Need for Speed Underground

"Great game, except every lap but the last is a waste of time"

Graphics - 10/10 - Great job on the graphics, very nice looking cars and tracks, and there's a wide variety of things you can do to the car and customize it's looks. Not TOO demanding on your video card either. Few things I noticed though is that the roads always look wet, even if it's not raining.

Controls - 9/10 - All right controls, nothing stupid, not much to say about this. (All the controls are also configurable, and there arn't that many buttons, so if you don't like the initial settings, it's very easy to change them to the way you like)

Music/Sound - 9/10 - Good variety of soundtracks for music, good sound effects for crashes, jumps, engine noises, etc...

Story - 2/10 - Not really a story oriented game, just straightforward linear missions to unlock better car parts. (And a different rating, your ''style points'' determines what kind of stuff you can put on your car for looks and stuff)

Gameplay - 2/10 - This is one of those games ruined by one single flaw. That is the ''catch-up'' stuff that cannot be disabled. Your playing a 4 lap race.. you do great on the first 3 laps, crash once on the 4th, and your done. It's not possible to get a big lead, since the moment you get a good lead, everyone else suddenly starts driving better. That is just a load of BS, and that's why i only gave the game 5/10. Other then that, for a racing game, it's pretty good. It has a lot of different types of races you can do.

Replayability - 5/10 - It's a racing game, if your into it, you can play endlessly, and there's multiplayer as well. As for the main bulk of the missions, once you played through everything, done is done, there's nothing more to do.

Major Flaw - The fact you can't turn off catch up makes it very frustrating for long races, since you can't get a lead and if you screw up near the end you just wasted a ton of time. If that was toggleable (and that includes for the main missions), then i would give this game a 9/10.

Conclusion - Great game, but there should be a way to turn off the ''catch-up'' that was toggleable, similiar to the way it can be toggled in the PS2 version of Hot Pursuit 2. If your a race game fan, definitely go for it.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 02/26/04