Need For Speed Undercover
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Need for Speed: Undercover
Need for Speed Undercover is the latest racing game from Electronic Arts and EA Black Box. It has you, the driver, being told to go undercover and try to infiltrate a gang of car thieves with international criminal ties. Your handler is none other then the sexy Maggie Q of Live Free or Die Hard (she kicked Bruce Willis around until he dropped the SUV on her), and she is a great choice for eye candy in a video game. You will be racing across a city, chasing rival racers, avoiding and escaping from the police and attempting to raise your value to the underworld so they will start trusting you.
Using a wide variety of licensed cars you will travel across 80 miles or so of roads and enter in races constantly winning cars from such manufacturers as Audi, BMW and Lexus. With a great soundtrack which includes Nine Inch Nails and Recoil there is a lot to love with this new Need for Speed game. But it is not perfect and it will not please all racing fans in the end but if you enjoyed the previous NFS games this is one title worth checking out.
The gameplay of Need for Speed Undercover is the same gameplay we have seen in previous games with decent racing controls, some interesting physics with collisions and jumps. But this time as your vehicle is upgraded you will notice changes immediately to what ever was changed. Especially in handling and acceleration are the two main areas where the game had noticeable changes to the driver skills.
The various races you will compete in range from the simple, race from point A to point B, to staying in first place for a set time or set distance, to causing as much damage as possible with the police on your tail and many more. None of these are very hard and often if you fail it is more due to bad luck and driver error on your part then being beat by the other drivers. Even with the most basic vehicles you will easily drive circles around the other street racers and the police who are more reckless then everyone else in the game.
As you race, your standing in the city goes up and it will go up faster if you are more reckless, cause more of a show and keep winning. As you keep winning you will have a chance to race drivers for their cars and get closer to your goal of being trusted. As you win cars it is always a good idea to modify them to your driving style at one of the local body shops and after you do that you can always take a picture in photo mode and upload it to www.needforspeed.com (this is done automatically) where you can view your stats, achievements, get information and more. This online community is great and adds much to the overall game experience if you have friends who are driving game nuts.
With the multiplayer side of things you have a few different choices of what to do; you can play Cops and Robbers, Circuit or Sprint against other players. But what is disappointing this would be a great game for a fully open multiplayer environment like Burnout Paradise, and that should be the logical direction of where the Need for Speed franchise will go, but with a Need for Speed twist on the game. Plus it was hard to find a race and I am not sure if that was a bug causing matching issues.
One aspect to the game which infuriated me to no end is the fact that when you enter a shop and plan on buying new parts for your car you can use money you earned in the game or buy it with Microsoft Points and modify your car for honestly cheap prices but in the end actually hurts the game because players who want to cheat the entire game experience who have extra cash, can and will. I realize that this is not the first game to do this, we have seen this in other games such as Tiger Woods and The Godfather, I guess the gamer in me is just a little disappointed.
Overall the graphics of Need for Speed Undercover are very well done, especially the cars and how the light reflects off of them. In photo mode you can truly see how detailed and realistic each vehicle is and how it looks in action. It would have been nice to have a replay mode where you could save videos, edit them and upload those to the Need for Speed community site like you can with your photos but hopefully in a future NFS game.
The city that you drive around in is honestly very boring and bland in overall level design, looks and is barely populated by any one other then the police or drivers you will compete against. A more living city would have added more of an overall challenge to the game during the races and evading the police. Damage you inflict on other cars and to the odd piece of scenery is minimal and almost not worth mentioning. It almost seems that the damage to building is an after thought since it is only the most basic of graphic features.
I love full motion video and have loved it since the days of Wing Commander III on my PC, so I totally expected to love the FMV in Need for Speed Undercover, but other then Maggie Q as eye candy, the acting is completely over the top and not in a good way. Cheesy full motion video works well in almost all video games, such as Command and Conquer 3 Red Alert. You know the actors are not taking them selves seriously so they act their roles perfectly, but the actors in this games video are acting like they are expecting an award. They deserve an award but not the one they would get from me.
Need for Speed Undercover boasts strong soundtrack which includes
01. Airbourne - Girls in Black
02. Amon Tobin - Mighty Micro People
03. Asian Dub Foundation - Burning Fence
04. Bonobo - Scuba ( Amon Tobin Mix )
05. Circlesquare - Fight sounds part 1
06. Floor Thirteen - Blame it on me
07. From First To Last - I Once Was Lost, But Now Am Found
08. Hybrid Feat. Charlotte James - The Formula of Fear (Hybrid’s Echoplex Mix)
09. Innerpartysystem - This Empty Love
10. Justice - Genesis
11. Kinky - Mexican radio
12. Ladytron - Ghosts
13. Mindless Self Indulgence - Never Wanted to Dance (Electro Hurtz Mix)
14. Nine Inch Nails - The Mark Has Been Made
15. Nine Inch Nails - The Warning
16. Ojos de Brujo - Piedras Contra Tanques
17. Pendulum - 9,000 Miles
18. Pendulum - Granite
19. Pendulum - The Tempest
20. Puscifer - Indigo Children (JLE Dub Mix)
21. Puscifer - Momma Sed (Tandimonium Mix)
22. Qba Libre & M1 - God Damn
23. Recoil - Shunt
24. Recoil - Vertigen
25. Recoil - Want
26. Splitting Adam - On My Own
27. Supergrass - Bad Blood
28. The Fashion - Like Knives
29. The Pinker Tones - Electrotumbao
30. The Prodigy - First Warning
31. The Qemists- Stompbox (Spor Remix)
32. The Whip - Fire
33. Tricky - Coalition
34. Tyga - Diamond Life (Feat. Patty Crash)
A strong sound track with plenty of variety for everyone, but of course with the Xbox 360 you can just use your own music and that is always the best option for gamers. I would have preferred more songs on the actual in game sound track, especially after we see many more songs in other games. Hopefully in the next Need for Speed game we will have a robust soundtrack with plenty of choices for everyone’s musical taste.
The sound effects are great for all of the car sounds from squealing tires to the engine revving at high speeds but the sound effects for collisions are almost muted to the point they seem uninspired and not dangerous. If you do a head on collision at 120 miles an hour it should be loud, but in Need for Speed Undercover it sounds more like a hammer versus an empty soda can.
What little voice over work you hear in the game out side of the full motion videos is well done. It is mostly police dispatchers and the police themselves who radio for help, other calls and basically how you are driving circles around them. I was impressed by the variety of things they say and how accurate it was such as taking out a police cruiser, you will then hear them call for EMS. It is just too bad that the ambulance never shows up, that would have been a great touch.
Once you finish the game that is pretty much all she wrote for Needs for Speed Undercover. Multiplayer is fun but in the end the best aspect to the game is the single player side of things and it is still not the complete Need for Speed game we racing nuts want.
If you like action racing games this is a worth while rental at the very least. There is much to do in the game and even though it feels like the game is just missing some key factor to make it one of the best arcade racers around it is still enjoyable.
Pros
+ Maggie Q… is hot
+ Photo mode is good
+ Modification of your vehicles is very good and noticeable as your drive
+ Music and sound effects
+ Graphics are good
+ Police voice overs
Cons
- Controls are not very good for a racing title but they are good enough
- AI for the other cars you race against is unrealistic
- Full Motion Video is over the top and not in a good way
- World feels cramped and not very open
- Most races have no civilian cars on the road but this is supposed to be a major city
- Very easy game you will almost never lose
- Using real money to buy parts for your cars? LAME
Final Verdict
Here's a small guide to help you understand our evaluation of games.
PRESENTATION GRADE
Can be from the game's box to the contents of the booklet, and even the game introduction. (Intro, menus, options, etc)
GRAPHIC GRADE
Up to what point the graphics have been worked on my the developper. The design type, the effort used for textures and environments, as well as animations and framerate.
AUDIO GRADE
Is the soundtrack a good match to the game's style, he ambient sounds keeping with the gameplay and the sound effects clear and convincing?
GAMEPLAY GRADE
Placement of the controls and the inferface that the player with be using during the game.
REPLAY VALUE GRADE
The most important factor in the evaluation of a game. It identifies the lifespan of the game and the fun of coming back again and again.
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