Need for Speed: Underground

The Good
First of all, I like the ability to really customize your car. There are so many combinations you can have for your car's looks that it would be very difficult to ever find someone with a car just like yours. You have the ability to not only customize various performance parts on your car (engine/exhaust, turbo, nitrous, tires, etc), but also how your car looks visually.

After choosing your car, you can change the hood, the front and rear bumpers, the spoiler, the roof scoop, and the ground effects along the doors. You can also change the head lights and tail lights, the muffler, and rims. After all that, you get to paint your car from a wide choice of colors, tint the glass, add neon ground effects, and add vinyls and logos. The vinyls can be four layers deep... and there are many different styles of vinyls, such as flames, lightning, "wild", logos such as HP Racing, and Unique vinyls such as a purple rose, a racing skeleton, and more. Within those styles, there can be up to around 20-30 different kinds of vinyls. Overall, there are way over 100 different vinyls to choose from to make your car unique.

After customizing your car, you get to race. This is where you get even more choices. Rather than a single kind of race that you see in many racing games, you have many choices. You get to choose from circuit (multiple lap races), drag racing (shift at the right times to win), sprint (start to finish; no laps), drifting (slide your car around the track to get points... don't hit the walls), and knockout (be the last standing). You are also able to take part in tournaments in the campaign mode as you work your way up. In this campaign mode, you are able to get your car pictured on the covers of tons of magazines. So get your car looking great and then get on those magazines!

Besides single player modes, which include the campaign (underground) and the quick race, you can also race online with your friends. However, you'll need to unlock the cars and tracks in the single player mode first or you'll be limited on what you can do.

The game tracks also your stats, which lets you keep track of how well you do in the different types of races you enter.

One other thing I really enjoyed with the game was the graphics. The reflections were well done and the cars just look great. The only bad thing is that you appear to always be racing on roads that were just rained on.

The Bad
The game is completely arcade-style racing. There is no damage to your car in the game. The closest thing to damage is if you're in drag racing -- if you crash, your car is said to be totaled. Other than that, you can flip, roll, crash, and still have a perfect-looking car. Although this can be fun, I enjoy having damage affect the car's performance... and seeing pieces flying off your broken car would be great.

Also, the cars tend to handle more like you would expect in arcade... at least whenever you hit anything. For one, you really can't land on your roof (at least I've not been able to...), also you tend to bounce off things when you hit them. You might end up flying through the air, but it's still unrealistic. Besides those, you will be very hard-pressed to spin out an opponent. You can slam into the back corner of their cars and it won't spin them out. You are left to run them into objects that will stop them.

Another bad part is that the opponents appear to cheat. You can slam the opponents into stuff causing them to stop until they get going again, and run a close to perfect race, yet very often the car(s) you crash into stuff are right on your bumper, or ahead of you, when you finish the race. Yet if they are ahead of you, their cars are not any faster than yours.

Finally, you are racing in the streets... where are the cops? I have never heard of people racing 120mph and higher down city streets, jumping drawbridges, jumping over cars on hills, and more without a cop noticing. There should have been cops in the game, in my opinion... even if they were optional.

The Bottom Line
This game is a great addition to the Need For Speed series of games. The Need For Speed series really has not been that great since the first Hot Pursuit. That was a great game, and then the rest of the series that came out were good, but nothing really special. This game lives up to the series name.

Although the game is arcade-style racing, with no cops, everything else about the games is great. If you enjoy racing games, and especially if you enjoyed the 2Fast 2Furious movies, this is a must-have game.

The Good
Graphics:

The creators did a very smart thing when they made the graphics for NFS. They made the cars look realistic but they didn't make them look dull, the cars still look flashy and one of the best things in the game is adding on parts to make your car look better.

Sound:

The cars sound great, when you get the turbo you can actually hear it as you change gear and the music is actually worth listening to with a little R&B and some other heavy stuff so it will appeal to all different kinds of people.

Gameplay:

I have never really been a fan of racing games but I played this game at a friends house and we were just playing drag for ages. After that I had to buy it for myself and I realized that story mode was as good as multi-player (even if it does get a little repetitive in the later levels.) There are many different types of competitions so that you do not get bored of doing the same thing over and over again. The best types of competitions in my opinion are drag, where you race against three other cars down a long strip of road trying to dodge traffic and get perfect gear shifts to leave your opponents eating your dust. And the other type of competition is drift, where you drive (or skid) around a track that had just been covered in water and try to do the most drifts within the time or lap limit.

The Bad
Graphics:

The only thing I have to complain about the graphics is that light shines off everything. The road looks like it has just been polished every time you have a race.

Sound:

There is nothing much wrong with the sound in NFS except for the fact that the sound track is not extensive enough so you will most probably end up getting sick of all the songs after hearing them hundreds of times while you are racing the repetitive races.

Gameplay:

In total there are 112 races in the underground mode of need for speed. That might all sound good but the problem is there is only about 30 circuits so you end up racing tracks more than twice and it gets a bit annoying doing the same race to many times.

The Bottom Line
I said before that I have never been a very big fan of racing game but NFS drew me in and didn't let me go until I had done up about every car there is to do. So no matter what types of games you usually play just remember this is not an average racing game.

The Good
I've lost the counting in the Need 4 Speed series!! Here NFS goes deeply urban and illegal street races cultured. If you've watched the Fast and Furious series of movies you'll know what I'm talking about. It's all about having your average everyday car tuned and turned into a sports car with all sorts of expensive goodies, having all kinds of silly stickers and paintwork full of stripes and flames and tribal shapes and colourful stuff that basically makes you want to puke (sorry, it's just a personal opinion - I just prefer my RX-7 in plain glossy black or red! - no Sparco or KYB stickers on my paintwork!!!). Basically NFS-Underground is all about being the king of the city racers, driving to the edge of your abilities and being respected. A nice fairy tale for modern kids.

That aside, here we're talking about a racing-arcade type of game that packs a lot of special effects potential, offers a great deal of exciting (and somehow affordable) cars for you to enjoy.

You can either have a free run or play in campaign mode where you can race in these modes: free run, circuit, sprint, drift (which is the most fun and requires some skill too), drag and elimination.

The graphics are superb, if a tad too colorful and cartoony for my tastes. The sound is exceptional too as well. But the best part of the graphics department is the modeling of the actual cars. Now considering all the modifications and extra body styling parts we're talking about a massive modeling project here.

One thing that I've loved in this game is doing drift type races in a RX-7. We're talking about huge fun here, although highly unrealistic. Combine it with a steering wheel controller and you have some hours of rubber burning fun here.

The Bad
The fact that hits you like a 10 ton block in your face is that this game is highly unrealistic! Even for an arcade type racing the game is disregarding some basic facts.

First of all, it's about illegal street races and there's not a hint of a police authority in the game. It's like living in a city where the police is a concept unknown and the poor civilian drivers are in the mercy of the racers expertise not to hit them! Maybe street racing is legal in the part of the world that NFS-U takes part, who knows... It lacks the feeling that you're doing something dangerous and forbidden - therefore enjoying hehe! - though.

The physics have gone down the drain as well. You can fly and wizz around, hit other objects and bump like your car is made from rubber, which actually seems to be the case, cause you don't get any damage at all. What you'd expect the real effects to be if you crashed a 2 by 2m concrete column support at 120mph? Instant death... Well not in this game. Not a single scratch! You'll just put reverse and continue your course.

While boasting the high customisation factor, the plot doesn't let you choose freely, or according to your financial abilities, to customise your car as you wish. You have to go through an awful lot of racing before the game allows you to gain access to more choices for your visual and mechanical modifications. And as mechanics are involved, I really do not see any difference in choosing a certain brand of a turbo kit than from other that are on offer. To cut it short, most of the brands that are on offer in the game are for advertisement purposes only, without having a crucial point to your car's performance. So as far as the customisation is concerned you'll have to invest to a lot of time and nerves in order to gain access to some good extreme stuff.

Also the tracks look all the same, way too repetitive and single themed. The tarmac looks wet as if the rain has just ceased, something that has a very negative effect in a racer's psychology: wet surface - less vital grip, of course you can fix that by going in the settings and set the road reflection setting to a very low value.

Finally, a fact I do not like is all that stupendous plastic wings and trims and stickers that are beginning to appear in real cars on the street. I see quite a lot of cars everyday that look as if they came out of NFS U... I mean what's the point of having your car looking so stupid like that??!!!

The Bottom Line
Hmmm... Well ok, it's not a classic Need for Speed representative, it's a straight forward arcade that tries to capture the Fast and Furious kind of thing, while advertising a lot of brands to boost your car.

Basically we have a Hollywood driving game here, with all the marketing (y'know - buy our brand of brakes and buy that brand of tires) that accompanies it, only it's a whole lot worse than that... And if you're one of those -like me- who have long awaited the arrival of this game to say: WOW, expect to be highly disappointed.

If you loved The Fast and The Furious culture though, chances are that you'll like this one aswell, although bear in mind that it lacks the personality and character the F'n'F had.

Another guy wrote that The Need For Speed series is going downhill after the Porsche Unleashed title... I couldn't agree more! NFS Underground is a total miss, suitable only to matchbox drivers and nutters who have their car looking so stupid as in that game, while having a top speed of 100mph LOL

The Good
Lots of customization for your car, which is really the high point of the game. You do races, earn reputation points based on your stunts and uh, how phat your car looks.

Nice visual effects.

Great soundtrack, if you're a fan of that kind of stuff (I am not).

The cinematics were nicely done.

The Bad
Need For Speed was a great series. It steadily climbed from its meager start in Need For Speed, and look a giant leap with Hot Pursuit. It raised the bar even more with High Stakes, but it was around Porsche Unleashed that it began its decline. Since then, it's been tumbling downhill at an ever increasing speed, and Underground is just another hole for the franchise to fall into.

The game itself is fun enough, but that's only due to its simplicity. Pick a car, race, customize your car, race, pretty lights, race, MTV, pretty lights, drag race, blah blah blah. There are no cops, no damage, simple, unrealistic physics...the game plays like a prettier, but dumbed down Project Gotham Racing.

Also, someone explain why I spent a thousand bucks on computer upgrades only to have a whopping twelve frames per second on highest detail? Come on, even the X-Box can pull that crap off.

The Bottom Line
The series ended with Porsche Unleashed. If you cared for Hot Pursuit 2 (which I actually liked, due to the Hot Pursuit mode which kicks ass no matter what, really) and want to try it with a "phat MTV 2 Fast 2 Furious nigga ho mary jane underground" feel to it, you can't really go wrong with this game.

The Good
Underground is graphically competent featuring some nice little trickery like reflective surfaces (that don’t reflect anything other than a pre-defined light map) and decent car models. The city itself you find yourself driving through is a garish, neon jungle with enough lights and flashy things to keep the un-evolved mind occupied.

Driving actually feels alright when you first begin, cars handle responsively and the inclusion of Nitrous Oxide for a quick speed boost in a pinch is a nice touch.

Underground features several different game play modes to keep you interested including but not limited to drag racers, sprints and drifting competitions. There are over 100 events to compete in meaning there is a lot of content for you to wrap your gums around.

The Bad
Alright, I’ve been diplomatic enough. The beauty of Need for Speed: Underground lies in how mundane it all is. It’s a game about illegal street racing, coming from squeaky clean, appeal to everyone EA. This should disqualify it immediately from any sort of credibility it could possibly have garnered on the “street.” What you get in this, laughably G rated experience is a super diluted Disney version of illegal street racing. In reality illegal street racing is a violent, intimidating affair. The people who do this are the kind of people who will stab you on the street because you accidentally looked in their general direction. Illegal street racing is just that, illegal, and the people who engage in it are criminals. They are the kind of people with no regard for the law, no regard for other people’s safety and with their sights set primarily on fulfilling their unbreakable addiction to adrenaline. So if you’re coming to Underground expecting a game with a sophisticated, crime thriller storyline and mature dialogue you’re going to be vastly disappointed.

Need for Speed Underground is let down entirely by its laughable presentation, that and a close to broken engine, which I will get to later. You are herded from flimsy character to flimsy character, each giving you a heaping bowl of ‘tude. They all sound like they are poorly written characters from an after school special from the early 90’s, their poorly acted “attitudes” are nothing more than a vague threat that amounts to about 5 seconds worth of useless dialogue.
The final straw however is the fact that all of the EA Trax music in the game are radio edits, with all the bad words edited out. This game is so devoid of attitude and any sense of danger and excitement that it could proudly sit alongside Super Mario Kart as one of the most inoffensive racing games ever produced.

Each race is an almost identical tribulation against 3 other mid sized family sedans with neon stripe and tear decals splashed across the sides. The physics engine is laughable, with your car flying ten feet into the air if it even barely clips traffic and coming to a complete, frustrating halt if it hit’s a pole or cement block. So, even with a crappy physics engine as long as the car handles alright this shouldn’t be an issue right? Wrong. Your car fishtails so easily that it isn’t even close to funny. It doesn’t matter what you are using if you over steer by even the slightest of margins you’ll begin to fishtail and power slide uncontrollably. This isn’t so much of an infuriation when you’re racing however in Drift mode it makes you want to snap your controller in half as you’ll constantly have to hit restart as your car hits boundaries and the several thousand points you’ve just accumulated disappear. Drag mode is totally pointless. The races are often over in around 30 seconds, which although might be the nature of drag racing, is totally redundant in a video game. On top of being short and pointless it is also laughably easy, requiring maybe one or two runs to know the lay out of the strip and then the difficult task of pressing the shift button at the right time begins…for 30 seconds. It is virtually impossible to lose these races. They shouldn’t be here. The AI in the regular races uses rubber banding to catch up to you, no matter how you are doing. How does this archaic method of conveying artificial intelligence still exist? This is a relic and should be banished to hell. In any case, you’ll be driving along, totally smoking the competition when the car you passed five seconds ago suddenly rockets up beside you for absolutely no reason. It’s cheating, plain and simple. It makes you feel like no matter how well you’re doing, no matter how good you get at the game it doesn’t matter because the game will just cheat and make you look like you suck.

Graphically this is a weak game. At first the gaudy neon lights and slick roads will put a smile on your face, however if you stop to smell the roses now and then you’ll see bland, blurry textures on the buildings and horrible, jutting geometric shapes that are supposed to pass as fountains and arches. There is no real time reflection and a cardinal sin in the form of aliasing on the cars. Then the repetitiveness of the environments will begin to get to you. No matter how much you block roads off to make alternative routes you’re still going hell for leather down the same road you were going down at the beginning of the game and it becomes tiresome.

Sound? The music is a bizarre mixture of generic tracks aimed to placate everyone. There is some gangster rap, disco metal, rock music and electronica. The selection of music is terrible, limited and full of radio edits to avoid anything even mildly offensive infiltrating this already bland, inoffensive Frankenstein of a game. As I’ve already mentioned the voice over work is terrible. The dialogue is full of weak, forced attempts at conveying attitude while trying to skirt around rightly offending anyone. It’s like Marv from Home Alone is talking to you through your TV every time someone opens their mouths.

The Bottom Line
Need For Speed: Underground isn’t a particularly terrible game. It is fun to some degree for a little while however it is just impossible to take it seriously. EA has tried to give us an insight into underground street racing however by diluting it, censoring it and neutering it they simply demonstrated that they know next to nothing about their source material. They think underground street racing stops at applying decals to your car and using Nitrous Oxide. This game had the potential to be gritty, sophisticated and mature however in an attempt to appeal to as many people as possible EA churned out another limp wristed game that not only disgraces the name of the franchise, but the entire scene it is trying to represent.

The Good
Almost everything.

The game's graphics are very nice, and the cars look "hot". A tuned up car looks absolutely impressive. The environment (the city) looks okay, and I liked the idea of night driving.

The user interface is simple, and easy to use. I liked the event selection, and career advancement system, which is simple, and "user-friendly". To advance in your career you must win some races. After you win those races, you will be "transported" to a new tier. Where, again you must win other races. This may sound boring at first, but it is one of the most fun career advancement ways i've ever seen.

The game's soundtrack is, as usual, PERFECT. Most of the ST's singles are to my liking.

The actor's voice-acting is OK. Maybe a little bit too much ghetto talk... but still OK.

The Nitrous Oxide car addon helps alot, but there are no graphical effects for it... .

The Bad
The storyline is kind of boring... nothing special about it.

The Motion Blur display option isn't that cool. If you like driving while drunk, then you should use this :)

The car control is a little to simple, but I suppose it's ok that way. Underground was never supposed to be a perfect sim.

The opponent's AI is mediocre. They usually crash near most difficult turns, and they can be easily taken out from the road.

The Bottom Line
Almost a masterpiece.

The Good
There was almost NOTHING good about this game. Forget it.

The Bad
The graphics looked like super-shiny, unrealistic, crap. I can't even continue on the graphics. And who really wants to tune the car your Grandma drives? So, you buy a terrible Dodge Neon, put some stickers on it, and add some NOS that doesn't work. Yey! We get to put that ugly car in a race that makes one want to commit suicide. These races get extremely repetitive, and, thanks to the fact that there are only about 10 tracks that are early identical, it gets boring after, what, the twentieth race. And, on top of all that, the physics model feels so unrealistic that all the cars feel the same, and, because of the poor sense of speed, they all feel like they are going 30 mph, even when it says you're going 150. The customization is a waste of time, and the game requires you to do it. The storyline is bogus. Just a bunch of jackasses talking smack in an alley.

The Bottom Line
Overall, this game would be a waste of your time, ad if you bought it, I feel sorry for you.