Need speed most wanted review
#NEED SPEED MOST WANTED REVIEW UPGRADE#
Instead of falling lustfully in love with a new BMW that you’ll upgrade and tamper with for the duration of a lengthy career, Most Wanted wants you switching out between vehicles quickly to keep things varied. Once you source a ride, each vehicle has five unique events associated with it. Criterion’s directorial control of the action and presentation is often stylish, but random hiccups like being spawned the wrong way round after a collision do break the illusion of seamless racing. Takedowns no longer interrupt the action, and instead just give you a satisfying on-screen message that doesn’t rip you out of a pursuit. The flow of racing is more streamlined, too. But the satisfaction when you emerge from a packed tunnel unscathed, often zooming away from a pile-up worthy of Michael Bay’s most erotic desires, is without comparison.Īs well as their volatility, each car feels suitably weighty, but with its own individual nuances – a vintage Lamborghini controls nothing like a tuned Nissan. Most importantly, racing the 40-odd cars is where Most Wanted cements itself into the genre’s upper echelons, with Criterion’s innate style mixes with an engaging substance: the camera bumps and slams around as you crash back to earth after a jump, slinging a Ford GT into a drift drums up a cacophony of sound, and the game’s breakneck pace makes navigating through the bustling traffic a challenge harder than diamond nails. This isn’t Forza or Gran Turismo by any means, but there’s enough to keep even the most studious petrolhead happy. From classic open-top Ford Shelbys to sleek Aston Martins, the roster is just large enough that you’re getting a decent chunk of desirable automotive excellence.
Every car in the game – apart from the ten you’ll net from tackling the boss-like Most Wanted challenges – is available from the start, but only after you’ve found the vehicle in the world. Without a typical garage, the emphasis is entirely on you to discover new vehicles. The unobtrusive menus of Easydrive helps keep the action prescient, unless you decide to fumble with settings midway around a particularly merciless corner.īut Most Wanted is not always that simple, and its core structure may confuse thanks to Criterion’s scrapping of standard car classes and the genre’s usual event-based career progression. You can also switch and jump straight to cars, swap upgrades and head into multiplayer. Discovered events can be accessed immediately, whereas the game will plot a course if you’re yet to take part in it – the right balance between immediacy and discovery, if you ask me. Like Burnout Paradise, Easydrive is mapped to your D-pad to allow quick, easy navigation of standard menus. Exploring every area of this dense, spectacular world warms you with a satisfying way to spend time, from the discovery of luxurious cars dotted across every corner of the map to the constant stream of information about nearby races and your online rivals.Īs well as the return of Criterion’s social platform Autolog, Most Wanted’s jazzed up GPS – dubbed Easydrive – knits the game together with its player. This is absolutely essential for a game of this type: Criterion’s desire for thrilling freedom would be nothing if its host was a bore. More than just a network of roads for you to plaster with burning hot rubber, Fairhaven holds Most Wanted together with a tight embrace. Even better, it doesn’t require you to give a toss about Top Gear in order to love it.įairhaven, the diverse metropolis that acts as your racing playground, is a construction of weaves and webs starting from its bustling industrial core and spiralling outwards into wide-open mountain tunnels and stretches of highway.
The result is one of the smartest, most enjoyable racing games of 2012 – one that slams emphasis directly on the race itself. In fact, despite the class that Most Wanted’s stunning garage exudes, Criterion has made a clear distinction between the materialistic superfluousness of games like Forza Motorsport, where the focus is very much on your love for cars and the desire to curate a digital garage, and the thrill of the race itself.
There’s none of that “turning car lovers into gamers” stuff here. Like the cold metal girders and sun-glinted glass panels that make up Fairhaven’s skyscrapers, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is as mercilessly rock solid as it is stylish.