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Game Review: Need for Speed – Undercover

Posted on 17. Nov, 2008 by tawnos in Game Reviews

For those of you that don’t know me I’m really into cars, chances are you’ll catch me checking out the new Zonda instead of the hot model standing next to it. Point is I really like cars and car related stuff. So you can understand how excited I get when a new racing game gets announced and then instantly disappointed when I see that it’s just another Need for Speed game. This was not the case during the hot pursuit days. This Need for Speed Undercover release is no exception, prepare your self for disappointment.

Game play: Racing games in general are straight forward, get from point A to point B faster than the other guy and don’t crash in the process. NFS is no different but at least tries to mix things up by adding their own race types to separate it and make the game stand out above the rest. In this release they introduce the new highway racing, which as the name suggest is basically racing on the highway with more traffic (think of driving to work in the morning, you’re late and there’s a traffic jam on the highway.) Other than that you have your need for speed standard races: sprint, circuit, and cops & robbers. Sorry, the drift events have been removed from this release.

Graphics: Ever since the first underground release it appears to me that EA improves the graphics enough for you to see they worked on that aspect of the game but never enough to actually leave a lasting impression on you and this release is no exception. The shaders are slightly better, car models a bit more detailed, background slightly sharper and car vinyl’s a bit less like Fast and the Furious. Over all they improved just enough to get by with calling it a new game.

Game design: Let’s get one thing out of the way, Need for Speed Undercover is an arcade game and in no way a racing sim. There is no way a Volkswagen R32 is going to beat a Koenigsegg CCX no matter how many stickers, bottles of NOS, and BOV sound effects you add to the car. The car lineup is impressive but when you work so hard to save up for that Nissan GTR and your opponent in a Ford Focus beats you, it makes you wonder… Who was the lead developer and why did he allow such things. Maybe he was too busy managing the team that designed the city, this is the largest one to date for the Need for Speed series and while its fun to drive around in the new larger city I wish they would have spent as much time on other aspects of the game as they did on that.

Final thoughts: You may have noticed I skipped talking about the story in this review… Yah I did that on purpose. Over all it’s a fun game that will help kill some time while you wait for Gran Turismo. Oh and you also get to see the new 370z.

Tags: cars, game review, need for speed, racing, undercover