Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Posted January 14, 2006
Building on the successful NFS:Underground series, EA Canada injects an old school shot of Hot Pursuit into the mix and produces a fresh, evolutionary title into the Need for Speed library. This game takes the most delicious aspects from the two types of games and intertwines them in a delightful romp throughout the Los Angeles inspired city of Rockport. The polished presentation begins with several stylistic FMV sequences introducing your character into the adrenaline pumping world of illegal street racing. These FMV sequences continue throughout the game to progress the fast paced story and give you a chance to ogle Josie Maran, the gorgeous young lady who plays the female lead. 
The production value of the FMV sequences cannot be understated. Similar to the artistic nuance seen in Frank Miller's Sin City, the mixture of real actors and a motion filled, painted background is undeniably unique to the world of video games. While the actors and actresses definitely aren't of the highest caliber, they certainly produce convincing performances and create a lifelike, engrossing storyline for a genre that typically skips such extras. This important narrative greatly enhances the many gameplay aspects that come into play throughout the entire game.
The story details an entrance into the street racing world and proceeds into a betrayal from a shady, dishonest street racer by the name of Razor, played by Derek Hamilton most recently on episodes of The Dead Zone and Smallville. After beating the rap, you are back at the bottom forced to climb your way through the Blacklist of fifteen notorious street racers. If that wasn't enough for your plate, you get to deal with a unscrupulous cop who is dead set on nailing you and ultimately ending the practice of illegal street racing in Rockport. Fortunately, you have the help of Mia Townsend (Josie Moran), a mysterious young woman who despises Razor and seems to be hellbent on pushing you to the top of the blacklist. She will offer assistance throughout the game in the way of voicemail and text messages, along with a few other characters that start to notice you later in the game.
Gameplay:
Most Wanted brings several types of street racing to the table, many of which were seen in Need for Speed Underground 1 and 2. The various types of street racing include sprint, drag, circuit, knockout, speedtrap, and tollbooth. While the first three were seen in the Underground series, the last three introduce new challenges designed to test your driving skills. Knockout is similar to a circuit race with the addition of eliminating the racer in last place at each lap. Speedtrap is a tense race between 3 other competitors that measures your speed at various points along the track and imposes speed total penalties if you finish behind first place. Tollbooth is a checkpoint based race that increases the amount of time on the countdown clock as you speed along to each tollbooth on the track.
Besides completing these various races to increase your street rep, the second kind of challenge that you need to complete is called Milestones. These milestones are usually awarded during police chases and range from disabling a certain amount of cop cars, giving the law the slip in a certain amount of time, avoiding roadblocks and spike strips, or just getting your picture taken at a high rate of speed with a mounted speed-monitoring camera. When competing for these milestone achievements, you are also increasing the amount of bounty on your blacklist rep. A prerequisite amount of bounty is required to race the next blacklist member on the list and progress through each of the 15 levels. The amount of bounty in the later levels seems outlandish and impossible to attain, but it makes for some remarkably fervent police chases when trying to lose insane, suicidal police officers ramming your sweet ride from all directions.
It's important to note that a police chase can start at any time in the game. Regardless of what race, milestone or just free-roaming that you happen to be doing, a chase can break out especially if your car has a high wanted level. While you are allowed to finish any race, it's vastly more difficult to complete successfully and the chase continues after you finish. Luckily, there are a couple ways to evade the onslaught of police officers. The first is a slow motion, bullet time style of decision making called Speedbreakers. By hitting the specified controller button at a danger filled point in the race, you are given a short window to correct the direction of your car to avoid a mistake of massive proportions. At first, it's hard to remember the option is even available. But after many accidental crashes, you will be using Speedbreaker as if it's was standard in every racing game. The second option is a lawman disabling technique called Pursuitbreakers. These red triangle icons light up on the map during a chase and create a massively destructible environment as you pass through them. The purpose is to disable the following red-light masses with a exploding gas main, falling concrete structure, descending water reservoir, etc. It's a creative addition to the game, but the police have to be directly behind you at the time for it to work which can be problematic.
If you do manage to evade the fuzz, there are a few ways to escape as the chase goes into cooldown mode. The first is to find a little used alleyway, tunnel, or field and wait for the excitement to die down. The second is to find one of the blue flashing circles on the map and park in it while your cooldown meter raises much faster. While important to the gameplay, these two types of actions are just temporary fixes. EA brought over the car modding features from the Underground series for the permanent fix. Reducing the wanted reputation of your favorite car is easy as changing the color or changing the body style with the visual upgrades that come available during the game. This will lower the amount of heat the car attracts and increase the time spent racing without interruption.
In addition to unlocking visual upgrades mentioned above, you will also unlock the performance enhancers. These will take a stock car from piss poor performance to high speed hot rod in a matter of minutes. As a bit of an extra, the performance upgrades aren't needed if you are lucky enough to snatch up one of the blacklist member's pink slip to their ride. After beating a blacklist member, you have the option of choosing two out of six cards. Three of the cards are guaranteed types of car upgrades while the other three are a mystery. Included in the unknown cards is the pink slip to the blacklist member's car among other bonuses such as cash, impound strike reducers, or get out of jail markers.
Beating the blacklist racers is a matter of outsmarting the AI of the competition. The intelligence of the blacklist racers and the normal racers along the way progressively increases exponentially until the ultimate final battle of speed. The same position can be stated for the AI of the police officers. At a low wanted level, it's quite easy to dodge and escape from the local cops. Similar to the five star wanted system found in the Grand Theft Auto series, the AI of the angry patrolmen gets wildly tougher to shake. Overall, the AI averages out to be challenging enough to return for more pulse pounding car chases.
While the AI is fun to beat, it's even more fun taking the NOS filled fun onto Xbox Live. Any modded vehicle can be taken online if you want to strut your skills against the best. The Xbox 360 version allows for two to four total racers for several of the racing modes and you have a choice of playing in ranked or unranked games. The ranked games figure into a massive online leaderboard appropriately dubbed the blacklist. I was disappointed that EA failed to include any pursuit modes at all. Why not include the feature that gives the single player game so much character?
Graphics:
Visually, Need for Speed Most Wanted is astoundingly beautiful. I am speaking about the high definition version which gives Project Gotham Racing some serious competition. In many respects, the game impresses the eye due to the urban art direction. The city landscapes are finely detailed and include a vast assortment of buildings, road types, and landmarks. The destructible items such as trees, lamp posts, parking meters, etc. shatter into many pieces at a blistering rate. The weather effects are also well produced with blinding sun glare and slick, drenched roads. The blurring effects are overused a bit, but the allusion of massive speed is quite evident. I did notice an average amount of stuttering while racing and flashing buildings in the distance. While negligible, it really shouldn't be occurring to any degree in a first generation game due to lack of hardware power. It's probably due to bad coding or inexperience at EA Canada.
Audio:
The shining acoustic accomplishments come in the way of the sound effects and the voice recordings. The first includes accurate engine noises depending on the make and model of the car along with the performance improvements installed on the automobile. In addition, crunching metal between cars, screeching police sirens, and wind tunnel effects are a few of the auditory delights found in the game. The voice work is also top notch for the most part. The voicemails left for you by fellow racers range from excellent to awful. The best lines come from the police scanner mounted inside your car. These quips can be quite helpful in determining if you should change directions to avoid the tactics implemented in your honor on the road ahead. Anyway, the realistic nature of the chatter is perhaps the most accurate in the game. The music in the game isn't particularly memorable. It's mostly the same cliché rap music that was found in the Need for Speed Underground series. Crank up your own tunes with the 360 and lose the soundtrack.
Conclusion:
The game is rather lengthy for an storyline based racer, but it is certainly quite a ride. The single player game will take approximately 15 to 20 hours to complete and the multiplayer can extend the life out while the number of quality racing titles for the Xbox 360 is currently low. The Gamerscore Achievements are broken up between the 15 blacklist racers for a total of 1000 points. It's important to note over 80% of those points are awarded for the last five racers. In terms of fun to be had, this arcade racer certainly tops the simulation style of Project Gotham Racing. While certainly not as drawn-out or deep as PGR, it's a highly addictive racer that shouldn't be missed by any Xbox 360 owner. I recommend this title for purchase at a price point of around $40 or use an online rental service if you are only interested in the single player game.
The production value of the FMV sequences cannot be understated. Similar to the artistic nuance seen in Frank Miller's Sin City, the mixture of real actors and a motion filled, painted background is undeniably unique to the world of video games. While the actors and actresses definitely aren't of the highest caliber, they certainly produce convincing performances and create a lifelike, engrossing storyline for a genre that typically skips such extras. This important narrative greatly enhances the many gameplay aspects that come into play throughout the entire game.
The story details an entrance into the street racing world and proceeds into a betrayal from a shady, dishonest street racer by the name of Razor, played by Derek Hamilton most recently on episodes of The Dead Zone and Smallville. After beating the rap, you are back at the bottom forced to climb your way through the Blacklist of fifteen notorious street racers. If that wasn't enough for your plate, you get to deal with a unscrupulous cop who is dead set on nailing you and ultimately ending the practice of illegal street racing in Rockport. Fortunately, you have the help of Mia Townsend (Josie Moran), a mysterious young woman who despises Razor and seems to be hellbent on pushing you to the top of the blacklist. She will offer assistance throughout the game in the way of voicemail and text messages, along with a few other characters that start to notice you later in the game.
Gameplay:
Most Wanted brings several types of street racing to the table, many of which were seen in Need for Speed Underground 1 and 2. The various types of street racing include sprint, drag, circuit, knockout, speedtrap, and tollbooth. While the first three were seen in the Underground series, the last three introduce new challenges designed to test your driving skills. Knockout is similar to a circuit race with the addition of eliminating the racer in last place at each lap. Speedtrap is a tense race between 3 other competitors that measures your speed at various points along the track and imposes speed total penalties if you finish behind first place. Tollbooth is a checkpoint based race that increases the amount of time on the countdown clock as you speed along to each tollbooth on the track.
Besides completing these various races to increase your street rep, the second kind of challenge that you need to complete is called Milestones. These milestones are usually awarded during police chases and range from disabling a certain amount of cop cars, giving the law the slip in a certain amount of time, avoiding roadblocks and spike strips, or just getting your picture taken at a high rate of speed with a mounted speed-monitoring camera. When competing for these milestone achievements, you are also increasing the amount of bounty on your blacklist rep. A prerequisite amount of bounty is required to race the next blacklist member on the list and progress through each of the 15 levels. The amount of bounty in the later levels seems outlandish and impossible to attain, but it makes for some remarkably fervent police chases when trying to lose insane, suicidal police officers ramming your sweet ride from all directions.
It's important to note that a police chase can start at any time in the game. Regardless of what race, milestone or just free-roaming that you happen to be doing, a chase can break out especially if your car has a high wanted level. While you are allowed to finish any race, it's vastly more difficult to complete successfully and the chase continues after you finish. Luckily, there are a couple ways to evade the onslaught of police officers. The first is a slow motion, bullet time style of decision making called Speedbreakers. By hitting the specified controller button at a danger filled point in the race, you are given a short window to correct the direction of your car to avoid a mistake of massive proportions. At first, it's hard to remember the option is even available. But after many accidental crashes, you will be using Speedbreaker as if it's was standard in every racing game. The second option is a lawman disabling technique called Pursuitbreakers. These red triangle icons light up on the map during a chase and create a massively destructible environment as you pass through them. The purpose is to disable the following red-light masses with a exploding gas main, falling concrete structure, descending water reservoir, etc. It's a creative addition to the game, but the police have to be directly behind you at the time for it to work which can be problematic.
If you do manage to evade the fuzz, there are a few ways to escape as the chase goes into cooldown mode. The first is to find a little used alleyway, tunnel, or field and wait for the excitement to die down. The second is to find one of the blue flashing circles on the map and park in it while your cooldown meter raises much faster. While important to the gameplay, these two types of actions are just temporary fixes. EA brought over the car modding features from the Underground series for the permanent fix. Reducing the wanted reputation of your favorite car is easy as changing the color or changing the body style with the visual upgrades that come available during the game. This will lower the amount of heat the car attracts and increase the time spent racing without interruption.
In addition to unlocking visual upgrades mentioned above, you will also unlock the performance enhancers. These will take a stock car from piss poor performance to high speed hot rod in a matter of minutes. As a bit of an extra, the performance upgrades aren't needed if you are lucky enough to snatch up one of the blacklist member's pink slip to their ride. After beating a blacklist member, you have the option of choosing two out of six cards. Three of the cards are guaranteed types of car upgrades while the other three are a mystery. Included in the unknown cards is the pink slip to the blacklist member's car among other bonuses such as cash, impound strike reducers, or get out of jail markers.
Beating the blacklist racers is a matter of outsmarting the AI of the competition. The intelligence of the blacklist racers and the normal racers along the way progressively increases exponentially until the ultimate final battle of speed. The same position can be stated for the AI of the police officers. At a low wanted level, it's quite easy to dodge and escape from the local cops. Similar to the five star wanted system found in the Grand Theft Auto series, the AI of the angry patrolmen gets wildly tougher to shake. Overall, the AI averages out to be challenging enough to return for more pulse pounding car chases.
While the AI is fun to beat, it's even more fun taking the NOS filled fun onto Xbox Live. Any modded vehicle can be taken online if you want to strut your skills against the best. The Xbox 360 version allows for two to four total racers for several of the racing modes and you have a choice of playing in ranked or unranked games. The ranked games figure into a massive online leaderboard appropriately dubbed the blacklist. I was disappointed that EA failed to include any pursuit modes at all. Why not include the feature that gives the single player game so much character?
Graphics:
Visually, Need for Speed Most Wanted is astoundingly beautiful. I am speaking about the high definition version which gives Project Gotham Racing some serious competition. In many respects, the game impresses the eye due to the urban art direction. The city landscapes are finely detailed and include a vast assortment of buildings, road types, and landmarks. The destructible items such as trees, lamp posts, parking meters, etc. shatter into many pieces at a blistering rate. The weather effects are also well produced with blinding sun glare and slick, drenched roads. The blurring effects are overused a bit, but the allusion of massive speed is quite evident. I did notice an average amount of stuttering while racing and flashing buildings in the distance. While negligible, it really shouldn't be occurring to any degree in a first generation game due to lack of hardware power. It's probably due to bad coding or inexperience at EA Canada.
Audio:
The shining acoustic accomplishments come in the way of the sound effects and the voice recordings. The first includes accurate engine noises depending on the make and model of the car along with the performance improvements installed on the automobile. In addition, crunching metal between cars, screeching police sirens, and wind tunnel effects are a few of the auditory delights found in the game. The voice work is also top notch for the most part. The voicemails left for you by fellow racers range from excellent to awful. The best lines come from the police scanner mounted inside your car. These quips can be quite helpful in determining if you should change directions to avoid the tactics implemented in your honor on the road ahead. Anyway, the realistic nature of the chatter is perhaps the most accurate in the game. The music in the game isn't particularly memorable. It's mostly the same cliché rap music that was found in the Need for Speed Underground series. Crank up your own tunes with the 360 and lose the soundtrack.
Conclusion:
The game is rather lengthy for an storyline based racer, but it is certainly quite a ride. The single player game will take approximately 15 to 20 hours to complete and the multiplayer can extend the life out while the number of quality racing titles for the Xbox 360 is currently low. The Gamerscore Achievements are broken up between the 15 blacklist racers for a total of 1000 points. It's important to note over 80% of those points are awarded for the last five racers. In terms of fun to be had, this arcade racer certainly tops the simulation style of Project Gotham Racing. While certainly not as drawn-out or deep as PGR, it's a highly addictive racer that shouldn't be missed by any Xbox 360 owner. I recommend this title for purchase at a price point of around $40 or use an online rental service if you are only interested in the single player game.