If you’re looking for a good Fast and Furious game, it exists. It’s just under a different name.
Yup, the perfect Fast and Furious game has stared you in the face for decades
With Fast X coming out in theatre’s last week, a lot of you might wonder why there isn’t a good Fast and Furious game. After all the franchise is basically a giant video game at this point, with tons of crazy car stunts, superhero level action and a requirement for suspension of disbelief that only the likes of Mortal Kombat or Grand Theft Auto require. And while there a few games with the Fast and Furious logo attached to them, most recently Fast & Furious: Crossroads. They all…..kinda suck. Terribly so actually, that you might end up wondering why no good Fast and Furious games exist. And I’m here to tell you one does exist, and it’s called Need For Speed : Most Wanted.
Now yes, 2005’s Need For Speed Most Wanted isn’t actually an official Fast and Furious game (you didn’t really think we meant the 2012 reboot did you), but in everything except name this game represents everything that defined Fast and Furious especially in that era. While the series is a superhero/spy action Mashup nowadays, back then it really was an ode to slightly over the top street racing, and that street racing spirit still does remain core to the series to this day, and is at its best in NFW Most Wanted.
In fact, it’s well known that Fast and Furious was one of the biggest inspirations for that era of NFS games too, inspiring the art style and approach of the NFS : Underground games, the undercover cop storyline of NFS: Undercover, and having Most Wanted embody all these aspects on the best ways. Here was a street-racing focused NFS game based on winning races in an open city while you took on the law, underground street gangs and engaged in pretty crazy car stunts and wanton destruction while at it. In fact, Most Wanted as a game and a story actually resembles one specific Fast & Furious movie from that time: Fast And Furious 3: Tokyo Drift.
Released in 2006, this semi spinoff Fast and Furious flick shares so much in common with Most Wanted that you really can’t help but think some cross copying had to have happened. Both the movie and most wanted feature a hot-shot street racer coming into a new city and promptly getting knocked down a peg and schooled on how racing works there. Said driver goes on to start from the bottom with some guidance from a racing veteran from that area (ROG in Most Wanted and Han in Tokyo Drift), gets involved with attractive female character who has links to the underground racing scene’s elite, comes into conflict with an overarching authority in the city (slightly corrupt cops in Most Wanted and the Yakuza in Tokyo Drift) and of course, has a bitter rivalry with the top racer in the street racing scene (Razor in Most Wanted and DK/Drift King in Tokyo Drift).
There’s some more lose similarities like learning new driving styles or losing a prize car at the beginning only to regain it in some shape or form at the end but basically you get the point here : these two share a lot of concepts. So much so that Most Wanted’s direct follow-up Need For Speed: Carbon even featured a final race track based on Tokyo Drift’s final mountain race. And awhile yes, we’ve essentially moved away from the street racing Fast and Furious films, Most Wanted still embodies other huge facets of the current films as well.
The first indicator of that is definitely the racing and the carnage itself. We constantly talk about the over the top nature of Fast and Furious especially in recent movies but unless you completely turn of your brain while playing it, you’ll realize Most Wanted strives to achieve the same. Here’s a game that has you jumping across bridges, pulling slow motion moves that would make Dominic Torreto raise an eyebrow and most importantly, dispose of cops (and technically, fellow racers) with wild, destructive property destroying moves that even part of Dom’s family would admire. True Fast and Furious takes it further with more elaborate setpieces like the bank heist in Fast Five or going to space in Fast 9, but let’s not act like taking down fuel stations, network base stations, construction sites (that include Fast 8’s wrecking ball) all to dispose of cops tailing you isn’t ambitious as well.
The carnage, chaos. And adrenaline that fills each second of Most Wanted brings similar rushes to Vin Diesel’s car franchise. And while there isn’t the crazier spy craft and world dominating plots of the newest Fast movies, there is definitely the rush that comes with them. And it’s arguable that this rush was never quite found again. The aforementioned need for speed Carbon more directly borrows inspiration from Fast and Furious yet never quite gathers the same kind of adrenaline induction of its predecessor. Undercover tried to even make you Paul Walker’s character as an undercover cop but also missed the point. The 2010s were filled with NFS games that brought in the high-tech stuff of the new Fast and Furious movies but none of the story or rebellious spirit and while the likes of NFS: Heat have revived the spirit of Most Wanted, they don’t quite capture it as well either. So really, Need For Speed Most Wanted essentially mastered how to be a Fast and Furious game 20 years ago and no one has really beat it since.
And to some extent that is sad, after all imagine you had the official sponsorship and characters of Crossroads, the stylish approach of NFS : Heat and the tech based weapons from the likes of Hot Pursuit 2010 or NFS Rivals and the cutscenes of and family based storytelling of NFS 2015, perhaps we actually could have that perfect Fast and Furious game. And honestly I do want to see what that game is like. But until then, booting up that 2005 soundtrack and being chased by Cross in a Blacklist race is just as awesome as all of Torreto’s stunts. And that makes me feel like him and I are family.
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