Difficulty:

Hard

Time Spent:

10 to 20 Hours

The Bottom Line:

"Disappointing"

As a fan of NFS I was looking forward to this title and initial impressions were positive. It has a nice arcade feel to it without being over the top. A good selection of cars, tracks and race modes and the only thing lacking is perhaps an element of customisation. Yes the cars can be customised but for each vehicle there is a list of upgrades that using said vehicle slowly works you through. So for car A you might get better tires, then a better engine then nitrous but for car B is could be nitrous then tires then engine. Use the car enough and eventually you get everything and that's it.

In world tour mode - the main game "career" mode there are 8 levels each with a variety of events to compete in. Within a level you can unlock the "final" event by accumulating enough points for placing in the other events. However winning the final event does not automatically unlock the next level and herein lies the main problem of the game. To unlock the next level you must place in the top 3 in each and every event in the current level. This leads to what I consider to be the biggest issue with some racing games and that is a "single point of failure" - namely if you get stuck on an event you cannot progress. Yes you can play "quick play" and practice the tricky event or similar and yes doing this still upgrades your car. Also you are subject to challenges from the RoadKings consisting of 2 events and winning them both defeats the RoadKing and gives you their car. However there is still the single point of failure. In a lot of games this needn't be a problem as eventually most races can be beaten, however likes it's console cousin the PSP version has insanely difficult drift events and unlike the PS3 version you have to place in the top 3. Ultimately this deafeted me as I dislike drift events at the best of times and even after 15+ attempts (on the 4th level) I was only getting to half the required points to place 3rd.

This was ultimately a major disappointent to me without which I would have scored the game as a 9/10.