Ghosts’ second Need For Speed has been labelled a fresh start, but it sometimes feels like a vision of the afterlife. It’s always night, the skybox flickering between dusk and dawn, and the environment doesn’t add up on some worrying level – some roadside objects can be smashed, others are eerily shatter-proof. Poor civilian drivers resemble lost souls, faces chalk-white behind the windshield glass.
And then there are the demons – your buddies Manu, Spike, Amy, Robyn and Travis – each a ghastly, chirping thesaurus of car culture slang, prancing through cutscenes dripping with product placement. They’ll pester you mercilessly by phone, and while you can always hang up, you can’t ignore them completely – these characters are the gatekeepers to certain missions, rewards and, further in, meet-ups with real-life…
