Need for Speed Unbound is out now, which means you can start exploring Lakeshore City and getting up to no good!
However, there are some gameplay tips you will need if you want to keep your ill-gotten gains and avoid being busted by the cops.
Here are five tips you can use RIGHT AWAY in Need for Speed Unbound.
Need for Speed Unbound 5 tips
There are a lot of little quirks in Need for Speed that you may not know, especially if you're a newcomer to the series.
Our guide will go through five that we recommend the most, but don't forget about features such as being able to quickly change your car by going to a meetup and wisely keeping the vehicles you win in races rather than selling them.
Enter garages from any side
Garages are where you go to hide from the cops, save your game and a whole lot more. Did you know though, that you didn't have to go in through the front?
That's right, you can actually go into the garage by approaching it from any angle or at any speed. You could be travelling towards the side wall of the garage at over 100 mph, but when you get close enough, you'll automatically enter.
This might sound minor, but when you visit garages hundreds of times throughout the game, this will save you a significant amount of time.
Use high ground to escape cops
Need for Speed wouldn't be Need for Speed without the police. The cops usually play a major role in NFS' story and that is definitely the case in Unbound.
Escaping the cops isn't easy, as it should be, but sometimes you just want a quick way out of trouble.
Thankfully, whether it's by design or fault, there is one place where the law won't follow you. Taking Obi-Wan's approach of having the high ground usually shakes even the most serious tail you may have.
Good places to do this include the elevated train tracks that Lakeshore's L metro uses, on top of shipping containers around the docks and the longest, largest jump ramps.
Burst NOS for tight corners
Slow in, fast out. That's a racing technique that has been used for the longest time and surprisingly, it's a big part of how to race in Unbound.
When racing around a tight corner, you should burst your nitrous when exiting it to get an advantage over the AI and your friends in multiplayer.
The acceleration generated from NOS makes a huge difference when starting at a lower speed. It's a bit like how using the Overtake mode when starting a race in F1 22 is more effective than using it in a higher gear.
Tap NOS to keep your combo
This is one you definitely won't have seen coming. The temptation when it comes to your nitrous levels is "use it or lose it", but that isn't the best strategy when it comes to Unbound.
This is especially the case with Takeover and Drift events, where making sure you have at least some left in the tank at all times is vital. Bursting your boost on and off is a great way to help with this.
It's also a great way to make sure you don't go too fast around corners and miss checkpoint gates, which would also end your multiplier.
Use parked cars for near-misses
There's more than one way to build up your nitrous meter in Unbound. With a world that feels fuller than any previous NFS title, there's plenty of traffic traversing Lakeshore.
Something you may not realise you can do, though, is increase the amount of boost at your disposal by near-missing any car. It doesn't matter whether it's stationary or moving - any near-miss with a vehicle earns you boost.
That means even parked cars by the side of the road get your NOS levels up when you fly past them. The best thing about doing this is that parked cars don't move, so they're a lot harder to accidentally hit.