Need For Speed: Most Wanted

So to continue the driving theme I thought it best to review Need for Speed:Most Wanted (NFS:MW) next. The second game in the series that I’ve played (the first being Need for Speed Underground on the XBox) and to be honest I was quite surprised when I started to play. I was expecting more of the same in this incarnation as the last (in terms of the type of action that was available) however with NFS:MW there is one big addition to the game, the Police. As the title suggests, the police have taken an interest in the racing antics of the local drivers nad have decided to clamp down on them. The introduction to the game brings in this concept as you race against a couple of people with the police in hot pursuit. Of course eventually you get caught, and thrown behind bars, and the actual game then begins with a “a few years later” type scenario with you looking for revenge.

This is where the game really comes into its own. Starting off with a reasonable (but not too reasonable) car means that quite early on, you feel like a challenger. You can race against the rivals you have, and invariably you can beat them quite easily. The idea being that the top 15 racers in the area are ranked on the “Blacklist”. The driver who ultimately put you in jail is sat at number 1. If you want to get revenge on him you have to beat the 14 racers below him. To get to each of the racers you have to complete certain challenges, and these are split into different categories. Races give you what you’d expect with a couple of twists. There are the standard street races (multiple laps of a single course) and sprint races (a point-to-point race across the city) but then there are the “new” modes including Speed races (where you pass through a number of speed traps along the race and the person with the highest cumulative speed across the whole race wins). There are also milestone achievements, which tend to be one-off challenges such as “pass this speed trap at a certain speed or higher”-type affairs. The final category of challenge is bounty, and this is where the introduction of police comes into its own. You are tasked with a number of police-related challenges (e.g. evade the police in a chase for at least 3 minutes, cause at least $30,000 of damage on a chase).

To be able to challenge the next rival on the blacklist you need to complete (win) a set number of races, complete a set number of milestones, and rack up a set amount of bounty. Once all three of these has been achieved the Blacklist member will “respect” you and you can challenge them to a race. Beat them over a number of stages and you knock them off the blacklist. Once you’ve beaten them you also get the chance to pick 2 markers (from a possible list of 5 or 6). 3 of these are general ones and the rest are performance enhancements. The general ones will also include the fabled “pink slip”. This slip is basically the ownership rights for the car of the rival you have just beaten. Find the slip and the car is yours. This makes it quite good as there is still a luck element that you will get a free car, even after you have beaten the balcklist member. Obviously the higher up the lsit you get, the better the performance on the cars.

You can also enhance the performance on cars by buying performance upgrades with your hard-earned cash. Money in the game isn’t massively readily available, and so you have to choose your upgrades wisely so as not to run out of money at that vital point. You can always raise more cash by selling cars, however having a huge garage of vehicles to call upon is an advantage when it comes to your heat rating.

Heat within NFS:MW is basically how badly you are wanted by the police. This also reflects in teh kinds of patrols they send out to try and stop you in a chase. The standard police cruiser is all you get at level 1. Casue a large amount of damage and all of a sudden your heat level will be up to 2 and the County Cruiser will appear (basically a black sedan with police lights) and these guys are tougher to shake off, and so on up through the levels. The higher the level, the more sophisticated the tactics they will use (including rolling road-blocks as well as static ones, trying to ram you off the road, the use of stingers – strips of nails they place in the road to blow out your tyres – and so on). The way to get rid of heat is to change the performance of your car (they’d never pull you up in a blue Golf GTI if you are driving a sparkly yellow one that has just been painted!) or to leave your car in your safe-house and use another one for the time being. The more time your car is off the road, the more the heat will drop, hence the advantage of a big collection of cars.

So in a nutshell that is NFS:MW. It provides a different challenge to PGR3 in that it’s not all about how you drive (some of the police chases are helped tremendously if you can disable the police cars) but the tactics that you use, both on the road and off it (with the heat reduction system). I really enjoy picking this game up and having a few races. The second area of the town that you can explore has a fantastic boardwalk section which really shows off the speed of teh game, and its performance at this speed. The graphics are fantastic and the sound adds that level of realism (with my new setup of VGA monitor and speakers with subwoofer I actually jumped the first time the car was sat still and a clap of thunder sounded overhead to mark a new rainstorm). Graphically NFS is as good as PGR, but in different ways. The speed blur effect in NFS:MW counters the crispness of PGR3, but both work equally well in different environments. The sound in both is outstanding. The gameplay is where these 2 stand apart. If you want an arcade-sim type driving experience then go for PGR3 (or wait for Test Drive Unlimited). If you want a far more arcadey type driving experience then by all means go for NFS:MW. I think PGR3 probably edges the XBox Live implementation, but I haven’t delved too far into this on NFS:MW to be able to make a proper comparison.

So all in all it’s horses for courses. For me, I enjoy having both this and PGR3 in my collection at the moment as they are 2 different styles of game, and can provide my driving fix in different ways. I’d recommend them both to anyone with a 360 as I think they will please most driving game fans. It’s probably telling that I have sessions on both at the moment, although NFS:MW is now edging out PGR3 but more because I’ve done more of PGR3 and feel like a change of pace. And NFS:MW provides that in abundance.