Besides being a huge fan of movies, I have been playing games ever since the original Pong home machines. One of my favorite genres has always been racing games. Ever since the Indy game on the Atari 2600 I have been playing them and it is a genre which has developed a lot through the various hardware generations. The first Gran Turismo game took it to a place which was new, where you could race a normal every day car. Besides the very realistic racing games there are the so-called arcade racers. These games are less about realism and more about thrills. I played a lot of these games (Burnout and Split Second come to mind).

The Need for Speed games have been fixed part of arcade racing games, with new installments released yearly. I must admit that I never was a fan of the games. Reason for that is that they are games where you hardly use the brakes and where corners only seem to exist that you can take at high-speed. I never felt they were very challenging or exciting and therefore rarely bought them. The Need for Speed Shift games changed as they moved away from arcade racing and were more simulation based games, more realistic. I did play those games quite a bit.
Movies based on games usually aren’t very good and when I heard this franchise was making the step to film I was not really looking forward to it. Still, there was a chance that it would be interesting. The Fast and Furious movies have proven in the past that movies with a focus on cars can be very enjoyable. Continue reading →