Need for Speed
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.
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Need for Speed™ Most Wanted on Steam
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The open-world action in Need for Speed Most Wanted gives you the freedom to drive your way. Hit jumps and shortcuts, switch cars, lie low or head for terrain that plays to your vehicle’s unique strengths. Fight your way past cops and rivals using skill, high-end car tech and tons of nitrous.
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is a racing, multiplayer and open world game
developed by Criterion Games
and published by Electronic Arts.
Released on June 18th 2020 is available on Windows, Steam Deck and Steam Machine.
It has received 22,750 reviews of which 17,586 were positive and 5,164 were negative resulting in a rating of 7.6 out of 10. 😊
The game is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam.
The Steam community has classified Need for Speed™ Most Wanted into these genres:
Media & Screenshots
Get an in-depth look at Need for Speed™ Most Wanted through various videos and screenshots.
System requirements
These are the minimum specifications needed to play the game. For the best experience, we recommend that you verify them.
Windows
- OS *: Windows Vista (Service Pack 2 and all available windows updates) 32-bit
- Processor: 2 GHz Dual Core (Core 2 Duo 2.4 GHZ or Althon X2 2.7 GHz)
- Memory: 2 GB RAM
- Graphics: DirectX 10.1 compatible with 512 MB RAM (ATI RADEON 3000, 4000, 5000 OR 6000 series, with ATI RADEON 3870 or higher performance)
- Storage: 20 GB available space
- Sound Card: DirectX compatible
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User reviews & Ratings
Explore reviews from Steam users sharing their experiences and what they love about the game.
Bought this game thinking I was going to become a professional street racer. Instead, I spent 20 minutes crashing into traffic and blaming the police. “Okay, this race I’ll drive carefully.” 5 seconds later: “FULL SPEED. NO BRAKES.” The cars are fast, the police are everywhere, and apparently every civilian car exists solely to ruin my race. 10/10. Would crash into the same traffic again.
Surprisingly Good Racing Game Rating: 8.5/10 I had no hopes from EA. They failed miserably to recreate peak NFS MW 2005 experience. So I went in with low hopes. But to my surprise, this was a very fun game. I was skeptical if there gonna be any sense of progression given you can grab any top shiny car in the open world for free. Plus absolutely no story, no face, no character. Only a list of Top 10 MOST WANTED tied with points. And each individual cars with it's own sets of races. Shocked, but it was kind of engaging. The cars, environment, graphics, physics, destruction, sparks everywhere it was full of lively fun arcade races. Police chasing with few banger music never gets old. I enjoyed it. No pressure race. Keep crashing and enemy cars will slowdown or crash to allow you catch up lol. Same goes the other way too! Mindless fun. Though not being able to personalize car is a miss. First fix few technical issues to make game playable. - Disable EA app overlay to fix crash - [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3395228469]Fix Input Lag + (optional) Use Lossless Scaling frame gen - (optional) [url=https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3382337900]Use Unlocker mod if you want access to all locked cars then Just hold Accelerate, W every race ✔
If you were looking forward to a Burnout game with licensed cars, welcome to NFS: Most Wanted 2012. In all seriousness though, it's hard to find a person who wouldn't talk about how rushed and unfinished NFS: MW 2012 is. But most people will only criticize the game by talking about the point that it is not “Most Wanted”, and… that’s pretty much it. It’s hard to find a review that would focus on the final game itself. First I want to say that it has its own vibe and positive sides. For example, the city of Fairhaven looks beautiful, and the same goes for graphics. I can’t really tell that this game came out in 2012. It’s almost on par with the most recent NFS releases. The city and the visual style create some great, chill vibes in my opinion. The soundtrack is decent as of now and was excellent back in the day. It literally screams early 2010s: Skrillex, Charli XCX, Muse, The Chemical Brothers, Calvin Harris, and all the other artists blend really well with the world of the game and the time of its release. There are some dubstep remixes which I would rather replace with the original versions, but overall it's not that bad. There are also unique intro cinematics for each event, which is a train of thought of whoever was responsible for the thing. I am not saying it’s bad; it’s actually quite the opposite: I really like those weird, creative cinematics. It is something that you simply can’t meet in the newer games. The unhinged creativity. But that’s about it. Everything else is… rather questionable. The game is literally being held hostage by its own naming. This is not Most Wanted; this is Burnout: Fairhaven. It lacks not only a purpose but also a whole bunch of other aspects that would make the game worthwhile to play. The gameplay is literally the same as in Burnout but kinda worse: complete races against faceless, generic bots who prove no resistance whatsoever; do some other generic stuff (go fast through a speedtrap, smash billboards, etc.); and earn enough score [Speed Points] in order to race yet another faceless Blacklist member, this time with cops and with the requirement to take out the opponent after the race in order to get his car into your garage. If such a formula had worked with Burnout back in the 2000s, it has become quite stale by the time of 2012. Not to mention the amazing damage model of cars in Burnout since those were unlicensed. I don’t know who came up with an idea to try to implement such a thing with licensed cars; I personally think that such implementation will never work the way it should simply due to the manufacturers’ policies. The very core of NFS: MW 2012 contradicts itself, and as you may guess, it is not a good start. Due to the rushed development, the progression system is questionable to say the least. Regarding the visual upgrades, the only thing you can change is the color/livery. In order to upgrade the insides of your car, you have to complete certain races. You got the detail you need? Great, now use it 300 times or do something X number of times in order to upgrade it so it becomes even better. Each car also has a certain list of available races, and once you have completed them, there is nothing else to do with the car except ditch it and switch to another one. Every car has its own set of races, which sometimes intervene with one another (repetitiveness). The cherry on top? Each car also has its own progression system, meaning that all of those performance parts that you’ve earned for your previous car do not carry over. The handling model is really hard to get used to. If you don’t have track tires on, the car always tends to wiggle to the sides a bit, which results in a crash. Drifting isn’t as simple as in future installments either: if, say, in Payback any car could pass the turns in drift without spinning out, in MW2012 certain cars require drift tires or heavy control in order not to end up crashing. You might think "oh, maybe the car is more grip-oriented then?" no, it isn't, it still tends to drift at times when turning. The handling model with the “brake to drift” system, which has appeared in NFS: Hot Pursuit , became closer to the abomination of a handling we have in Need for Speed 2015. Speaking of crashes, in my own opinion the game is way too sensitive in this context, even more than NFS 2015. Sometimes trading paint with a car or with a wall results in a crash cut scene that is around 5 seconds long. Yeah, I still have PTSD from the NFS 2015, don't mind me here. The side activities are quite boring. Excluding the races, there are half-baked 2-minute "drift" races, which are a rare occasion; chases, which hardly differ from the ones you might have in a race or in free-roam but somehow ended up as a separate event; and… that’s pretty much it. Cops are not fun either: there’s absolutely no penalty if you get busted (I can hardly call a penalty the fact that you lose the SP you’ve accumulated in a chase ). I couldn’t find speed cams or billboard-smashing fun no matter how hard I’ve tried. It just simply doesn’t click, maybe due to the fact that the game feels rather pointless as I've mentioned before. There’s no ending, there’s no beginning; it really is a Burnout game that wears the name of Need for Speed for some particular reason. I honestly think that if EA decided to reboot the Burnout series with this title or would call it the spin-off of the series, it would work far better than what we have today. But alas, it is what it is. All in all, considering today’s trend of aimless racing (Forza Horizon, The Crew , and sim races), the game would hold great if not for the questionable progression and the half-working elements of the Burnout series. Sure, the game was meant to be drastically different, and, supposedly, to be the continuation of the original Most Wanted, but I just can't put my finger on what could have been different in order for this version of the game to work in the end. Don’t get me wrong — it's a decent racing game for a couple of mindless evenings, but… many may find it boring and unfinished. I can’t say much personally; I personally found it fun but rather pointless to play after 3 hours. I recommend this game purely out of pity. I understand all the depths of hell this game has been through during development, and I don't want to post another negative review just for the sake of it.
---{ Graphics }--- ☐ You forget what reality is ☐ Beautiful ☐ Good ☑ Decent ☐ Bad ☐ Don‘t look too long at it ☐ MS-DOS ---{ Gameplay }--- ☑ Very good ☐ Good ☐ It's just gameplay ☐ Mehh ☐ Watch paint dry instead ☐ Just don't ---{ Audio }--- ☑ Eargasm ☐ Very good ☐ Good ☐ Not too bad ☐ Bad ☐ I'm now deaf ---{ Audience }--- ☑ Kids ☑ Teens ☑ Adults ☑ Grandma ---{ PC Requirements }--- ☐ Check if you can run paint ☑ Potato ☐ Decent ☐ Fast ☐ Rich boi ☐ Ask NASA if they have a spare computer ---{ Game Size }--- ☐ Floppy Disk ☑ Old Fashioned ☐ Workable ☐ Big ☐ Will eat 15% of your 1TB hard drive ☐ You will want an entire hard drive to hold it ☐ You will need to invest in a black hole to hold all the data ---{ Difficulty }--- ☐ Just press 'W' ☐ Easy ☑ Easy to learn / Hard to master ☐ Significant brain usage ☐ Difficult ☐ Dark Souls ---{ Grind }--- ☐ Nothing to grind ☐ Only if u care about leaderboards/ranks ☑ Isn't necessary to progress ☐ Average grind level ☐ Too much grind ☐ You'll need a second life for grinding ---{ Story }--- ☐ No Story ☐ Some lore ☐ Average ☑ Good ☐ Lovely ☐ It'll replace your life ---{ Game Time }--- ☐ Long enough for a cup of coffee ☐ Short ☑ Average ☐ Long ☐ To infinity and beyond ---{ Price }--- ☐ It's free! ☑ Worth the price ☐ If it's on sale ☐ If u have some spare money left ☐ Not recommended ☐ You could also just burn your money ---{ Bugs }--- ☐ Never heard of ☑ Minor bugs ☐ Can get annoying ☐ ARK: Survival Evolved ☐ The game itself is a big terrarium for bugs ---{ ? / 10 }--- ☐ 1 ☐ 2 ☐ 3 ☐ 4 ☐ 5 ☐ 6 ☐ 7 ☐ 8 ☐ 9 ☑ 10
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Frequently Asked Questions
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is currently priced at 19.99€ on Steam.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is currently not on sale. You can purchase it for 19.99€ on Steam.
Yes, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted received 17,586 positive votes out of a total of 22,750 achieving a rating of 7.60.
😊
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted was developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts.
Yes, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is playable and fully supported on Windows.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is not playable on MacOS.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is not playable on Linux.
Yes, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is playable on Steam Deck, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
Yes, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted is playable on Steam Machine, though it might require a few minor tweaks. Make sure to check the Steam store page and community feedback on ProtonDB for exact compatibility details.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted does not support VR.
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted offers both single-player and multi-player modes.
Need for Speed™ Most Wanted offers both Co-op and PvP modes.
Yes, there are 5 DLCs available for Need for Speed™ Most Wanted. Explore additional content available for Need for Speed™ Most Wanted on Steam.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted does not support mods via Steam Workshop.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted does not support Steam Remote Play.
No, Need for Speed™ Most Wanted does not currently support Steam Family Sharing.
You can find solutions or submit a support ticket by visiting the Steam Support page for Need for Speed™ Most Wanted.
Data sources
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Last Updates| Steam data | 22 September 2026 17:30 UTC |
|---|---|
| SteamSpy data | 22 October 2026 18:13 UTC |
| Steam price | 26 October 2026 19:31 UTC |
| Steam reviews | 19 October 2026 05:54 UTC |
If you'd like to dive deeper into the details about Need for Speed™ Most Wanted, we invite you to check out a few dedicated websites that offer extensive information and insights. These platforms provide valuable data, analysis, and user-generated reports to enhance your understanding of the game and its performance.
- SteamDB - A comprehensive database of everything on Steam about Need for Speed™ Most Wanted
- SteamCharts - Analysis of Need for Speed™ Most Wanted concurrent players on Steam
- ProtonDB - Crowdsourced reports on Linux and Steam Deck Need for Speed™ Most Wanted compatibility
Game modes
Multiplayer
Online players
133
Developer
Criterion Games
Publisher
Electronic Arts
Release
18 Jun 2020
Platforms