This article is quite a big one, just like the previous one about Lineage 2. But then again, this is what anyone might expect from an author owning a page.

In the early to mid 2000s, EA games published a big number of Blackbox games under the Need for Speed franchise. In the future, I wish to get into detail about most of them and especially Underground 2 which is my favourite up to this day, but for now, I need to be a bit specific and only go through a phase of the franchise when Need for Speed was about to change its face forever… and maybe there was a title that still to this day is able to show this transition and liminality to its fullest!

HUGE DISCLAIMER: I am not a videogames critic so do not expect a review of the game. As an author, I want to touch on other aspects that I’ve been trying to find material for and have thus far been unable to find almost anything. This is part of my research on this artwork and my experience within its world. I would like to thank every player and admin within the SoapBox Race World community for helping me fix a huge problem I had with my external disc, leading in my game taking up to 40 minutes to load.

 

LEAVING THE APARTMENT:

Just as in every other article, I’ve divided parts into paragraphs for anyone to be able to follow the thoughts and the flow. In 2010, NFS World was released by EA Games and it was the swan song of Blackbox, along with their last title, Need for Speed: The Run, before the NFS title would be taken from their hands forever. The game takes place in Rockport City, Palmont City and there were rumours for an update that would add Tri-City Bay (from Need for Speed Undercover) into the map, which never happened unfortunately.

In July 14, 2015, the game’s servers seized to function officially. I have seen countless of videos on YouTube from players spending their last moments online together and it’s devastating. Online friendships that would become pieces of code within the next minutes. Memories of having fun with eachother. For those who were able to keep in touch outside of the game, this was not as sad, but still, being in a world about to collapse felt quite unnerving.

The game has thankfully been restored by the talented team of Soapbox Race World (and the subservers), allowing for players to return. The game is pretty much the same, only with more cars, an ever growing community of dedicated players, an amazing Discord server and the original flavour that made the game feel like a continuation of the “Ryan Cooper/The Player/Silent Protagonist” era.

I mentioned I’m not a programmer, a reviewer or an expert, but I’ll only mention briefly that the gameplay is almost the same as in the Blackbox Era titles, without the slow-motion ability of their latest games and with NPC cars and narrow roads that do not allow easily for Roleplay (in case you love RP games and communities like I do). But if you want to RP, there are ways to do so with your friends or on an Instagram/Twitter page, like the photos shown below.

  

As for the actual gameplay, you collect cars, take place in individual or team police escape chases, race in a variety of events and customise your favourite rides. Some of the servers have exclusive cars and content, but I’ve only stayed in the SoapBox main server, as I simply enjoy driving around the city and working on my 2 cars, taking photos of them and just having a good time talking to people I’ve met there.

 

ENTERING THE GARAGE:

The first thing you’ll notice upon entering the game is the glitching effects. It's branded as Need for Speed WORLD, meaning it is online, so it makes a lot of sense, after all.

In classic Millenniumpunk fashion, this effect is one of the favorites of any content creator making anything that is nostalgic and has a flavor of the old good 90s and early 2000s, which is already making the game look like a look into the matrix.

Many of the cars might be from a newer generation, although they keep that aesthetic on their customization options which easily makes them look like something that would come out of a 2000s game, movie or photo. That includes neon lights, thousands of decals to choose from, eccentric colors to paint the body of the car and more. It's like a combination of the Underground games, Most Wanted and Carbon.

The loading screen also creates that feeling of no-clipping somewhere else, as it presents what seems to be 3D shaped objects posing as buildings and neon flashes run through the in between spaces of these shapes like electricity within circuits. This aesthetic is something that was extremely common in any music clip, movie, game, photo or illustration from the early 2000s and so was that color pallet used to create that digital liminality feeling.

 

6:04 A.M. ON AN EMPTY ROAD:

Upon hitting ENTER, you literally no-clip into the world. The car itself makes a glitching effect, as if it's printed into the game world and you're free to do whatever you want.

However, this is where the liminality begins. In another article I'm preparing, I want to talk about how the Burnout Series features that liminality and how it is actually a horror game. But Need for Speed World itself could be considered as a borderline horror game without an actual villain or at least a visible villain.

First, you notice the music. Most of the tracks on the explore mode are creepy to say the least.

This is a short example to demonstrate what I mean. Especially when Most Wanted featured some of the most high-octane music ever met in a videogame. It's as if there is something lurking in the world. As if something is staring at us. And it's not the Discord members who are able to view whatever you say in the game chat, but something completely different. Invisible to the naked eye.

Whenever you race, the music is more energetic and heart pounding, but as for exploration and driving around the map, the music sounds as if it's taken out of a mystery thriller or horror movie. It's not bad, in fact it's perfect, because it creates a feeling of nostalgia and eeriness at the same time. However, it's a weird feeling, hard to describe to anyone that hasn't experienced it in case they haven't played the game.

 

SUNRISE – NO DRIVERS IN SIGHT:

Have you ever been on an empty road that is usually extremely busy with pedestrians on the pavements and drivers on the road? That's exactly the feeling that's created any time of the day. Of course, if the vehicle density was realistic, Need for Speed would be impossible to play. However, that, combined with the music creates for a really creepy atmosphere. The pallet used here is not the one that was used in Most Wanted (the one that made the brown effect a staple for future videogames). Instead, it looks more like something out of the Tokyo Drift movie or an early 2000s Japanese Movie. As if it's undergone some tranquility camera effects or something that makes it more of a DvD era thing.

 

As mentioned before, the NPC vehicles tend to drive in a really questionable way. It's as if they are trying their best to create an accident. Their slow speed is intended to make any player car look extremely fast in comparison, but what seems to be strange is their behavior. They will get off the road and collide on walls even when driving on a straight line, they will stop dead on their track and they will even unintentionally attack the player's car when overtaking them. This all adds to the eerie effect of the game and its world. It creates a tense atmosphere that makes one feel unwanted. Alien. Like the wanderer of the abandoned mall who's getting chased by the Rolling Giant.

 

THE ROOFTOPS ARE SHINING. IT'S A NEW DAY:

If you've already checked the Millenniumpunk Fiction basic columns on how such a fictional universe could exist within a story, then you know about the pseudo-optimism portrayed in such environments. Only those who know of the inevitable future know that no matter how long such universe stays within the bubble of the Y2K and stuck into a future-less 2000's era, the bubble is very unstable and fragile, and destruction is all around it, waiting for a way to get in.

Rockport City and Palmont City look exactly like that. Huge buildings are everywhere, the lights of the offices stay on even late at night and it seems that every part of the city is coated in optimism for a bright future. But why are there no pedestrians?

In reality, this answer is very simple. It was too risky involving pedestrians in such a game for rating reasons. There might be people appearing in cutscenes of Need for Speed: Most Wanted and Carbon, although if you look into the background, you never see any of the buildings actually functioning. It's as if everyone is in the backrooms level 11, only they are able to drive cars. As if time has stopped existing for them and for anyone entering this world.

The map looks interesting too. I've been driving around Rockport and Palmont City for many years, in both Need for Speed: Most Wanted / Carbon, and in Soapbox Race World. Yet, the architecture and the locations always fascinate me in a way. The game is set in two fictional American cities and for the most part, Rockport, at least, looks quite American, featuring characteristics from New York and Chicago. However, Palmont, although featuring a casino area, similar to that in Las Vegas, seems as if on its entirety is from another country. I've been fascinated about how similar some of its locations look to Ih Ju, Hong Kong, Dubai and Dalian City. This is mainly because of the more open roads appearing there, the huge buildings (be it office or commercial ones) and the less usage of brick walls, as in most locations around Rockport City. This is also due to the bridges appearing in Palmont City, the seaside areas and the overall structure of the city. In their effort to make Need for Speed Carbon look closer to Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift, the developers must have tried to make the city look like a hybrid of an Asian and an American city, ending up with a result that is usually met in architecturally modern cities, such as the ones mentioned before.

 

YOUR WATCH HAS STOPPED…

After being stunned by the diversity the map offers, you come to a huge realization, combined with the absence of life. The city is stuck in time. Some of the most usual places used by liminal spaces content creators are usually malls, hospitals, airports, train or bus stops and office buildings. And they all exist within these two cities. It's only natural, as they are cities to have such places inside them, but what's unnatural is the way everything feels about them and around them.

Empty stadiums filled with workout machines. If that's not unusual, then the next ones will be, and some might even feel creepy. Empty malls or expo buildings that haven't held an expo ever and simply exist in time. Airports where planes never take off from. A bus station where the busses are always there. Offices with their lights always on, whether it's day or night. An amusement park which is said to be abandoned in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, however here, it seems functional, although the machinery looks rusty and nobody is on the rides that are standing still. But you can hear music playing in the background.

The roads of both cities and especially Rockport's look as if whoever is in charge of that place has stopped caring about both the preservation of the road systems and the safety of the citizens. It's not unusual that while driving, you'll see a heavy, rusty, metallic rubbish bin in the middle of the road, trash bags all around, or cardboard boxes in the middle of speedways. These existed in the original map of Need for Speed: Most Wanted, but in the case of that title, the music, the setting and the story concentrated on revenge and taking back the protagonist's car did not allow for much thought on that. Yet, here, we see these still objects, obviously belonging anywhere but the middle of the road.

Fog appears in many places. It's not as thick as in Resident Evil 4, Silent Hill or even Forbidden Siren, but it definitely is as paper-like as in most Playstation 2 era titles. It almost feels like a hostile entity.

 

A LIGHT IS BLEEPING ON THE DASHBOARD…

Need for Speed World's world is a beautiful and tragic case of one of these lately popular "Dead Worlds". It might have players playing around and it's great fun, but the game itself knows it's dying or dead already.

It's not something the modding community who revamped the game are to blame for. In fact, this atmosphere makes the game even more interesting and since it's alive and resurrected, it's something astonishingly great! However, the conclusion of this small tour around the map comes to one point: The original developers probably knew what was going to happen.

Need for Speed World, as already mentioned, was the last Need for Speed title created by Blackbox to be released by EA Games, along with their very last Need for Speed Title, Need for Speed: The Run. In 2012, EA Blackbox was renamed Quicklime Games, before seizing to exist completely. Need for Speed: The Run, might be the last developed game of the studio, but World is actually their last game, as they kept working on it by updating and moderating it until 2013, when the franchise would get into the hands of EA Ghost.

And Need for Speed World, or Soapbox Race World truly is a ghost. A beautiful ghost that brings the nostalgia of the past into the present. A memento of every idea and passion that could have been, if Blackbox was still working on the franchise and owning this project. It's a spirit brought back to life and it's a spirit that should it be treated with respect and admiration it will show each one of you the beauty of nostalgia.

Opening the gates to the biggest answer of all, about who the invisible enemy within the map is…

 

TIME