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 Need
for Speed: Undercover (Playstation 3)
EA's Need for Speed series is back
on the chase with NFS: Underground for the PS3. It returns to the familiar
formula of high-speed police chases through an expansive urban environment
as players try and evade capture from the local cops. The new 'heroic
driving' system allows you to pull off cool moves such as drifting and
spins easily. Underground's open-ended urban locations include some
impressively rendered locations, extreme lighting effects like glare and
reflections plus realistic car models. An impressive online mode adds cops
and robbers modes, and is also loads of fun. Look inside and discover why
Need for Speed: Underground marks a pleasing return to form for this
long-running franchise. |
Players who wondered why Need For Speed
seemed to go completely off the track with last year's somewhat
disappointing ProStreet should be happy to know that the chase is back on,
while the realistic, but dull track racing and decal-heavy is gone.
Instead, EA seems to have gone back to their roots, and Undercover more
closely resembles NFS: Most Wanted & Carbon. It's open-ended city
environment is huge and expansive, giving players plenty of room to
explore. The police are back on your trail this time, as you play an
undercover detective looking to infiltrate a street racing gang. While you
are technically on the right side of the law, you have to drive
convincingly enough to earn the trust of the street gangs. You can do this
initially by winning races against them, with circuit, track and sprint
courses available to play. As you defeat your opponents and win races,
you'll earn points that are added to your driving abilities, such as
increased engine and braking. It's an interesting system that allows you
to level up through winning, automatically improving your performance. You
start off with a fairly low-key, basic vehicle but can win more by
collecting pink slips. These sports cars perform impressively, but you
need to be careful and not get yourself busted, or else they'll disappear
from your garage just as quickly. While the initial stages limit your
vehicles, many more can be unlocked as you progress through the game.
There are more than 50 available in all, most of which are high-end sports
cars from manufacturers such as Porsche, Mercedes-Benz and Nissan. Each of
the in-game vehicles looks spectacular, with photo-realistic modeling that
is especially visible at close-range. The game's physics model isn't quite
as authentic, but it's still fun to drive these screaming monsters around.
NFS: Undercover's gameplay is solidly
entertaining and the basics should be instantly familiar for NFS veterans,
especially those who played Carbon or Most Wanted. Its still an action
packed racer, though with more emphasis on flashy moves and mechanics with
fewer nods to realism than in previous titles. This is largely due to the
new game's 'heroic driving' engine which lets you perform special moves
such as drifting, burnouts and massive spinouts effortlessly and
performing these moves adds to your driver's abilities. Driving is quite
intense especially as you race through the game's massive levels, weaving
in and out of traffic, make sharp turns and perform massive jumps to evade
your pursuers. This makes for some fairly exciting and dramatic racing
action . The controls are fairly simple with surprisingly responsive
handling. Underground makes it much easier to perform these stunts and it
makes the driving almost instantly accessible. While your initial
impressions of the game might be underwhelming, you have to wait until you
get the higher-octane vehicles in order to fully experience just how
intense the gameplay can get. The later missions are more complicated, as
you move from simply racing to avoiding capture in a stolen vehicle to
collecting and learning the secrets of your opponents to get yourself into
even more elaborate missions.
 Unfortunately,
your cool driving skills won't go un-noticed by the police, who will
quickly spot you out and begin chasing you immediately. You have to evade
them, but it isn't that simple, since they now have helicopters to help
them locate your vehicle and will set up road-blocks to impeded your
progress. The cops are much more aggressive than in previous games and the
longer a chase goes on, and the more damage you inflict, the harder
they'll chase you. The police will follow you for quite a distance if you
don't know the shortcuts, but you have several techniques to make your
escape. You can use your nitro-boost add-ons to create a burst of speed,
or use the slowdown to help you weave through traffic. In addition, there
are a several 'chase-breakers' on each course. Driving through one of
these causes a huge event, such as a collapsing scaffold, that will stop
or impede an officer's attempts to arrest you. These add to Undercover's
cinematic feel and make for some pretty dramatic chase sequences that will
send your heart pounding in a real hurry and give you a real sense of
imminent danger.
Most of the action takes place in the
city streets and roads and players have a remarkable amount of freedom in
where they can go. Players can choose to race through the streets and
explore the game's many different locations, or can go right into the menu
system and play through the story. Using the in-game GPS, players can
select which race or mission they want to complete and are instantly taken
to that location, which is a nice change of pace from some of the previous
games where you had to drive to each race. Once you get to your location,
you'll find that there's a good variety of missions ranging from standard
races against other street vehicles which can take the form of highway
battle, sprint, circuit, outrun and checkpoint races variations. These are
all fairly self-explanatory, with the out-run and battle race modes
offering some particularly steep challenges. In addition there are more
mission-oriented modes. One of the biggest additions this time around, and
probably the coolest, is Cost-to-State mode where you have to rack up a
certain level of damage and avoid capture before the timer runs out.
Driving and performing one of these tasks is hard enough, trying to both
simultaneously ratchets up the difficulty and intensity to a great degree
and makes for some fairly intense sequences that offer some challenging
gameplay. These new modes and additions keep the gameplay from becoming
stale while adding to the game's outlaw feel.
One of the most impressive things about
NFS: Undercover is the way it melds real actors and video with
pre-rendered sequences. Featuring the famous actress Maggie O. as your
contact and a variety of other actors playing supporting roles, this
approach is highly effective in bringing the missions and game world to
life. It helps to make the characters feel more real, flesh and blood but
doesn't detract from the on-street gameplay. Frequent voice-overs and
listening to intercepted chatter on the cops' radios is more than candy,
it can give you an idea of what they're thinking during chases while also
letting the street gangs think you're on their side. Once you get on the
street, you'll find a very impressive-looking and open ended city to
explore. The interconnected highways and streets make for a very coherent
and realistic experience with the fictional metropolis serving as a
fantastic place to race. There are loads of hidden sections, short-cuts
and jumps to find and the scenery is great as well. NFS Undercover's
visuals also feature some impressive effects such as sun-glare, realistic
reflections and screen-blurring that give the action a cinematic feel.
Unfortunately, there are moments where the game's graphics engine
undermines the stylish presentation significantly. On the Playstation 3,
there are numerous points where the action pauses and seems to choke. It's
not a big deal, but it does tend to become annoying after awhile. Another
problem occurred when other vehicles, specifically police cars came in to
ram us, causing distracting glitches where their cars would disappear and
re-emerge suddenly. Camera angles could also shift uncontrollably as well
at points, causing crashes unnecessarily. These unpolished elements take
the experience down a notch in the visuals, and mar what is an otherwise
solid game.
 While
the graphics engine probably could have used a tune-up, the overall
impression of NFS: Undercover doesn't really suffer when you take a look
at the larger picture. Some of its elements will be familiar to gamers,
and what it really does is take the series back to many of the things,
such as the intense yet entertaining car-chases, that have been lost in
some of the recent installments. NFS: Undercover delivers an intense
driving experience and has a decent gameplay mechanic, and its streamlined
arcade approach makes for an engaging and accessible game. It's not a deep
sim, and it obviously doesn't try to be, but Undercover is still, despite
some visual glitches here and there, a solid installment that brings the
series back on the right track. - Michael Palisano
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