Need for Speed: Underground

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