What the hell happened to NFS?
With NFS PS, you can forget about all that since they have decided to take it into legal racing. Of course there still is a \"villain\" (he didn\'t need to be such a crying **** and customization of the cars. But let me go deeper into the latter. It doesn\'t look as good as it used to and now placing a racing stripe vinyl from the front of the car to the back is a pain in the ass. Besides, if you add more than 1 layer of vinyls, the handling (rotation, scaling, motion, etc) of such vinyl will produce humongous load times.
But hey, the graphics part must have evolved for sure, right? WRONG! The cars look the same they used to, and the surrounding environment during the races looks really simple. The only thing they\'ve included here is the damage produced to the car and the fact that you can total your car. Anyway, once you have installed a bodykit to your car, the damage seems to go away. But that\'s not it as far as graphics are concerned, there is another serious flaw when it comes to textures which I still can\'t believe they didn\'t care enough to solve. Whenever you\'re at a warm-up session previous to a 1/4 or 1/2 mile drag, if you have a rear-wheel-drive car you can tell that in the inside of the opposing rear tyre where there should be a brake disk, there is a patch of the texture they use for the tyre\'s face. Only one word could describe it, crappy! However, it should be mentioned that they did include something new as far as graphics are concerned, and that is; more advertising than ever. Come on, how many times do I have to see the Energizer Lithium ad during the game.
Enough of graphics anyway... what about sound? The music sounds iterative since it isn\'t as varied it used to be, and, during the events there comes a time when you feel like kicking the crap out of the host so that he will shut up. Another thing is that in some cutscenes the audio is not perfectly synchronized to the animation, and the intonation the speakers have sounds contrived. Besides, they do repeat cutscenes (today\'s keyword is: CHEAPER!).
So, my verdict is 2.5 and both thumbs down. If you want to experience a NFS game, this is not it... try NFS Most Wanted, Carbon, Underground 2... whichever you prefer. If you want to race GT style, this is not your game either. Just get Gran Turismo 4... NFS doesn\'t stand a chance. Now, if you\'re into bondage, S&M and flushing your money down the toilet; then this IS your game.