11-20-2008, 10:29 PM
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Need for Speed Undercover Review (Team xbox)
 
Quote:
EA’s Need for Speed series has been doing a little soul searching as of late.
Black Box’s long-running arcade racer completely blew up around the time of a little movie called The Fast and the Furious. Although this movie was neither fast nor furious—more like awful and more awful—Need for Speed: Underground was very much the embodiment of both adjectives.
The Need for Speed (NFS) brand existed well before the hot tuner games of the early 2000s. The original NFS title was more of a sim than the more current games and featured a wide variety of vehicles from many different tuning genres.
Many of the earlier Need for Speed branded games were mere marketing ploys (NFS rally? Really, guys?), but the more legit games made specifically for the series involved police chases as a main theme. Underground and Underground 2 saw a departure from the “five-o chasing 5.0’s” mentality ushered in by Hot Pursuit and the like, but after a two-game hiatus (Carbon and ProStreet were more tuner games than police-chase titles), Black Box is back in the business of breaking the law (breaking the law…duh! Duh! Duh!) with Need for Speed Undercover.
Need for Speed Undercover begins as any Japanese RPG does—with credits, like it’s going to fool you into thinking some kind of movie is about to begin. In this case, the game is much like a movie due to the full-screen video segments produced and directed solely for Need for Speed Undercover. The video segments are pretty good, too, and not just because the uber-hot Maggie Q stars in them; there’s a high degree of polish in each and every frame.
Just as in other recent NFS games, the video sequences help to pull the story through in a way that isn’t all that common in video gaming. The professional actors and Hollywood production values in the cutscenes are big pluses for Need for Speed Undercover, mainly due to the twisted nature of a plot, which has the user working as—you guessed it—an undercover agent. It’s an entertaining romp that has enough good points to consider the story as a worthwhile addition; even for those that just want to jump in and race.
Speaking of those who enjoy the NFS series strictly for the extreme racing, Undercover has a ton of such action. It all begins in a busted-up Nissan 240sx, which is supposed to be a cover car for a street thug (you, the undercover agent) looking to crack a huge vehicle-hoisting ring. More importantly, the Nissan acts as a starting point for the progression system that is the hallmark of the more recent NFS-branded titles.
The car modification system in Need for Speed Undercover is complete, although it’s a little less in-your-face than in some of the hardcore tuner games of the NFS stable. You can change paint schemes, work with a decent vinyls package and add aftermarket body kits, wheels and the like to crate a one-off gem. The Auto-Sculpt system—an analog-driven aero kit editor—is in place, too, and makes a nice addition to the stock kits that are available for purchase.
Both the Quick Upgrade and Upgrade Package tabs of former NFS games have made their way to Need for Speed Undercover. The packages are kept very simple, but that’s just fine in a game designed for arcade-style shenanigans. A nice addition is a Tuning tab, which enables simple tweaks to be made to a setup via sliders. For instance, it’s possible to loosen or tighten up the rear end, or go for top speed or top acceleration with a few simple controller presses. Like the performance modding, you won’t need to know anything about scrub radii to figure it out, but it is nice to have some level of setup tweaking in Need for Speed Undercover, even if it doesn’t have a major effect on the bottom line (more on the handling core shortly).
Once you hit the tarmac of the make-believe Tri-City region (a NoCal-inspired beltway comprised of three separate metropolises), bits and pieces of ProStreet begin to show up. Although many gamers detested ProStreet, the better bits of said hardcore tuner make Need for Speed Undercover a more interesting game upon which to gaze. Things such as gear-change suspension hops, burnout smoke and engine cacophonies (which are actually symphonic to a gearhead) are borrowed from Need for Speed Undercover’s predecessor and do their share to make its brand of street racing more believable. The game is realistic at full tilt, with both decent visuals and amazing sound effects adding to the ruse.
The new physics and handling engine, unfortunately, doesn’t really hold up its end of the bargain in making Need for Speed Undercover an all-out extreme racer. You all know that Need for Speed Undercover is not going to drive like a simulator, but there’s a level of technique that should be required for almost any racing game. In Need for Speed Undercover, you’ll need zero technique to go fast in the twisties, due to the immense grip that comes from any of the game’s fabulous rides. In fact, the cars stick far too well—to the point that e-brake slides can’t even be performed with any level of grace—which results in cars that can nearly do a 180 without any signs of oversteer drift, thus producing common smacks into static street-side barriers. This may be fine for those simply looking to obliterate the competition (it can equal super-quick lap times for those okay with defying gravity every step of the way), but to those who want to try and use racing lines or do some style drifting: All bets are off in Need for Speed Undercover…the car tuning sliders can only do so much here.
The interesting car physics also slightly mar the end result of Need for Speed Undercover’s vehicle lineup. It’s obvious that the 50 or so cars selected for Need for Speed Undercover were picked by people who love automobiles. European, Asian and U.S. makes are well represented; from tuner cars to must-have exotics to solid, rare muscle. Not only do these cars look great, but they’re also moddable and deformable. Yet, they all kind of feel the same out there. Yes, there is a marked difference in overall speed between the stock 240 and, say, the Viper SRT10, but the handling models are extremely similar. It’s tough to tell if you’re driving an AWD, FWD or RWD sled in Need for Speed Undercover— something that takes the fun out of carefully selecting cars for your garage. It’s safe to assume, therefore, that online players will simply grab the fastest car out there, knowing that the base handling model will keep them right-side-up in the turns.
Although probably not surprising to fans of the modern racer, Need for Speed Undercover runs in a persistent world; where races are available on demand. A simple press of the D-Pad will send users to the race that coincides with the stretch of pavement currently being pounded. A GPS map can also be accessed for launches directly into a race, without any driving in between. This is for those who want to seek out certain events for additional Wheelman Rep points (bonuses that allow vehicle and driver attributes to be enhanced) or to simply run one of the better match types in Need for Speed Undercover.
The Highway Battle is one of the better events, as it’s about super speed through traffic; all shot from the ground-cam view. The idea is to overtake a lead car and separate from it through driving in precarious traffic. It’s nearly worth Need for Speed Undercover’s asking price in itself, especially when the truly fast cars begin to turn normal congestion into one continuous blur.
Evading the police is really the highlight of Need for Speed Undercover, but it happens automatically when Mr. Incognito causes collateral damage and is spotted by the authorities. The cop AI is extremely aggressive, which equals lengthy chase scenarios all over Tri-City—even early on. Fancy blockading techniques, tire puncture strips and helicopter aid are to be expected, but it’s the overall tenacity of the AI programming that is most noticeable—and pleasantly frustrating to a gamer trying to assume the role as undercover bad ***.
The wheel-to-wheel racing against non police vehicles is a bit more ho-hum in the Circuit and Sprint events (especially early on), so it pays to mod a car and bring it to the online scene. The Live racing that was experienced ran at great frame rates throughout, and was packed with very exciting and very competitive wheel-to-wheel action. But it’s worth mentioning, however, that a highly modded car with any level of driver will simply blow out a field of near stockers, thus making matches only as fair as the cars within them. For total parity, the Cops N’ Robbers mode is the way to fly, as it enables two teams of spec vehicles to either evade or blockade as a sack of loot is peddled around the map. The police vehicles can sometimes take on this feeling of running in fast forward, but all in all, the Cops N’ Robbers mode is a commendable alternative to the normal multiplayer race.
No matter where the NFS franchise takes gamers, one thing has held steady throughout the journey: These racers are only as good as their core engines. While Need for Speed Undercover delivers in the areas of cinematic production, audio, visuals and through its sweet vehicle roster, it falls a bit short in the realm of top-tier, arcade-quality handling models.
Need for Speed Undercover is still worth a serious look due to its overall thoroughness, but those looking for sheer circuit mastery by something other than raw horsepower numbers should probably give Need for Speed Undercover a rental first before deciding if to steer clear of its sneaky ways.
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