Mid-Sunday afternoon, I broke out my Logitech G923 Steering Wheel and Pedals, and set it up in the middle of my living room to play Need for Speed Unbound. I absolutely love the G923, as it adds an amazing amount of immersion to racing games, but I don't have a great place in my house to leave it set up all the time. So over time, my steering wheel has become a "special occasion" accessory, only taken from its packaging to try it out with specific games. But after playing Need for Speed Unbound for a bit, I'm gonna leave it set up for a while, living room feng shui be damned.
I played Need for Speed Unbound for a little over an hour yesterday with the G923, and it was an amazing experience. The wheel provides a different sort of force feedback than what you get from the DualSense controller, and while Need for Speed Unbound isn't certified for the G923, I found it to still be a really great and fun way to play the game, offering a much more realistic way to steer my cars through the streets of Lakeshore City. The wheel offers a fair amount of resistance, making it feel like driving a real car. And the gas pedals give the player a much greater degree of control than the DualSense's adaptive triggers, though you do miss out on that sweet effect where you can feel the gears shift.
I was struggling quite a bit at first (especially in multiplayer) while playing with the wheel, and in this video you can pinpoint the moment when a light bulb turned on over my head and I realized how to put all the pieces together to actually be competitive in the game (or at least, how to not suck quite so hard).
Apologies if you can't see the video. I left the music on, so it is blocked in some places.
After messing with the story mode for a while, I dipped over to the online multiplayer, where I proceeded to get my butt handed to me over and over again by the one other player on my server who was playing in my class. As I was learning the game, the in-game instructions said to tap the brakes when heading into turns to drift, so that's what I was trying to do. I ended up sliding past almost every turn, having to get reset or turned around when I would miss corners entirely. I was thinking that perhaps my feet just couldn't work fast enough to pull off the trick.
Then, around the 54:00 mark, I realized that tapping the Square button on the controller/wheel would initiate a handbrake drift, allowing me a much greater degree of control over my car as I went around corners. At that point, I became much more competitive, only losing by about three seconds in that race, and winning the next race (the one that starts around 57:40). The Square button is positioned neatly on the right side of the wheel, making it an easy reach for your thumb while driving, once you get used to it.
Of course, after my triumphant win, I immediately proceeded to lose the next two races horribly, as all of my newfound confidence completely fell apart. But the good news is, now I know what the buttons do, and I can actually practice enough to get better at the game so I'm not constantly losing in quite such a humiliating manner. I don't know if I'll ever "get good", but I'm going to have a ton of fun trying. If you have a wheel, I would definitely consider dusting it off for this game. It elevates the game to something wildly fun.
Need for Speed Unbound is now available on PlayStation 5, Xbox consoles, and PC. Look for Gaming Nexus' full review later this week.
