Need for Speed™
Skip · Action · 2020
Steam Deck PlayableThe verdict
SKIP IT.
The value isn't there at $7.49.
- Length
- 16.1h
- Value
- $0.47/hr
- Reviews
- 69% positive
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Minimum on the Steam store: 6 GB of memory, 30 GB of storage. Windows only.
Ready to own the streets? Get behind the wheel of iconic cars and floor it through Ventura Bay, a sprawling urban playground. Explore overlapping stories as you build your reputation – and your dream car – and become the ultimate racing icon.
What drives the score
How to read this
Every input gets a grade, S to D, read from the buyer's side. The score is multiplicative, so an input only counts as raising when it sits near the top of its own scale. Anything with real room left is holding the score back, because that room is the gap to 100. ▲ marks a lift, ▼ a drag or a dock, ? an input we do not have, • a fact this genre's score does not use. The exact weights stay secret.
The value story
August 2026 is where it bottomed out, at $2.99. It has been discounted 10 times in the 6 years tracked here, typically at 75 percent off, with about 6 weeks between sales. Today's $7.49 at 75 percent off still sits 151 percent above the floor, so a deeper cut exists in its history.
Take the discount away and it is a 22. With it, 26.
It is pricier than 97 percent of its genre, and less well reviewed than 75 percent. Among the games that feel like it, Need for Speed™ Heat ($6.99, scores 62) beats it on value, while it beats Burnout™ Paradise Remastered ($4.99, scores 12).
20 of the 800 Steam-purchase reviews sampled here come from buyers who refunded the game, sampled from reviews written June 2026 to September 2026. That is more refunded reviewers than 8 in 10 paid games this site has sampled to the same depth, and among the 3,221 games in its genre sampled this deeply, 715 have a larger share. Inside the two-hour refund window, 27 percent of the 4,761 reviews written there were positive, against 69 percent overall, and those are 19 percent of everything written about it.
The drop-off
67% start to 2% rarestNo achievement in this game marks the ending, so there is no finish rate. The curve runs from the most-unlocked achievement to the rarest, and its shape is where players stop. Steam global achievements
Players
125 players at peak in the last day.
The chart appears once this game has been counted more than once.Player counts via SteamSpy.
What players say
Perhaps the best available NFS on Steam? It may not replace the love i have for NFSMW2005 or NFSU2 but it's still far better than the other NFS games that came after in every aspects of Gameplay, Story and most specifically Visual Quality and optimization. NFS Heat was good in terms of driving system and customizations but graphic and optimization were horrible. Oh ... and the story and soundtracks... specifically...
I don't know where to begin with this one, at first i was thinking how on earth do people consider this game good? and is it a joke in the community because of how ass this game handles? There is a plethora of issues with this game. Just to name a few: 1. The broken physics and handling. 2. The 30 minute server disconnect warning on every boot up. 3. The insanely long loading screens. 4. Always online. 5. The AI...
My personal 9/11 Outstanding visuals accompanied with dog water experience. After trying all the game overhauls (mods) I can tell you all of them can improve the game, but its impossible to have a perfect uncompromised experience and the car handling, the THING that matters the most is always one of them: horrible at worst, mediocre at best. I cant recommend this game even at its highest discounted price.
Player reviews from Steam: the most helpful all-time, plus the newest that clear the same quality bar, with the hours each player had put in when they wrote it. The mix of Recommended and Not recommended follows the game's Steam ratio. Rotates daily. Opinions are theirs.
No data upstream: critic score (Metacritic).
Cite this score
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Need for Speed™ scores 26/100 on the BANG Score (a skip). The BANG Score rates what a game is worth for the money. Via Steam BANGERS. https://steambangers.com/game/1262540/need-for-speedThe BANG Score is one number for value, 0 to 100: price against how it reviews and how long it was built to be. It answers the money question and stops there; whether the game is for you is still your call.
Reviews set the ceiling and price moves you inside it, so a cheap game that reviews badly cannot climb. Ratings from few reviewers are shrunk toward the middle, so 100 percent from nine people does not outrank 96 percent from ninety thousand. Length comes from HowLongToBeat where it can be matched, measured against a per-genre floor so a five-hour narrative game is judged against other narrative games rather than against a sixty-hour RPG. Where no verified length exists the score says so and carries a dock, because the biggest input is then a guess. The full method, including where it is weak → Steam reviews as of Sep 15, price as of Sep 23.
A number here look wrong? Tell me what it got wrong and I will look at the inputs behind it.