Need For Speed: Most Wanted Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)The game is fast and fun, but with some tearing on the PS2 version. Poor PS2, it just can't handle the speed anymore. I can't wait for the PS3. I have a 41" Sony XBR Tube TV and my eyes were bleeding the first night of play. Wow!! My eye doctor gave me a bottle of teardrops for playing these types of games. Your eyes don't get washed by normal blinking and dry out because you're concentrating so much. Get yourself some REFRESH TEARS if you play race games for hours on end. You'll need it here. The graphics are good with nice rain and sunlight effects. The Dolby Pro Logic is some of the best surround I've heard in a game. The thunder coming out of my rear effects speakers was incredible. There's a WIDESCREEN feature. There is an option to mix the 26 songs in the jukebox anyway you like. I don't care for Hip Hop so I turned it all off and put all the Heavy Metal in random order. You can also sample every song to make your choice. If you don't like Heavy Metal or Hip Hop you can turn it ALL off and just listen to the sounds of the engines purring. The MENUS are confusing at first as there are many sub-menus within sub-menus. It took me 15 minutes just to figure out how to get out of CAREER MODE. (You must PAUSE, go to your SAFE HOUSE, and GO BACK two times to find the MAIN MENU.) It's not the most user friendly menu system I've seen.

This time NEED FOR SPEED mixes the free roaming city of the UNDERGROUND series with the heavy police presence of THE HOT PURSUIT games. The game has a million tracks and a million things to do.

The meat of the game is the CAREER MODE. This is where you acquire the stats in EVENTS, MILESTONE COMPETITIONS, and CHALLENGES to be challenged by the 15 MOST WANTED on THE BLACKLIST and open all the cars and some of the juicier parts for the cars. You'll meet all the characters in FMV which is a little weird, but kind of cool, for a racing game. The acting is good, but you can forward through all of them if you just want to race. Some of the characters will give you hints via messages on the SMS cellphone and email feature which you can manage by either keeping or deleting them. Along with acquiring stats you'll also need to make your presence known to the police and collect needed BOUNTY points so that when you have enough BOUNTY and stats you'll be challenged by a rival on THE BLACKLIST. Your RAP sheet contains all the info about your ALIAS. The funniest stat was for the amount of damage you've caused the State. CAREER MODE is where you FREE ROAM which is really unnecessary because you'll find yourself getting into the BLACKLIST with the press of a button to enter the events you need to be challenged by a rival. Once you enter an EVENT, CHALLENGE, MILESTONE COMPETITION or BOUNTY, it takes you were you need to go. There are also ICONS throughout the city that are also unnecessary for certain EVENTS. Just go into the BLACKLIST MENU to check off the things you need. However, you will need the WORLD MAP display to set the GPS system to show you where the parts SHOPS are. You can't go directly to them from the BLACKLIST or PAUSE MENU. You'll need to drive to them. You can get to the SAFE HOUSE (your garage) by just pressing the PAUSE button. You don't have to drive there. To me the free roaming around the city is rather moot unless you want to get the lay of the city for when the cops are chasing you. I just wing it with the MINI MAP provided in the lower left corner of the screen looking for the SPEEDBREAKER and COOL DOWN spots. The only time you use the whole city, which opens up later with more sections, is when you're running from the cops. The rest of the events are set courses that you must follow to beat.

Other MODES are QUICK RACE with QUICK PLAY where the game gives you the car for the track you select. The manual tells you to play this MODE because it will unlock special cars or items you can't unlock in other parts of the game. There's also CUSTOM RACE in QUICK PLAY where you use a separate garage with a limited choice of cars until you open up the rest of the cars in CAREER MODE. You can also set the number of laps and the number of rivals for most events. There's SPLIT SCREEN for head to head racing and THE CHALLENGE SERIES, which was the meat of the game in NEED FOR SPEED HOT PURSUIT 2.

RACE TYPES include CIRCUIT, DRAG, LAP KNOCKOUT, SPEEDTRAP, SPRINT, and TOLLBOOTH.

The cars are great, but limited, and can be customized. Visual CUSTOMIZATION is rather needless for reasons I mention below. I love the MUSTANG FASTBACK. As a teen in the late 70's and early 8o's, I street raced a '66 MUSTANG with a 289 punched out to a 302, a Holley 4 barrel, a high-speed rearend, a low race cam, turbo flow mufflers, anti-sway bars, and a Cruisematic transmission. That's it!! We didn't use nitrous or computers. And that car was the fastest quarter-miler in the whole San Fernando Valley in SO CAL. The only car that ever came close to beating me was a CORVETTE. That dreaded CORVETTE is in the game too. The FORD GT is a great car and one of my favorites from GRAN TURISMO. I'm glad they included the LAMBORGINIS from HOT PURSUIT, but where are the FERRARIS? Where else can you destroy a $250,000 FERRARI and just go get another one. Bummer. You will be driving the lesser cars for a while until you earn enough money to buy better ones, but even the smaller cars FLY when you get them souped up. VERY NICE!! VERY FAST!!

One of the best things about the NEED FOR SPEED series are the car physics. HOT PURSUIT 2 did them a little better, but when you get off the road into the dirt or grass your car spins it's tires a little. When you get back on the pavement you can really feel the car gripping the asphalt. I like them better than the floaty rocket car physics of MIDNIGHT CLUB and BURNOUT. The physics are a combination of simulator and arcade. JUST AWESOME!!

WARNING TO REPLAY FANATICS: There is no REPLAY RACE feature in the game to review big events. I've only played the UNDERGROUND series on DEMO, but NEED FOR SPEED HOT PURSUIT 2 (which is my favorite racer of all time) had this feature. As do most other racing games. To me, this is a glaring oversight by EA. Having a racing game without a REPLAY is like not having one of the best features. What's the point of all the visual customization and car damage when you only see your car in the garage and at the start of a race and you're only gonna be looking at it from behind for the rest of the game? A lot of the fun is watching yourself drive after pulling off some ridiculously insane driving techniques or after causing some major damage in a police pursuit. My friends and I love to REPLAY awesome races, critique the driving, and pat ourselves on the back. It's part of the reward for a challenge well done. I mentioned this to a friend and he just groaned. I know it's not a simulator but it should be a STANDARD feature in ALL racing games. Do the race cameras eat up that much memory? I don't think so. EA blew it BIG TIME by not including this feature!! I was really having fun my first night at the game and had taken down 2 of the 15 rivals on THE BLACKLIST in CAREER MODE. But, not having a REPLAY RACE feature almost SINKS this game for me. This game would get a solid 9 from me, but not having a REPLAY brings down my score!! WHAT A DISAPPONITMENT!! I FEEL LIKE SOMEONE HAS CHOPPED OFF MY RIGHT ARM AND I CAN'T SHIFT MY RICE BURNER.

I also filled out the game registration at EA's website and have yet to receive the hints and cheat codes they promised by email. Juggleheads!!

If you can get past the fact that the game has no REPLAY feature, you're going to have a lot of fun. Me, I just can't get over it. I WANT MY REPLAY CAMERA!! I guess I'll have to turn off all the lights in my house, grab a bottle of Jack, and weep by myself in the corner.

ENJOY.

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Product Description:
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is underground racing action so real, you almost smell the burnt asphalt. The thrill of illicit street racing permeates the air - out-race rivals, evade cops and exploit hundreds of miles of open road as gamers make their way up the Blacklist. Build up your street cred and Rap Sheet with gripping, White knuckle, head-to-head races with the top Drivers on the streets. Then pull daring, evasive moves to out-run and out-fox the cops that patrol the open road. Strategic cop pursuit and skill-based evasion techniques for an all-new level of gameplayExtensive visual customizations are available, whether you want to lose the cops or just pimp out your ride

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