By Elias Dounis on February 15th, 2006

It’s sometimes hard to be a fan of Electronic Arts’ Need for Speed series. Many times EA tries to do something new in order to expand its fan base, but it seems that in the process fans of previous games are actually lost. To say the least, the Need for Speed Underground series lost many of the franchise’s previous players but in return gained a great deal of popularity amongst the hip-hop gaming crowd. However, the second game in the Underground series had been panned by critics, and thankfully that caused EA to rethink its approach with the next Need for Speed game, the product of that being Need for Speed Most Wanted. To put it simply, Most Wanted is what you would get if you combined the Underground series with the classic Hot Pursuit, and it’s probably the best game the series has seen in a long time.

To say the least, the Underground series wasn’t to my liking. I found that it catered too much to the hip-hop culture and as a result couldn’t be taken seriously by those not ingrained into it. Need for Speed Most Wanted still shares this characteristic with the Underground series but, thankfully, it’s not as prominent as it once had been. So, if you’re not fond of hip-hop music, you are given the option of removing any music tracks that aren’t to your liking. Unfortunately, this only leaves you with a handful of hard rock tracks to listen to, but if you’re playing the Xbox or Xbox 360 versions, you can put custom soundtracks to use. Otherwise, however, you’re pretty much assed out.

What’s even worse is the game’s cheesy dialogue and cinemas. Both are almost always over-acted and laughable, and it surely doesn’t help that the game uses live actors for most of the game’s cinematics. These movie sequences come off as being cheesy and comparable to the horrid live action cinematics of the original Resident Evil for the original PlayStation. The visual effect done with the color saturation may make these sequences look somewhat interesting at first, but upon closer inspection it just seems like a cover up for some poor green screen CGI.

Those who are tired of the sometimes boring racing simulation will find much to love in Need for Speed Most Wanted. Obviously, the game isn’t going to be the most realistic when it comes to driving physics and never was it ever intended to be realistic. Most Wanted is an arcade racer and a damn good one at that. The game’s

Most Wanted is very much like Midnight Club 3 in that it has players roaming through a city area in search for various race events. The more you play the game, defeating more opponents and moving up on the Blacklist of racers, more areas of the city are unlocked for you to explore. Everything seems to be intertwined fairly well as all highways lead to an area of the city and you’re pretty much allowed to drive anywhere you want, including through a stadium or golf course. In comparison, the design of the city doesn’t feel as streamlined as that featured in Midnight Club 3, however, players who have played both games will barely notice much of a difference or even see a big enough issue worth disputing.

While roaming around the city, you’ll come across a number of events. You’ll have your traditional lap races, point-to-point races, drag races, tollbooth events (time trials), etc., but what is the most interesting is being able to receive infractions for driving dangerously when being chased by the cops. They can begin to chase you for any number of reasons, the most prominent being speeding, and these chases can be rather enjoyable, but they can also be frustrating to the point where you’ll want to smash your controller when you’re caught. The more infractions you receive, the more intense the chases get, and the longer they run for. In the earlier half of the game, evading authority isn’t much of a challenge. In fact, it feels more tedious than challenging due to the game forcing you to get involved in chases that meet

Now, evading the police can be a very difficult task. They can indeed be very successful in taking you down. If you get rammed by an SUV, it’s likely that they’ll press you against a wall, allowing a fleet of other patrol cars to surround you. So how do you get away? Well, there are a number of things you’ll have to attempt. The most useful method to evade the police is using destructible objects in the environment, such as running through gas pumps to blow up your pursuers or hitting the supports of various buildings to send things such as a giant donut or a radio station antenna crashing down. At first I didn’t find these too useful due to this dramatic camera used for high jumps and environment explosions that is really, really annoying. It does more harm than good. There were quite a few times where I had smashed through the gas station pumps, which then triggered the cinematic, and instead of helping me get away, it would screw things up even more because when the game returned to the normal view, I found myself stuck behind a poll or slammed against a wall. Thankfully, you could turn the feature off, because if you couldn’t the game would’ve been ruined right there.

Most Wanted really begins to shine in its final moments when the car chases get frustratingly intense. Getting away truly feels like an accomplishment and getting caught is an incredible bummer that may make you want to smash your controller. The way these car chases are intertwined into races is truly entertaining. At some point in a race the cops will get on your ass and even start harassing other racers and they’ll continue to chase you after you’ve won the event. To the victor go the spoils... but if you’re not careful your ride may find its way to the impound yard.

Like the Underground series, Most Wanted allows players to upgrade their cars and personalize them with a large variety of body kits and paint jobs. Personally, I have no desire to "trick" out my car cosmetically since I’ve always been bored by the feature in previous racing games. All I want is performance and these performance upgrades are usually available after beating "so and so" ranked racer on the Blacklist and visiting a nearby seller to purchase the parts off of with your winnings. A neat little feature that I liked was the ability to win an opponent’s car as a bonus when defeating them and moving up on the Blacklist’s lineup. While the chance of winning an opponent’s pink slip is based on the luck of the draw, I found that it happened more often than I would’ve initially thought; your opponents’ cars are often much better than the one you have in use at the current time as well. It’s a real treat to pick up a better racer without having to spend the money you’ve earned from victories.

The last racing game I played prior to Need for Speed Most Wanted was Project Gotham Racing 3 for the Xbox 360, and what utterly annoyed me about Bizarre Creation’s racer had been its complete lack of intelligent AI. Racing games that feature cars that drive in pre-determined lines are archaic and dull. Thankfully, Most Wanted doesn’t share this trait and instead features racers that function like unique racers. They make mistakes and crash, giving you the opportunity to make up for lost distance and time even if you yourself screwed up a few times in a race. This lessens the need to strive for perfection in each race and makes these competitions feel more natural. This alone makes

Taking Most Wanted online wasn’t as enjoyable as I would’ve liked. The gameplay is still there but the game’s technical issues really bog things down. The framerate gets all jittery and lag is an issue that makes it seems as if competing racers warp from one spot on the track to another. I’m not sure why this is occurring but a friend of mine seems to believe that poor netcode on EA’s part is the reason for the game’s online mode being a technical mess. I personally got zero satisfaction from taking the game online.

Technically speaking, Most Wanted is an impressive-looking game on whichever platform you play it on. On current consoles, like the PS2, GameCube, and Xbox, the game is easily one of the better-looking multiplatform racers available and the best-looking NFS game to date. However, the game truly shines on the Xbox 360 and PC. While there are some framerate issues every so often, the Xbox 360 version of Most Wanted is rather impressive. It may not boast the same visual fidelity of Project Gotham Racing 3 but the game uses an array of impressive graphical techniques that I found very appealing. The environments are partially destructible, the image blurs when you’re driving at fast speeds, and the sun glares in your eye (which even makes it hard to see anything at times). All of this together makes the game feel like a next-generation racer, even though it may not necessarily look like it in screenshots.

If you’re a fan of arcade racers and EA’s better efforts in the Need for Speed series, than you should definitely give Need for Speed Most Wanted a whirl. It’s one of the better arcade racers released all year and quite possibly the very best one you’ll be able to play on Microsoft’s next generation game console. Of course, the game has its flaws, but Most Wanted lays down the groundwork for a sequel that will hopefully improve on the faults of its predecessor.