Despite inexplicably enjoying last year’s rather awful NFS offering - Pro Street - I’ve always thought the Need For Speed belonged on the long and winding roads and highways of the world (preferably California or Texas) and felt at its best when you were being chased by a gaggle of persistent but dumb, Rosco P. Coltrane-standard Cops. Need For Speed: Undercover sees you off the racing circuits, back on the highways screaming along with your tailpipes on fire with the Cops back in tow, set in a plot-driven game with a massive open world. With the power of the Xbox 360 and the PS3 what could be better?
Well... pretty much any racer of the 10 months or so to be honest! Trust me, I suspect that I’ve put a lot more effort into writing this review than Black Box did into coding Undercover. The problems literally glare at you from the start.
As in Most Wanted the needless and at times, painfully cliché story is told via cut scenes featuring real-life actors. Christina Milian plays bad girl Carmen Mendez and Maggie Q plays FBI agent Chase Linh who informs you of your next objective. They both look lovely, but do little to enhance the action or keep you engaged in the game. From live action you’re plonked straight into the action with the cops chasing you, but what is briefly an impressive transition soon falls flat on its arse as you realize that Undercover’s visuals are extremely painful on the eyes, with anti-aliasing problems and an over-exposed, filtered look that reminds you of some artsy-fartsy movie rather than your favourite Cops ‘N Robbers car chase movie. The road surface looks extremely odd; this may be some rather poor attempt at simulating a heat haze or even a freshly rained-on or dewy damp surface, but it doesn’t work, and it looks more like it’s got a layer of ice on it. As soon as you turn sharply or there are several vehicles on screen the frame rate drops to a jerky, steppy mess. These “missing frames” of animation can actually make you lose control in a powerslide, and is therefore unforgiveable. The dodgy frame rate of last year’s Pro Street was bad enough, but this? It’s kind of inexplicable as Undercover’s environments are far from detailed, and is much worse than any stutters you’ll ever see in busy sandbox games like GTA IV or even any of its lesser imitators like Saints Row 2. The handling is fairly benign and the basic physics are okay, but the crashes are non-dramatic despite plenty of roadside destructible objects and set up piles of pipes, cranes or scaffold etc. with which to delay chasing race opponents or cops. Ignore the slick screenshots that accompany this review, Undercover looks like a cheap independent game when viewed alongside stablemate Burnout Paradise, and it would seem that it’s time for EA to talk nicely to Criterion and convince them that the two franchises should share game engines – good luck with that!
Thankfully the cars themselves look okay; nice and shiny and curvy, and the large roster includes some that even Jeremy Clarkson would be seen dead in, like the Lamborghini Gallardo, Pagani Zonda and the world’s fastest ugly thing, the Bugatti Veyron. But let’s cut to the chase for a moment; if the NFS franchise starts producing games in which the cars don’t look good then it’s surely time to put the old girl out of her misery.
Undercover Car list:
• Aston Martin DB9
• Acura Integra LS
• Acura RSX
• Audi RS5
• Audi S3
• Audi Le Mans Quattro/R8
• BMW M6
• Bugatti Veyron 16.4
• Cadillac CTS-V
• Chevrolet Camaro Concept
• Chevrolet Camaro SS
• Chevrolet Cobalt SS
• Chevrolet Chevelle SS
• Chevrolet Corvette C6
• Dodge Concept Viper GTS-R
• Dodge Viper SRT-10 Coupe
• Ferrari Enzo
• Ford Escort RS Cosworth
• Ford GT
• Ford Mustang GT
• Ford Shelby GT500
• Honda S2000
• Infiniti G35
• Jaguar XK
• Jaguar XJ-220
• Koenigsegg CCX
• Lamborghini Gallardo Superleggera
• Lamborghini Murcielago LP640
• Lexus IS350
• Lotus Elise
• Mazda RX-7
• Mazda RX-8
• Mazda Mazdaspeed 3
• Mitsubishi Eclipse GS-T
• Mitsubishi Lancer EVO 10
• Mercedes-Benz SLR Mclaren
• Nissan GT-R Proto
• Nissan 240 SX
• Nissan 350Z
• Nissan Skyline R34
• Nissan Silvia
• Opel Speedster
• Pagani Zonda F
• Plymouth Hemi Cuda
• Plymouth Road Runner
• Pontiac Firebird
• Pontiac GTO
• Pontiac Solstice GXP
• Porsche Cayman S
• Porsche 911 Turbo
• Porsche 911 GT2
• Porsche 911 GT3
• Porsche Carrera GT
• Seat Leon Cupra
• Subaru Impreza WRX STI
• Toyota Supra
• Volkswagen Golf GTI
The driving/racing itself is probably the most disappointing thing of all. Undercover is set in a massive, humongous open world, probably bigger than Burnout’s Paradise City or GTA4’s Liberty City – think: San Andreas and you’ll be nearer the mark. So bigger should make for a game with lots of exploring, varied racing and shortcuts/routes/things to discover right? Nope. You’d think you could pick your own route to the finish of a point to point race ala Paradise, but you can’t, you’re confined to one set path and hemmed in by barriers at the side of the road, with only the occasional, mostly inconsequential shortcut to allow you to stray from the set path. The game’s huge map is accessed via the D-pad, and races/missions can be chosen from it, and once an area’s races are unlocked you can also “warp” straight to a race’s starting point, or even remove this step by simply pressing down on the D-Pad to “Race Now” and select the nearest available race – this might suit the lazy bastards out there but seems a bizarre idea the more you think about it: taking the driving and exploration out of a racing game? You can’t even set a waypoint to guide you to a point of interest on the map, but at least it has a ‘retry’ option should you fail to win a race or complete a mission – a major omission from Burnout. It soon becomes apparent that Undercover is aimed at the extremely casual end of the market, this feeling is reinforced when you find that you can buy all the cars in the game with Microsoft points rather than actually go through all that “nasty” racing and earn in-game $ to buy them!
Unless you’re one of the hopeless casual and lazy gamers that the game seems to be aimed at, you’ll also find Undercover extremely easy to play. Actually no, that’s wrong. The frame rate makes my eyes hurt after 20 minutes or so, so it’s hard to play but the racing is predictable and the cops are easy to lose when they chase you, so it’s easy to win at. Even the tightest of gaps can usually be squeezed through thanks to the “Speed Breaker” slo-mo ability (‘Square' button), and the easily affordable tune up parts (including the ubiquitous nitrous boost - press 'Circle') make catching up and passing, or evading the cops easy. The difficulty does eventually spike at about level 13 when Police choppers and faster, more aggressive pursuit cars are added to the mix, but this could have been a false impression left on me by the overriding desire to go play something else instead. Trust me, when you get to the point where every single frickin' roadblock has tyre spike strips and even the cop's SUVs can do 200mph, you'll want to go play something else too. The racing is dull and linear, the police chases do at least provide a few thrills and allow for some freedom and unpredictability as you can go wherever you want to evade the chasing cops.
Undercover has a plethora of tune-up parts, a nice, easy-to-use paint job editor and a rather out-of-place RPG-style Wheelman rating level-up system, but all this upgrading seems cosmetic and pointless as I seemed to do fine for 80% of the game with the basic, un-tweaked Lotus Elise, which was the very first car I unlocked.
It’s highly unlikely you’ll buy NFS: Undercover for its online component but it has a new mode called Cops ‘n’ Robbers in which the lobby is split into two teams, the robbers tasked with picking up and delivering a package to a location in the city, whilst the other team of cops job being to stop them. It’s fun for a while but is nothing that GTA IV hasn’t already done much much better.
If you’ve been read all of the preceding words then you can probably tell that I found Need For Speed: Undercover to be a hugely disappointing title. It fails in so many departments and ticks one box as far as I can see. If you desperately need to drive a pixellated Bugatti Veyron then this is possibly your only option at the moment. This does nothing to advance or enhance the NFS franchise in any way, and visually is quite bad enough to put someone off NFS games for good. The early Need For Speed games were aimed at the simulation end of the arcade racer market, and some of the were undeniably “must have” games, now the series doesn’t seem to know what it wants to be and is becoming less and less significant, and is clearly in need of a similar kick in the pants to the one that FIFA got, or it risks gaming oblivion. With Burnout Paradise dominating the arcade racer genre to the point where this NFS offering is actually quite embarrassing, maybe it’s time for a genuine change of direction and to turn the franchise into a proper simulation racer, with in-car views like the Gotham’s or Gran Turismo’s. Alternatively maybe it should go the other way and head for a GTA-style sandbox game with more freedom and a character who can leave the car, explore and interact with other in-game characters, because sadly Undercover’s back story is a waste of time, and its huge environment is just a waste of space.
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