Need for Speed Most Wanted

This game has everything an underground racing fan such as myself could want; a very long extensive career mode and an online mode.  However I must firstly say a little disclaimer: I am a proud owner of a sunlight silver RX-8 and the entire culture of street racing enthralls me, so certain specifics of this game that really made me love playing may not strike the same cord with you. But by the same token I promise that if you give this game a chance it will prove to you that it is worth every penny; which seem to be tight at the moment, with a launch lineup such as the 360 has.

First let’s jump into the gameplay/story of Need for Speed Most Wanted.  The game’s story mode is intense; it actually makes you care about the story of the main character which is rare and certainly welcome to the racing genre.  The story begins with the main character speeding into the city of Rockport and causing a stir among the racers as well as the local police (which happens to include one tough ass cop that has a little racing experience of his own).  After we get introduced to everyone in the story we then meet Razor, the rough-around-the-edges street racer that already has plenty of street cred to his name. 

After losing your souped up BMW to him in a crooked race you spend a few months in jail and come out with revenge on your mind.  Starting from the ground up players must go through a “blacklist” that includes the top 15 street racers in the city (number 1 happens to be Razor).  To race an opponent on the blacklist you must complete a number of trial races to prove that you have got what’s needed to go up against someone with some credit to their name.

After working your way through the list races get tougher, cars get faster, and cops get smarter.  The career mode alone will easily take you 20+ hours to complete everything, beat everyone, and unlock all the bonus features.  Different modes in the career are also there; such as circuit race, drag race, sprint, toll-booth, and my favorite, the speed ticket challenge (where the point is to drive around and rack up the fastest speed that is being clicked by radar cameras while still trying to win the race).  There is also a great “free roam” mode in which you can check out the city, find shortcuts for later races, and get your groove on with the police; oh the police, what fun we get to have with them this time around.  EA did something right that’s for sure!

The multiplayer mode is a double edged sword. Xbox live mode is great, fun, and plenty of extra time can be spent online increasing your rep or just playing against your friends.  My gripe is with the split screen, which in my opinion is so utterly important for a racing game that I cannot understand why EA gave it such little attention.  The good thing about multiplayer is that you can load your custom cars from the career mode but as far as the races and modes that are available, I am not impressed.  Not only is there only a few modes to race in, there is no free roam or way to get the cops into the game.  After only playing a few races with my friends via split-screen we found ourselves bored and ready to play something else.  Lucky for EA the NFSMW’s single player experience and Live modes make up for this obvious oversight.

The cars in this game are what made me notice it in the first place and they are a good mix.  Everything from a Lexus IS300 to my personal favorite the Mazda RX-8 are in the game and even a few Lamborghinis are available if your are good enough to get that far.  All these cars are fully customizable and after spending many hours customizing one specific car (you guess?) the limits to this option are nearly endless.  There is something fun about repainting your car once a day or adding stickers, changing rims, upgrading your turbo or amount of nitrous; I could go on and on. The cars handle much better than any of the Need for Speed games of the past. Both of the previous Underground renditions of the series were the best up until this game, but NFSMW blows anything before it out of the water. 

Controls are as easy as any arcade style racing game you have played before with the left thumb-stick used for steering, RT and LT for gas and break respectively, and the other buttons are used for nitrous, camera changes, gear shifts, and other things.  The new physics engine that EA used for this game is what really takes it over the top in terms of the feel of the cars as you take turns at 160 MPH, no game that I have played to date has made this feel so realistic.  Although the word realistic doesn’t show up much in the review of a game like this, I am here to tell you that certain parts of NFSMW give you that feeling of being there – and I love it.