You’ve worked your way to the top, going from driving a worn out Fiat Punto, to a modded beast of a Porsche Carrera GT. Your speeding down a highway dodging between dense traffic at 230mph in a street race, your ahead of your rivals, with the cops at your tail, You fly through a nearby gas station causing an explosion that catches some of cops immobilising them, you hear there alarmed response on your police radio and smile. This is Need for speed most wanted.
 The Story: Being a racing game there’s never much of a storyline other than to be the fastest racer out there, and like the other NFS games its another battle through ranks of rivals so you can unlock better stuff and kit out your pimped ride. But most wanted makes a bit more of a stab at a storyline, you start the game in a beast of a car and your already about to face the biggest name in street racing, you battle through a few of his mates and soon your beside him on the road, of course when you race him your kicking his ass, but suddenly your car starts making dodgy noises and slows down, yes you’ve been blatantly sabotaged, but nonetheless the scumbag takes your ride anyway and leaves you for the cops. The only way you can get back at him is by battling your way up the ‘Blacklist’ of rivals, basically there the most wanted street racers by the cops, and to do this you have to buy a cheap ride, and slowly work your way back up as you improve your car, eventually re-challenging the most wanted guy.  Game play: I smashed the NFSMW disc into the console before remembering it was closed, upon rectifying this I re-smashed it in and whacked the power to the on position, other than that were should I start? There’s so much to say with the game having so much to offer… well I guess ease of control is the most important thing to me at least when it comes to a racer and yes Most wanted has great handling, although it took me a short time to get used to it, after a few minutes I had effortless control of even some of the harder to handle vehicles, just needing a little more braking with the lower handling cars when at higher speeds. The other controls are all pretty simple to use as well, when accessing the many different menus it is no more difficult than the press of a button, with the basic start button menu, as well as the objectives, the rival menu and the map buttons, at least I found this method of splitting the menu up made the action run faster. That’s another thing going for this game, the action never does actually stop, and it’s also another reason why it’s so damn hard to get of the thing. The game follows suit from Underground 2 with a free roam angle to it of course, so you want to go race someone? You look on the map, make the GPS guide you there, and then your of, flying between vehicles like a wheeled ghost, and hoping to god you don’t attract the attention of any cops on the way, you start the race, again flying around laps but only vaguely hoping you don’t meet cops during this, you finish first leading to a snapshot of your car and a few stats, you press A and your still driving as fast as when you crossed the line, this time in free roam. From there its up to you wither you want to go onto the next race or drive around a bit, unless your being chased by cops, in that case you’ll have to lose them before you can continue. The great thing about this system are the as few menu’s as possible, you can play for hours on end pretty much continually racing, continually driving, or continually mocking the cop’s lack of ability if you’re good enough.  One other major thing that has always lured us to the NFS series is of course the upgrading and pimping of the beautiful beautiful cars, and surprisingly enough this hasn’t been left out of the latest instalment. With all the old cars and a good many new ones to choose- from fast too bloody fast the choice is yours, also included are loads of new vinyl’s and car parts to make your cars look even more awesome. The sense of speed in this game is awesome as well, you actually feel like your going 100mph when it tells you you are, speed lines come of the back of your car, the image blurs slightly and the camera pans out from the back, this accompanied with the roar of the engine and the heavy music makes it really feel fast. Alike the last games the addition of loads of short cuts that are pretty much in every race can be found, these are a lot of fun to use and some of them tend to take a lot of skill to pull off right but are worth it, sometimes though you simply will have to use them as your opponents will be using them too.  The length of the game is also amazingly large alike the other Need for speed games, this is partly of course due to the fact that all the races are set in the same city, but the fact that you don’t get to go through it all at the start makes things a bit better, as you unlock new areas as you beat rivals, and its not as though the cities small, it’s an extremely large area with a whole range of scenery, from highways to small winding roads, you’ll see them all. Unfortunately I haven’t yet got chance to try multiplayer, yet it has got a good amount of options and modes to choose from to battle it out with your mates, and probably like the last games it allows you to bring your memory card round your friends and battle your car against there’s, there is nothing quite like beating your friend at a race just after smacking his car into a wall.  Sounds: The sound effects are great in this game, the roar of the engine is done perfectly, as well as the wind rushing past and the rush of air as you go under a bridge, even down to when you’re staying still and you can hear the distant sounds of engines as other street races go on in the city. Of course again like the previous games this game has an awesome selection of music, with music artists ranging from The Prodigy too Disturbed, all of the songs fit in perfectly with the game and the feel of speed and it adds to the authenticity of the game, you feel even more like you’re a street racer. Graphics: The graphics are pretty damn good in the game, the cars are beautiful and the scenery is constructed extremely well, allowing for some awesome tracks. The slowdown effects are impressive too as well as all the lighting. The cut scenes in this game are kickass and there are scenes of the fast racing cars along narrow streets with good camera angles and impressive effects, but also the scenes featuring people talking to you are done very well, using real actors with rendered backgrounds turns out to add to the awesome.  Overall: This is basically a very good game; it beats Need for Speed Underground 1 & 2 in my opinion with ease, and has so much more to offer than I can fit into this review, basically you should buy it. I mean I ended up stopping in the middle of writing this review at least four times to keep playing it. Also I have had it for over two days now, and pretty much playing it constantly have only managed to get to 30 percent ish, and to give you an idea of how fast I usually am I completed half life 2 in two days. Anyway 9/10 easy pushing on 10 seriously I like it that much. Buy, buy now!  |
