Stop saying you want every game to be like MW 2005.”

It’s such a ridiculous cope for why people want to revamp the series. There’s very good reasons why people want the games to go back to how they were back then. They were simple, fun, and didn’t require constant online updates to keep your attention. The story didn’t try to tell a message of “express yourself, street racing is fun! The cops are just mean bullies!” No, you’re a criminal. You’re putting countless lives in danger. You’re bombing down a suburban street going 170 in a clapped out Chevy Cobalt.

Need for Speed nowadays doesn’t have any balls. The writing is so “how do you do fellow children here’s some anime sadboi music, you like anime? here’s some anime. anime anime anime,” that it’s nearly vomit inducing how cringe it is. Yeah, MW05 was cringy but it was cringy in a fun cult B-movie way. It wasn’t trying to send a message to express yourself and be who you are, you knew who you were in those games- a maniac who wanted to be the best. Sorry but none of the modern games can hold a candle to driving through a radio tower and destroying 10 police cars, slamming through police roadblocks and sending cop cars flying and flipping through the air like they’re made out of styrofoam, or really any of the over-the-top madness that made games like MW05 and Burnout so great.

It says a lot about a series (and gaming as a whole) that there’s an entire subset of the fan base that would be happy with a game that has 30-35 cars and no updates for 20 years of what we get is so good that it doesn’t even matter. I don’t need 200+ cars if the only longevity the game has is in the online mode and everybody uses the same 3-4 cars anyways.

Plus the game is called Need for SPEED, and the series is in desperate need of speed. Anything below 150 feels like 30. The cars are so heavy they might as well be boats, and crashing is beyond frustrating. You clip an SUV? Better flip your car 30 times Casino Royale style. It kills the pace of the game.

MW05 isn’t perfect but there’s a reason it’s the highest selling game in the franchise by far: it was simple, fun, and knew what it wanted to be. The series wouldn’t be where it is today without UG1-2 and MW, and even the developers know that, that’s why they keep trying to make the games feel like those games.