Need for Speed II (PC)

GameSpot editors' review

• CNET editors' rating: 3.5 stars Very good
  Detailed editors' rating
  Overall score: 7.0 (3.5 stars)

• Reviewed by:
  Tasos Kaiafas
• Reviewed on: 05/14/1997
• Updated on: 05/01/2000
• Released on: 04/30/1997
• Originally published on GameSpot: Need for Speed II (PC) Review

The idea of a sequel to The Need for Speed should make many folks happy. After all, who didn't enjoy the thrill of racing down some of the most beautiful stretches of road in the world - roads made for cool sports cars that would fulfill our need for speed, even if that darned state trooper in the Mustang got in the way.

Yep, Need for Speed II should surely be a treat. And with the promise of a faster 3-D engine, courses with 50 percent greater detail, customization and performance setups, and a number of other new options, this should truly be awesome.

And it is - if you have the recommended Pentium 166. Anything slower forces you to set the resolution low (forget that frazzled medium setting that EA recommends) and maybe turn off the horizon to get an acceptable frame rate. Even so, the ground textures start to synchronize at higher speeds, taking away the feeling of velocity on long stretches of open road. It may be that 50 percent greater detail comes at some performance cost, or perhaps that cost is the result of developing for Windows 95 only.

Although each track locale can be guessed by its name - Pacific Spirit, Mediteraneo, The Outback - and they are certainly places that you would want to drive one of these dream machines, they don't look like any road on my planet. Sure, you get the twists, turns, peaks, and valleys like you would expect, and of course there is some embellishment to make them more interesting. But what was truly enjoyable in the original was the balance between surreal and real roads. Most of the roads in NFS II are so outrageous that they seem to belong in Monster Truck Madness, not a simulation of cars with relatively little clearance and stiff suspensions that don't perform so well over cobblestones and jumps.

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