Need for Speed Most Wanted

"Made special for those who believe street racing should be an Olympic sport."

Okay, after the debacle that was Need for Speed Underground 2, EA decided to go back to it's roots and bring back the police in this installment of the long running racing series. Some people are going to consider this NFSU3, but I assure you that while the outside package look and feels the same, it is a little different from those titles, which, in my opinion, is mostly a good thing. Let's get one thing out of the way first off, I despised NFSU2, from it's weird free roaming style, to the strange fact that you actually had to roam around and search for stores in order to unlock new items for your car. Not to mention the game just didn't have the same feel as the first, from the strange idea of being able to hook you car up with sound systems, to you racing to every photo op for "Import Tuner Magazine," (apparently photographers have no patience). Luckily I am happy to report these things are absent in this installment, and the game is better for it.

The story is the same boring sterotypical racing plot that you can find in most racing games and movies. You play as yourself, as the game starts with you in a big race with you estranged rival named "Razor," number one on the "Blacklist" consisting of 15 other racers who are supposed to be the best of the best. During the race however your car breaks down, and you are forced to give up your ride to the man who sabotaged your car. So you must start all over, by racing crappier cars, and work your way up the Blacklist until you reach Razor and get revenge, or whatever. Luckily the game is more fun than the story, so you shouldn't really be put off by this point.

GAMEPLAY: 9/10

Let's start with what's been removed from the game. Drift events have been removed, in a very wise decision, as this was probably the worst out of all the modes in the previous two titles. Some customization options have been removed, including tail and headlights, soundsystems, and hydraulics, and although some fans may complain about this, you must realize that in the scheme of things these were rather stupid and unneccesary options that don't lesson the experience any due to their absence. Now to what has been added. Two new races have been added. Tollbooth, in which you must race from point to point in order to recharge your time and reach the finish line, and another mode in which you must speed through traffic cameras as fast as you can, the highest speed total at the end of the race wins. Tolebooth is pretty good, and has a good arcade feel to it, but the Traffic Camera race is pretty easy, as sometimes it's hard to tell if your opponents even know the rules of the race. From the title you can pretty much gather that police have returned to the series (It disappoints me to know some people didn't know police were ever in the series) and automatically the game is twice as good as the Underground series. It's good to know that what you are doing is illegal, and it's exciting when you're in the middle of a race and the police get involved, trying to stop you and your opponents and drag your but off to jail. This was so fun in fact, I started taking races that had the highest probability of cop interference just so it made the races all that more challenging. Your car has a heat meter, which is determined by how big of a bounty your have on that car. The higher the heat, the more police forces with be on you. Level one and two may just be cops and unmarked cop cars, while higher levels can be helicopters, roadblocks, spike strips, and the cars trying to do a rolling box move, in which they surround you on all sides and try to halt stop you to make the arrest. Of course, your not without options, as you have a feature called pursuit breakers, which is pretty much you crashing into support beams, or gas stations so the cops must fall back and deal with the after math. Once the police lose sight of you the game enters a Metal Gear like cooldown mode, where you need to avoid detection, until the cops give up the chase. While the chases are fun once you get them rolling, to initiate them is less fun. To race the members of the black list, you have to have a certain bounty on your head before they agree to race. Thus, there is an option to automatically initiate a chase. While conveniant and neccesarry, this makes the start of chases feel almost scripted and some of the joy is lost in this way. Plus you must complete certain milestones as well to race the blacklist, which include things like being caught speeding at a certain MPH through traffic cameras, or hitting a certain number of police cars. It's fun at first, but later in the game it becomes a little more tedious than it needs to be.

Also new is Speed Breaker, by pressing the X button, the world around you slows down, and you are able to make decisions easier, and take corners faster than you normally would be able to. Some players might not realize how handy this is for right away, but it can be a big help in races with turns where you practically need to come to a stop to in order to take them.

One thing I must add, while the customization mode is fun, after playing certain games like Forza, it's clear the some more tuning needs to be done in this department as well. The vinyls in this game are pretty generic, and I must say most of the time I didn't ever use one because I didn't like any of them. Where as in Forza you can create your decals yourself, and come up with cool new designs, like my Bender from Futurama car. Hopefully the next title with have a little more options in this department.

GRAPHICS: 9/10

Comparing this version to the PS2 version, it is really obvious how much graphic power the 360 has, although I can't say how it compares to the original X-Box as I have never played that version. Still shots of your car shows real reflections of the environment, particle effects are great, and the town itself is surprisingly clean and full of life. However, I would make the small request of real time day to night cycles. In this game, instead of racing at night, you always race in a sort of post apocolyptic dusk that never changes, so it would be nice if that added a feature like this.

SOUND: 7/10

Okay, the car sound effects are great and all, but it's nothing you haven't heard before. You know cars go vroom-vroom. Ultimately this is my biggest area of complaint in the game. After awhile of hearing the endless voice messages you recieve on your cell phone from rivals and friends, some of these messages do get sent to your twice by the way, you want to mute every voice in the game (making it even worse because the voice actors are real actors that appear in the cutscenes, so you even know the voice behind the voice). Also, I'm not sure how EA did it, but somehow they have an even worse soundtrack than Underground 2, which is quite an accomplishment considering that NFSU2 had Satans curse that was "Rocket Ride" by Felix Da Housecat. Lucky for you, you have a 360 so you can put on your own tracks using the X-Box Live button, and saves you the trouble of turning on your stero or I-pod.

CONTROLS: 9/10

Controls are a very important thing in the racing genre, probably more so than any other genre. Of course it all depsends on the handling of your car and the upgrades on it, but I can see the controls are tight in this game, and it seems a little more so than they were in NFSU2, but I don't know if that's just in my mind. Also, shifting gears has been located to the right stick, which gives the game a good feel, and it is very easy to go from one gear to the next during the intense drag racing events.

The 360 has three very good racing games out as I right this, NFSMW, Project Gotham Racing 3, and Burnout Revenge. However, it's all up to the consumer, which one is the right one for them. Luckily, I can promise you, that if you are a fan of street racing, look no further than this game. However, admittedly, Burnout Revenge is the better of the three titles, however it's your decision to make.

Graphics- 9/10
Sound- 7/10
Control- 9/10
Gameplay- 9/10
Overall- 8/10

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 10/02/06