Need for Speed Underground takes the series to uncharted territory - illegal street racing. Owing a lot to the huge success of The Fast and the Furious, street racing has become a well known subculture that has received its share of both fanatical support and bashing alike. NFSU captures this hobby in a definite stripped down, simplified, arcade environment and throws almost every bit of realism – and law of physics – out the window.
NFSU begins by allowing you to choose your ride out of a limited selection provided to you at the start. Once that decision is made, your job is to work your way up the "underground," a series of one hundred and eleven missions, and become the street racing champion. These missions are tied together by FMVs and text based messages that serve as the story elements, but as with most stories in these types of games, it's just a bunch of polish that isn't really any bit interesting and ultimately fails at serving as a catalyst to keeping you playing.
A nice factor about this game is its large amount of racing modes. Yes, plain old vanilla racing is here, but what's great is the inclusion of drag and drift. Drag racing is pulled off superbly, recreating almost every aspect of drag racing perfectly. Drift, on the other hand, is easy enough even for your sister to get the gold without breaking a sweat. Drifting is a subculture of a subculture, if such a thing exists, and is the method of performing in which a car loses its traction around a turn, yet the driver still retains control out of the turn. It's an extremely tough thing to in an actual car in real life, but it's entirely too easily done in this game because all that is required of you is to drive around the turns at high speeds; the game essentially drifts the car for you.
One major selling point of NFSU is its sheer amount of customization that can be done to your car. The game allows you to choose everything from the small manufacturer logos on the sides of the car to the color of the neon light mounted under your ride, and the more stuff you put on your car, the higher your reputation goes, which serves as the point modifier as you try to accumulate style points to unlock bigger and better things for your car.
Unfortunately, what's disappointing is the fact that Electronic Arts kind of went light on actual performance upgrades. Instead of allowing you to actually tweak your car, a la Gran Turismo 3, NFSU merely gives you performance packages in a few defined categories, each new upgrade being superior to the last. It fails at creating any sense of accomplishment when all you must do to make your car quicker is unlock a new engine upgrade and then purchase it with a few button presses.
I suppose it fits in better with the rest of the game this way as the racing itself really isn't very much realistic either. This new installment of the series does things entirely different than previous Need for Speeds and serves as the most arcadelike rendition yet. The cars feel much more forgiving than they were in the past titles, almost achieving this sort of F-Zero quality of driving to them. Whether that is a good thing or a bad thing is a matter of personal taste, but it must be pointed out.
What must also be brought up are a couple of glaring flaws that stuck out that I'll only mention briefly. First, there are no cops. This is a big letdown for me because, after all, haven't cops always been one of the cornerstones of street racing. It just baffles me how street racing can be street racing without cops. Every other NFS installment included cops, but when a title is suited for them more than any other, they go missing. I don't get it.
Second, the track, yes, singular, is just basically reused over and over and switched up a little. I know that illegal street racing is usually done nightly in a big city, but that doesn't mean that the game couldn't have gone out of bounds at least a bit. A few more locales would have been a very welcome addition. Frankly, it gets rather boring racing on the same track over and over again.
I must also mention that NFSU is is an extremely beautiful game. This is undoubtedly the most gorgeous racing game I've played yet. The PC version is the one I test drove, and on my Radeon 9700 Pro it's simply eye candy galore. The car models are simply gorgeous and have stunning reflections cast on them by every damn thing on the track.
In addition, the sense of speed in this game is amazing. EA brought in Hollywood special effects professionals to help them achieve the right feeling, and it definitely shows. The motion blur of NFSU has to be hands-down the coolest thing I've seen on my PC since watching the 3DMark 03 benchmarks, and that's no joke. Unlike many other titles, you'll know when you're going 200 mph, because not only will you see it on the speedometer, but you'll feel it too. If you need a game to impress your friends with, this is undoubtedly the one.
Overall, Need for Speed Underground is a game that can only be recommended if you are satisfied with a title that provides beautiful, thrilling, arcade racing with a lot of aesthetic customization and nothing more. NFSU does indeed supply hours of entertainment, but if I had to recommend either NFSU or Midnight Club II, I'd have to say Midnight Club II due to its more appealing open-ended style of gameplay and better track design. However, don't think NFSU isn't a title worthy of play, because it is – it just didn't quite live up to my expectations.
-Sam
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