-- Gameplay --
For the uninitiated, the principle of this game is to enter underground and illegal street races to win money. Use the money to buy performance and visual upgrades to your car. The visual upgrades make no difference whatsoever to your car (regardless of what some of the people on the forums think) but it is the visuals that make the game *fun*. Sticking some 20" rims to pimp your ride is excellent fun, I found myself spending ages choosing the right custom bits for my car.
The difference between this game and the previous NFSU game is that this time round, the races have to be driven to rather than selected from a static menu. This adds extra immersion but sometimes can be a bit of a pain having to drive to the other side of the city to take a race.
One addition that the EA bods have not managed to do yet is the fuzz. The Bayview city where you race must not have a night shift on their force as there is no sign or mention of the cops. It would be fun to be racing and also having police cars in the fray too (a bit like Vice City races then). Perhaps it was a conscious design decision.
The racing itself is very cool. The opponents can be fairly tricky on hard mode and you get a sense of achievement for completing races.
-- Multiplayer --
I am not sure if this has been patched but I really struggled with the multiplayer.
The game browser only shows one game type at a time and only those games that are ready to start, you have to select each type of game in turn to see what races are available. Also for 7 out of 10 race attempts I got connection errors. When I finally did get into a race, the opponent cars would jump around and flicker making the experience not very rewarding. Plus I was annoyed that I won a few races and the stat tracker said I had not even raced any at all. The game does support LAN play which might by better.
-- Graphics --
With the full details switched on everything is beautiful. The cars look amazing and all include environmental reflections making them look even more appealing in the neon glow of the late night city. All of the cars are true to form and actually look pretty cool when modded up - it is nice to be able to do this virtually as I would never do this in real life!
-- Sound --
The sound effects are amazing, the engine notes are different for each car and the car mods make a difference. For example, adding the turbo to the Ford Focus causes a slight whistling sound to appear. The sounds are also environmental; go under a bridge and the engine sound changes to echo off the walls like when you go through a tunnel for real. This might be an EAX feature only though. Additionally to the engine sounds we get tyre squeal and the music.
Let me say something about the music: The sequel soundtrack is nowhere near as good as the first game's by a long way. The excellent Snoop Dogg cover of Riders on the Storm is 10/10 but most of the other tracks are fairly forgettable. Remember cruising through the streets in the original game with Rob Zombie's Two Lane Black Top on in the background? None of the tracks in this game seem to inspire the same memories. NFSU2's soundtrack is not bad, it is just not as great as the original's.
-- System --
I played it on a Radeon 9700 Pro at 1024x768 resolution with an Athlon 2400+ processor max detail. The games mostly played at a decent framerate, though Street X races caused minor slowdowns for some reason. Not enough to make you want to reduce the settings.
-- Overall --
Great game, let down slightly by the multiplayer but not enough to warrant losing a star.
Note: If you get the problem with it getting stuck on the loading screen, it is being caused by the NoCD patch. You need to either keep the CD in the drive or use daemontools/Alcohol 120 instead.
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