An intense arcade racer that's worth playing for the police chases alone.
you've got your assortment of traffic, rival cars, boost, and exaggerated
blur that kicks in at high speeds. Truthfully, the game appears to use the
same engine as Burnout 3 and Revenge and the way the cars handle is very similar once you get up to speed. Is this a bad thing? Not at all.
For one, this Need for Speed is a nice nod back to the older games, namely Hot Pursuit and its sequel that featured police chases. It's also a very solid arcade racer with plenty of car customization options and a dash of Grand Theft Auto freedom in the open city you can drive around as much as you want.
The game's main mode also has a plot, which others have stated elsewhere for no real gain - it's nothing special. The cutscenes, however, are over-the-top in a hilariously campy sort of way, whether it's the actors
enjoying their ridiculous lines or cars defying physics. The career mode
starts out with many of these, but they eventually peter out and all you're
left with is Josie Maran dropping progressively more obvious plot hints
through voice messages. Brought to you by Cingular and Burger King!
To advance, you win races, meet challenges (usually of the police chase
variety, but there are speed trap ones too) and accumulate bounty. Bounty is the numerical equivalent indicating how much the police want to pull you
over, rip you out of your car, and pound your head in with nightsticks. The
higher it gets the more into the chase they become and the more forces
appear to take you down.
The car variety is good, and there are plenty of customization options. Even
with the exaggerated physics (and how easy it is to squeal tires on launch)
it's easy to tell front wheel drive cars from all-wheel drive and rear-wheel
drive, or how much they weigh, or what have you. If you want to outfit your
car in garish colours with tacky body mods, neon rims, and hood scoops (why, God, why?), you're free to. Creating something more tasteful is possible too even with some of the more elaborate decals you can place. Limited performance modifications are available too, but most are locked and they are almost prohibitively expensive given how little you earn in career mode.
Challenge mode is similar to Career but you're assigned fixed cars for the
events. They all contain the same types of races, though - circuit, which is
a number of laps around a closed loop; the variation knockout, which removes the last place racer after each lap; sprint, which is an A to B race; speed trap, where your speed at marked intervals is recorded and the most
accumulated wins; and toll booth, which is essentially a time trial with
gates that grant you additional time. The others involve causing a certain
amount of damage or ramming police cars or roadblocks and then avoiding the pursuit. Those chases are one of the best parts of Most Wanted.
Occasionally you'll be spotted by police in a career race (not often). If
they're still on you by the end you'll have to avoid them before you can
jump back to your safehouse. Other times you can simply choose to start near a police station or other location with a cop in order to initiate a chase
yourself. These grant bonuses and bounty and are a rush. At first the cops
simply tail you, occasionally throwing comments out on the radio and calling for backup. Once in a while more show up, and you might even hit a roadblock consisting of barricades and parked police cars. So you do the obvious and ram it at full speed, knocking cars into the air. The chase escalates to level two, then three. Unmarked cars show up. Then Cameros. Big SUVs attempting to ram you head-on. Larger road-blocks. A helicopter. Spike strips. Corvette cops who try to pin you in and grind you to a halt. If you can manage to avoid them, either through sheer driving skill or hitting a collapsable building or structure (dubbed chase-breakers) to block the cops, a cooldown time pops up. As you become more wanted, the cops take longer to call off the hunt for you, which necessitates running for certain hiding locations that are marked on the map. All tucked away from prying eyes, they will accelerate the timer and (hopefully) end the chase before a roaming police car spots you. These moments are as satisfying as the rush of driving 150mph with police converging all over.
Part of what makes the chases so fun is the score, which swells up in
particularly hectic chase moments and lends the whole experience a movie
chase feeling. When not being chased the soundtrack mostly consists of rap - ignoring taste (or lack thereof) it's suitable enough for the game, and the game smartly knocks the volume down a notch when you jam the gas. So when idling, the music is louder, but when you squeal the tires and floor it around a corner, the engine note takes over. And with good reason - the cars in the game sound incredible. Realistic? Who knows. But they're all throaty, with satisfying turbo whines where appropriate and slightly changed exhaust notes after upgrading. All manner of squeals and crunches and honks and sirens are just as clean and - most importantly - loud.
The graphics are nice too, if not as integral to the experience as the audio
and control itself. Car models are superior to the surroundings and feature
plenty of polygons to avoid those low-res textured parts that many racing
games have (rims, door handles, grilles, etc). The roadside buildings and
trees aren't as nice, but you're travelling so fast most of the time you'll
barely notice, particularly when the motion blur kicks in. One neat
additional subtle bonus is a slight colour shift to the entire view when you
move up a heat level during a chase.
Really, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is worth playing for the police chases
alone. It does feature Burnout-style rubber-band AI that can be occasionally
frustrating, but solid driving will almost always keep you ahead of the pack
and the final stretch seems to be in your favour most of the time. In other
words, expect to see many photo finishes with your car just sneaking ahead. The other annoyance is the police's total incompetence early on, as some of the challenges can be difficult to accomplish - many times you'll find yourself losing the police without intending to and have the cooldown timer end the chase before you can tag enough cars or roadblocks. At higher levels this problem goes away. Beyond that...the game is a heck of a lot of fun to play. Everyone rags on EA but beyond a small list of minor complaints there isn't really anything wrong with this game. If you love cars and don't mind racing games of the arcade variety you'll have a blast with Most Wanted.