Need For Speed Most Wanted Review

“Isn’t it too soon?” that’s the question that struck me when I was
playing Underground 2 and heard of Most Wanted’s launch. EA took over NFS series and it all started: Illegal street racing. First there was

Underground, then immediately came Underground 2 and before I could remember the lyrics of the soundtrack, there is Most Wanted. Isn’t it too early to launch a game? Isn’t it too early to add another in the series? Isn’t EA going too fast? Well, maybe they wanted to cash the Xbox 360 hype, maybe they wanted to cash on the trend of street racing, maybe they had enough money to spend, maybe they didn’t have anything else to do… or maybe its just coz its Need for Speed and speed… it is!

Well it’s been launched and been sold, so there’s no answer to my questions. Rumours are that it jitters at Xbox 360. A friend of mine almost claimed Microsoft for warranty coz he thought his Xbox had some manufacturing fault, later he knew that EA was to be blamed for that. Whatever maybe the cause behind the framy visuals, Most Wanted has got mixed views from all over the world. What can you expect? It’s a mixed game after all… mixture of cops and Illegal street racing … mixture of Hot Pursuit and Underground. In a nutshell, in Most Wanted you race illegally to gain “respect” (something new..!) and get to the top of the most wanted list and cops chase you while you do that. Well that was so hard to guess! There is something really funny about this “respect” thing. You do all kind of illegal things: crash your rides, destroy public property, race illegally and kill cops (well when you send them in loops and burn’em wheels, I presume they die) and doing it all gets you respect enough to reach the blacklist. What kind of respect and blacklist is that anyway?

Everyone’s a Racer in Rockport:

The job is to race, reward is…ahem… your name in the most wanted list and the venue is Rockport city. Rockport city is a large city (why does this name sound so familiar…Rockport? Wonder if it has anything to do with “Grand Thefts”!!) with ports, country side, junctions, industrial sites and usual hoods. Rockport city is the presumed hub of illegal street racing. For some reason all the racers of the world live in Rockport city. Why don’t they join Rally, Nascar or F1? eh? Rockport is such a city that everyone races here: even cops race and they drive Corvettes, Porsches and Lamborghinis (they must be the richest cops’ squad of the world!). And you… you my friend have the same fate you always had in every street racing game. Yes! You are no one…i.e in the beginning and the game is all about becoming ’something’. You are a newcomer to the town and you have to start at the bottom of the food chain and have to work your way right up to the top. The path to glory is the black list which contains the top 15 street racers in the city of Rockport. In the beginning of the game you will drive against the 15th ranked driver called Razor. Unfortunately he tampers with your car, you loose the race and to finish it off you get arrested and loose your car. When you come out of jail you are helped by a woman called Mia (She is a woman, not a car…damn it!).

Now you have a chance to get back on your feet. You have to go out and buy a car and start racing again. This is a long task as you will have to take on each one of the 15 blacklist racers in turn. Each racer has certain criteria that you need to meet before you can face off against them. The criteria consists of winning a certain number of racing events, reach certain pursuit milestones, and earn some cash along the way. Each racer has a different set of requirements that you will discover after beating the racer below them.

Races come in a number of different guises. There are the normal circuit and sprint races that you would expect, plus elimination where the car in last place will be knocked at the end of each lap. There are races against the clock which are called tollbooth races. Drag racers focus on gear changes and dodging traffic and lastly there are the speed trap races. In the speed traps, the player with the highest speed total at the end of a series of radar camera checkpoints will win. The radar cameras are spread through the race, and you will
to try and get the fastest speed possible as you pass by the camera. The game will notify you when you are approaching a radar camera, so that you know to kick in the speed boots.

The different racing modes offer a nice variety in gameplay, but the real fun is in the cop chases. Cops come in various sizes and shapes. The ’size’ of police chasing you starts off small and increases the more you resist the pursuing officers. They start of very basic, and they increase in difficulty as your heat level rises. At first you will see your typical police car chasing you around however later on you’ll see undercover cops and the feds chasing you around. If your chase lasts long enough, you will see police helicopters getting involved as well as roadblocks, spike strips, etc. The pursuit will end when you get caught or get away. You will get caught if you stop your car or by having the police corner you. In order to escape, you will need to get out of visual range of the police and lay low for a period of time in order to let things cool off. The more you get chased, the more heat you will get on your car. In order to reduce the heat on your ride, you can modify it with visual enhancements. If you earn too much heat, it will be very difficult to take your car out. Another tactic to use is to have a few cars to swap. If the heat is particularly high on your current car, go and swap it for one of your others. Beware though, if you get caught too many times you run the chance of getting your car impounded.

What to do when you are not “Wanted”:

That was the Most Wanted career mode. So what to do when you don’t want to be ‘Wanted’? There are other usual modes of playing. You can play a quick race, a custom race, split screen multi-player and the Challenge Series. Quick play throws you right in to the action with all of the options chosen for you, while Custom race allows you to choose the race, track, and car that will be used. The Challenge Series gives you a car and specific goal to achieve. As before with the career mode there are races’ which just involve winning and then you have pursuit challenges. The pursuit goals include smashing a number of road blocks or damaging a certain amount of cars or property. There is not much to say about the off-career mode races as they are same good ol’ races. Just different bottles, that’s all.

General opinion is that these individual races give you a chance to get a feel of the tracks, cars and handling issues. But I really wonder if that’s so coz the cars, tracks and feel of the game varies so much in the off-career mode that you cant really use the experience to your own benefit. I’d rather advice that you go straight for the career mode and when get stuck at some career race, impound the off-career mode to win some easy races and feel good. That’s the trick!

It’s a Looker!!

Most Wanted is a Looker. Graphics, images, backgrounds and cars are all so impressive. Almost every frame of the game is a wallpaper in itself and that surely is a compliment. Attention to detail is awesome. Reflections would be the best part. The Oscar for best rain effect in games should go to Most Wanted. The best effects are seen after the rain when the water on the road reflects its surroundings and the red-blue lights of the cop cars. You can even see a fully detailed driver in the seat when you’re looking into the windshield of your car, down to being able to see his face! I almost believed I was handsome.

The handling is better than previous games in the series as they have a sense of weight and dimensions but not as great as Grand Turismo. AI is great, and especially that of cops, is a little greater. Many a times a single cop will spot you trying to loose the heat in a dark corner, and will ruin your hard work of half an hour in a split second and you will start running again to screw up once again.

The audio quality is charming. Engine sounds change, depending on which car you are driving and then they sound different when you start to tune up your car. Then there are environment effects, squealing tires and other random effects. The second best aspect of the sound is the police radio as they chatter away planning to take you down. You can
hear all the orders, although they are coded, but after a while you will be able to work out what a roadblock is as opposed to a spike strip. There is a lot of voice acting in the game, and it is all done well. Some parts come across a little sub-par, but overall it sounds good.

One aspect of NFS series that you can’t compare with any other game is the soundtrack. Damn, they sell like albums or somepun’. Underground 2 featured “I Need Speed” by Capone and “Riders on the Storm (Fredwreck Remix)” by Snoop Dogg feat.The Doors. Most Wanted has Jamiroquai, Juvenile, Static-X, Prodigy and Hush along with other seeders doing what they are supposed to do. It’s about Trance and Electronica this time around and I’m definitely missing Rob Zombie and Fluke. Somehow I feel that Gangsta’ Rap doesn’t fit with racing games and Trance is the only fitting issue, so Most Wanted has somewhat of what I want. But music is an individual choice and the tastes vary.

Verdict:

I’d like to conclude by saying that Most Wanted has an average speed. It will please those graphic-hungry-high-rig gamers who play games for the visual aspect of them. It has plus point in its overall package as EA has attached a mean theme with the game and that’s how it has been publicised: “Be Wanted” they say! Cars, races, gameplay, story and thematic content is almost the same with a little extra dose of new races. There have been so many racing games that it is hard to differentiate and choose. In all this turmoil Most Wanted stands as a product of a trusted brand and a prestigious series. Maybe NFS has lost its luster coz of too much quantity in its genre. After all how many times can you start from scratch and try to be ’something’? Driving the same cars in different games and different roads looses its adrenalin quotient after sometime. Though NFS has a fan following and most of them will buy it coz of that urge and I don’t believe there are any new comers to NFS coz almost every gamer has played a sequel of NFS once in his or her life. NFS is almost a part of our education. Launching a sequel to NFS means a lot of pressure and responsibility, but I must say that with Most Wanted EA has done a fairly good job. You may not find it addictive, but you won’t regret spending your money here either.