Need for Speed Most Wanted

"Pretty Similar To NFS:Underground But, Thankfully, With Less Rap"

This version of NFS, brings back something that I really liked in the older games; the chases. Being able to go through the cities being chased by wave after wave of police is pretty fun, however, unfortunately, there's not really many ways to end it. For the first in the series on a next gen console, I think it's fair enough to have high hopes for it, but the game doesn't really deliver.

===
Storyline (6/10)
===

Probably one of the better storylines from a Need For Speed game, but it feels and plays out like a B-movie. You get set up by some underground racers, who end up taking your car, and then basically, the whole game is about you trying to work your way up the underground ranks and beating the guy who set you up. As said, it's nothing amazing, but at least the game sticks to it, and never loses track of the purpose of the game.

===
Gameplay (6/10)
===

Where to start… Navigating through all the menus is easy enough, and you can start up your races rather quickly. However, the cars themselves handle very badly, and almost never stop trying to turn to one of the sides, no matter what your speed, you'll find it nearly impossible just going in a straight line. The tracks themselves are alright, but there's not a whole bunch of variety and so you find yourself on the same tracks over and over, which is fine when they only take one minute, but there's some that can take far too long. This means it's quite easy to get bored half way through, which is a bad thing, as it means it's extremely easy to lose your focus, then have to start again, over and over, thus wasting half an hour of your life.

The AI is also a big problem I have with this game, despite it meaning to be every man for themselves, the AI often works together and will have two racers essentially try to block you in while the third races off. Unfortunately, I've found this happened far too often, and there are other AI problems; such as sometimes when they miss taking a shortcut, they'll stop reverse, and waste a LOT of time going back just to take it. It just makes the game a lot less enjoyable, and ultimately frustrating, and when you're racing your rival one on one, it's even more noticeable, because the one AI player doesn't have the back up and is a lot easier to beat.

Also, my main gripe is the shortcuts. I understand that they're there to give players an advantage, but I don't like the fact that in this game, you are basically forced to use these shortcuts as the AI does, meaning if you don't there's practically no way you can win. This completely destroys the fun you're having, because you're constantly searching for the shortcuts that the computer keeps taking, or having to trail an AI player just to find where they are. I don't mind them being there, but when the only reason you lost a race, after not crashing or slowing down at all, is because the computer took all the shortcuts, it's just not very appealing.

===
Graphics (8/10)
===

No real problems with the graphics, all the cars look nice enough, and the cities are big enough. Not a lot more that can be said about them.

===
Sounds (6/10)
===

A step up from the exclusively rap tracks that NFS:Underground featured, however, still not that great a selection of tracks. I don't really think that a game should strive towards forcing players to play their own songs in favour of what's contained in the game. However, the songs included, while some are alright, aren't ones that simply fade into the background and can be ignored. The sound effects are alright, but not much of an improvement, and in fact sound pretty similar to the previous games.

===
Summary (6/10)
===

In essence, it's pretty similar to NFS:Underground, but in a new location, and an altered story mode. The riding about the streets getting chased by police vehicles is fun for a while, but after being forced into doing it time after time, it's something that quickly loses it's appeal. Overall, it's a decent enough racer, but nothing all that amazing and new, and for a next gen console, it's a shame. There's a lot of potential, but not enough is done between this one and the previous release in the series to warrant owning both.

Reviewer's Score: 6/10, Originally Posted: 03/20/07