Need for Speed: The Grand Finale

Need For Speed: The Grand Finale is a Need For Speed game which takes place directly after the events of Need for Speed: Carbon and preceding Need for Speed: World Online. The player, whose name is revealed as Bishop, decides to travel to a new city, and is rammed off the road, shot, and left for dead by Sgt. Cross. A racer codenamed 'Spartan' finds him and revives him, in exchange for him going into street racing one last time.

Gameplay
The gameplay of the game has been extremely reworked, in an attempt to evoke the simplicity of Most Wanted while also hiding deep layers of complexity under its hood. Bishop is free to drive around the city, targeting races to earn money, rep for battling the street racers and getting tougher races, and cars and parts. Bishop is free to use any part that he can get his/her hands on for free: it must be unlocked by beating a race in at least the top three though. Parts also have rep requirements: if a race to unlock a part is not beaten, but the rep requirement is met or exceeded, Bishop can buy that part early. Vehicles must also be purchased, though they can be bought at any point in the game provided Bishop has the money. This also works vice versa: Bishop can buy his way into events that he doesn't have the Rep for. This wins double the Rep, but means that if he/she loses Bishop needs to spend double the original fee to re-enter.

Bishop, if seen doing anything illegal, or if their Heat Meter is up far enough, will be chased by police on sight. Elements of the police include standard police (Ford Crown Victoria), power police (Mitsubushi Lancer Evo), muscle police (Porsche 911 GT3 Turbo), sport police (Chevrolet Corvette ZR1) and super police (Lamborghini Reventon), with Heat Level 6 being locked except for one challenge race. Every Bishop evades drives up their Fine meter: if he/she is arrested again, he/she must pay the fine. It also adds an impound strike to the car. If Bishop does not have enough money to pay the fine, he/she must surrender any remaining money and their car. As well, it will raise the Heat Level exponentially. The Heat Levels raise slower, but are global and affect the part of a city it is in. Higher Heat Levels means more and more powerful police cars patrolling, and a higher chance the player will be chased on sight. Instead of undercover cars being randomly put into races, the Heat Levels determine this: a higher Heat Level in the "province" you are racing in means that there is a higher chance that one of the cars is a cop car. As well, there may be a few races where it turns out every car is an undercover vehicle. If a province is at a higher Heat Level, there is a chance the Heat Level of a connected province may rise as well.

New to the game is the fact that the player can escape the cops during Cooldown by driving into his Safe House: however, doing so may lead to the Safe House being "compromised", and a permanent loss of that safe house. Some safe houses (like the starter) cannot be compromised at all. All car and part purchases/unlocks are made at the Safe House, to simplify gameplay.

Need for Speed will house an unknown number of vehicles, but multiple cars from Fusion RSes to Audi R8s are allowed. As well, easter eggs, once found, allow the player to reacquire their old M3 GTR and Darius' won Le Mans Quattro, and they are referenced as such in the car select menu (instead of "BMW M3 E46", the car is called "BMW M3 GTR", as is the same for the le Mans Quattro. Acquiring them through the easter egg or finishing the game on the hardest difficulty will unlock the GTR and Quattro for use in Quick Drive.)

The Showroom function returns, but instead of 10 cars you can have one of each car or 30 cars, which can be adjusted in the Options menu (it says so on the Showroom itself). Quick Drive will allow players to select any car (only a base car: except in the case of special cars [cars unlocked with cheat codes, or cars won from Street Racing Masters], cars from your Career, or Junkman event types), whereas Arcade mode allows you to select Showroom-made cars.

Driving has been improved: you can wreck other cars by smashing them into walls, but you are also vulnerable to damage. Much like in the Burnout series, nitro is earned through drifts, big air, and wrecking other cars, which will respawn onto the course. You start with Nitro, but you can upgrade and tune it. Upgrades include giving it more power without tuning it and increasing capacity. Some cars will have higher nitro capacity than others.

Cars are not classified under the three types of car origin points, but are instead classified under Tiers much like in Need for Speed: Shift, with the M3 GTR being in Tier 3, the Volkswagen Golf GTI being in Tier 1, and the le Mans quattro (and, consequently, the R8) are in Tier 4. Tier 2 is for sport cars, much like the Ford Mustang and Mitsubushi Lancer.

The creator of the game, SPARTAN-984, said that "Need for Speed: The Grand Finale is an In Vitro game born in a petri dish, made using a dash of Need for Speed's genetics, along with some of Blur's visuals and particle effects. The cars will be heavily detailed, even on the PSP version, and will provide an arcade racing experience unlike no other. We do not intend for this to compete with combat racers like Blur or simulation racers like Gran Turismo."