NFS undercover - A review

INTRODUCTION

The sun is shining, helicopters are flying over glittering water and you hear a thrilling soundtrack. Credits are fading in and out as the helicopters are flying towards a city – it's like a movie. They arrive at the shoreline and follow a red car driving down the highway, trying to evade the cops. Smoothly the camera flies behind the car, a flash and you're in the game.
Electronic Arts tried to give Need for Speed Undercover more “Hollywood-Style”, by adding a story and filmed sequences. So far this worked quite well. Once you crashed through a police road block, the real game starts and you're being introduced as an Undercover Cop.

GAMEPLAY

Need for Speed Undercover is a real action-packed title. It's very similar to Most Wanted and maybe without the story being an Undercover-Cop the game could easily be called Most Wanted 2. The driving performance is much more arcade than last year's ProStreet and it's easy to steer the car and keep it in track. Together with the "Heroic Driving Engine" this is quite some fun, because often you need this kind of control to evade the cops. Most times you may won't need the brakes, because you can either use the Speedbreaker, which slows down time for you, to go around the corners or obstacles, or you just lay off the gas a little bit. Depending on what car you're driving, you can also drift around the corners quite easily.
Although Undercover is more arcade-like you still have differences when driving different types of cars. Muscle Cars drift much more, while Tuners or Exotics handle differently. Each car has its unique style.

When you're going at high speed, you really get the feeling of driving fast, because the screen blurs slightly in the corners. It doesn't feel exaggerated, just realistic. Read more about that in the "Graphics chapter". Tri-City is free roam, so you drive around the city wherever you like. You can start races by going to the designated locations on the map, or you get a job or challenge by SMS, which you can start immediately. Alternatively you can always use the GPS map, which shows you the open and completed races and jobs.

THE CITY

The city in NFS Undercover is called "Tri-City". This is mostly because the city consists of three districts, which all have their different style. They are connected with highways. You don't have to unlock anything, you can drive wherever you want, but the events at the beginning will take place mostly in one district.
In this area the sun is shining and it's like after a short rain. In the shadows the streets are wet and your car is sputtering the water. You can drive beneath high skyscrapers, in garages, shortcuts, alleys...it's really a big city. For a racing game there is much to see, because the developers put much effort in the variety of tracks and different districts. It doesn't feel like it's a city designed and planned on blueprints, it has a realistic structure, nice textures and amazing skies.
Once you have enough of one district, you just hop on the highway and drive to different parts of the city. For example in one area the buildings are more industrial and you see cranes and stuff like that. In the next district it gets more hot – the sun is burning, the plants are all brown and sand is all over the streets. It has a very brown look, similar to Most Wanted – no wonder with all the sand. ;)

CAREER

As the name “Need for Speed Undercover” already points out: you are an Undercover-Agent. You have to get into the crime scene, get acknowledged to infiltrate the crime syndicate. This also means you have to participate in races, doing jobs and evade the cops as well.

This works quite well, since it's a simple story, but I would've liked to see more of the story. I could play the game for around 4-6 hours, so I can't say whether the story will become more intense. Some sequences of cops talking, some challenges from other rivals but I never really felt being “in” the story. More like driving from race to race, with hardly any motivation behind it. Apart from that, the sequences are quite nice. You can see that EA put a lot of effort in it and the style fits the game.
The career mode consists of around 200 events, but you don't have to finish all of them to complete the game. Finishing the career will take you ~12 hours, but for 100% you might need 25 hours.

GRAPHICS

EA did a really good job, regarding the graphics of NFS Undercover. The cars have an amazing amount of detail and together with the damage model this makes a very good impression. You can see the reflections and almost everylittle detail of the car. Of course, this concerns mostly the gamer's car, but also the Cops and Traffic-Cars are looking very good. It's fun crashing into cops and traffic, as you can see deforming and splattering the cars and pieces flying around.
The tracks are quite detailed as well, as far as it is possible. They are wet or dusty, you can see cracks in the street and you have many objects on the side of the road like city lights, benches etc. The trees and plants unfortunately still look quite unfinished, but you won't really notice once you go down a street with 200 km/h. ;)

The sense of speed in Undercover is really amazing, you can really feel the car going faster and faster. EA didn't exaggerate this time with the motion blur. It's just slightly visible on the corners of the screen, where it doesn't distract you, but gives you a great feeling of speed. This comes noticeable especially at the Highway Battle mode. Please note that I only played the Xbox360 and Playstation 3 Version of NFS Undercover, so unfortunately I can't say anything about the PC, PS2 or handheld versions.

GAME-MODES

The heart of every racing game: the Gamemodes! In Undercover you have the fairly regular modes like Circuit Races, Sprint and Checkpoint mode, but there are also some new modes as well.

For example the Highway Battle is a fun new mode, which is in my opinion the best new mode in Undercover. Highway Battle is always a 1on1 race. You race against your opponent and you have to be faster than him and make a distance of 1000ft in order to win. Or you have to be in the lead, when the time runs out at 1:15. This mode is quite similar to the "Outrun-Mode", only that you're driving on a highway at high speed in the middle of traffic! If you hit a bus, you're totaled. This is the mode, where you really can live your need for speed!

Another mode, which was already mentioned is the Outrun-Mode, which is pretty much the same, only that you are not on the highway, but you can drive around in the city wherever you like.

Additionally there is a new Takedown mode, where you have to chase your opponent and have to take him down. You see a progress meter above his car and you have to hit him as often as you can until the meter is down to zero and he's totaled.

Additionally with Undercover you have several missions, you have to complete in order to advance in the story. This is quite fun, as there are jobs like "steal this Audi TT and bring it to the docks without a scratch". You have to be fast and careful not to get noticed from the police and not getting any damage.

Since the world is full of cops, you also have some game modes, where you have to either evade the cops, within a certain amount of time, or you have to take them down or reach a certain "Cost to State" limit by crashing cops and objects.

A new multiplayer mode is the "Cops'n'Robbers" - you can read about it in the chapter about Multiplayer.

TUNING

As in previous Need for Speed Games you have quite some possibilities for visual tuning. You can upgrade your car with several new parts and "autosculpt" them to fit your needs. Whereas you don't have such a wide range available as in the Underground series, it's still entertaining to give the car your personal touch.
Additionally you can add vinyls as well, and paint your car the way you like it. The interface is more user friendly and has been improved to give you a faster selection. The limit of vinyls is still 20, which you can place on the car.
It's possible to choose colors from a color selection wheel, as well as adjust hue and saturation. You can paint your body parts individually.
The performance tuning has been scaled down a bit in this title, as you just have a few sliders available to tune your car: Engine, Drive train, Suspension, Tires and Nitro. You can upgrade your car with several upgrade packages, but there isn't much fine-tuning available, especially not as much as in ProStreet...but for casual gamers it may be enough.

MULTIPLAYER

Multiplayer is similar to the previous NFS titles. No free roam and no LAN for PC. However, EA didn't exclude the possibility that LAN can come as a patch like in ProStreet.

There are three online modes available in multiplayer: Circuit, Sprint and a new mode called “Cops and Robbers”. This is a mode where two teams race against each other, mostly like Capture the Flag. It's robbers against cops, whereas the robbers have to deliver a package, while the police team tries to stop them. It's a two-round match, where the roles are switched in the second round. The online lobby has been overhauled as well. In ranked games users just select the game mode and the system automatically finds the right race for you. In ranked games there is no host, so the system sets the parameters for you. On the other hand in unranked games you can set the parameters yourself.

CONCLUSION

Need for Speed Undercover is an action-packed racing game, wrapped up in a neat story, combining the best of ProStreet and Most Wanted. It's a fun racer, allowing you to drive the latest high-end licensed cars like the Nissan 370Z. You see a wide variety of game modes and tracks, plenty of licensed cars and cops everywhere. The damage model is just like the icing on the cake. Tuning enthusiasts may be a little bit disappointed, but nevertheless it's a great game and if you liked Most Wanted, you'll definitely have fun playing it!

source:www.nfsplanet.com