Need for Speed Unbound PC Version Report — A smooth ride

Need for Speed Unbound has had its PC version zoomed onto Steam for anyone with early access, bringing with it lots of cops to outrun and plenty of cars to drive. As you might expect of a AAA open-world game, it can be semi-demanding if you want to run it at high framerates. I play it at 4K and 60 fps on a 3090 and get pretty consistent performance, barring some drops in certain areas. The install size also isn’t bad at all, coming in at 31GB, which is a lot less than other big open-world driving games. There are some caveats, though, which you’ll have to live with if you want to play on PC.

Since this is an EA game, if you get it on Steam, the EA app has to be installed on your machine whether you like it or not. When you install the game, the app will appear on your desktop. The app also has to run whenever you launch the game. Granted, this probably isn’t the first time any of us have had to tangle with this, but it’s still annoying. Let’s take a look at the graphics and display menus to see what exactly the game has under the hood.

Not much customization

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Actual fullscreen is included here, not just borderless windowed. And dynamic resolution scaling if you’re prioritizing your framerate.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

Strangely, you don’t seem to be able to actually mess with the individual graphics settings. You can only change the presets, which is something I haven’t seen in a AAA game in a long time. At least it lets you turn motion blur off at the top of the menu instead of having it default to on with the highest preset.

Screenshot by PC Invasion

You can freely rebind any keyboard buttons. If you’re using a controller, you can’t rebind anything, though, so better get used to those controls. Overall, Need for Speed Unbound has a decent PC version as long as you don’t mind the presets and EA app. The game looks and plays well, even if there’s bizarrely no cockpit view.