While Undercover does not move the franchise forward, it does provide cheap thrills and fun arcade style racing.
I've long been a fan of the Need for Speed series ever since I played the first one for PC. I closely followed the series through underground 2 and grew tired of the direction NFS took toward the street racing scene. Since then I still pick up all the NFS games but only when they have a major drop in price. Although they are nothing like the old classics, they still provide great entertainment for anyone who loves cars and racing... NFS Undercover keeps the franchise alive and provides around 10 hours of hectic racing but doesn't do anything that hasn't already been done before.
Story
The game starts off with a race gone bad and the player getting wrapped up in a serious import/export investigation as an... wait for it... undercover agent. From there the task is to infiltrate various racing clans by making a name for yourself on the streets. The way the story is presented is much less corny than previous games and even made me want to continue playing just to see what would happen.
Gameplay
The game is open world but doesn't feel very alive. Making this worse is the map menu which the player can access and instantly jump from race to race without ever driving in the open world. There is no need to drive around anyway, as there aren't any collectibles to find, areas to discover, or any reward what-so-ever to give the player an incentive to explore the world map. I simply jumped from race to race through the menu the entire game.
Something the game does do incredibly well are the racing events. There are plenty of types that are both fun and vastly different from each other which makes the game diverse and never tiresome. The various types are: Sprint, Circuit, Highway Battle, Time Trial, and Out Run. Sprint, Circuit, and TT are the typical stuff. Out run has the player try to get in front of another racer in the open world and stay in the lead for a certain amount of time. Highway Battle is the same concept but the track is the highway and the player must get 1000ft in front of the rival's car while dodging traffic at 150-200mph.
Another set of events are the Police events which consist of Escape, Damage, and Knockout modes. Escape has the player lose the cops in a certain amount of time, Damage makes the player destroy a certain amount of state property in a designated time, and Knockout sets a number of police cars the player must knockout before the time is up. These modes are a great aside from all the racing and are typically very easy.
Points are awarded for completing the events which improves the Wheelman score and advances the game forward. Every 5-10 races there is a career race which has the player taking out a rival car, racing for pink slips, stealing cars, or just losing the cops. All accompany a small cutscene and some reward the player with a brand new ride. This continues as the player unlocks new upgrades, cars, story missions, and areas. Each Wheelman level also unlocks new, slightly harder events.
The handling is typical NFS and is never too easy or too hard. Some cars are very loose while others are extremely tight, but each can be tuned in to make it suit anyone's driving style. My only complaint with the cars is that some cars are supremely better than others with no difference being show by the stat bars. My advice is to test drive the cars before you drop dough on them, or better yet just wait for a pink slip race. You must buy a tier 1 car though. For the record, I easily beat the game with the Corvette Z06.
Graphics/Sound:
The graphics are looking dated which is expected in the old engine they use. The textures are rather bland and uninspired but the tacked on graphical effects such as bloom, motion blur, and random glows pick up the slack and mask the imperfections. The cars look nice, especially when modded out with custom paint. A pet peeve of mine was seeing the same 5 traffic cars (SUV, pickup, compact, muscle car, and sedan) in the same 4-5 color schemes over and over and over again through out the entire game. Overall though the graphics do not take away from the game and are about average for this genre.
The sound is fine, nothing blew me away but I will say the voice acting wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. It wasn't movie quality, but it did show they took their time and shot decent footage for the cut scenes.
Value:
I picked up the game for 5 dollars on Steam, which is a steal in my opinion. It took me roughly 10 hours to plow through the campaign mode which translates to 50 cents per gaming hour. Not bad at all. I would say the game is still worth 10-20 dollars if you can pick it up for that.
Final Comments:
I was afraid this game would suffer from the insanely steep difficulty curve found in some previous NFS games which makes the end game almost impossible or very frustrating. However, Undercover seems to stay away from extremely aggressive rubber-banding or AI cheating. There is still some mild cheating going on, but nothing that is game breaking. Running a good, semi-clean race will net you a win without the nasty luck- factor being involved. Other than only a couple hard races, most were either easy or just right. Veteran racers will have no problem completing the game and newbies to the racing scene should be okay as well.
If you are a fan of the series definitely give this one a try. It was fun, predictable, and mindless but in the end it provided 10 hours of solid entertainment and can be gotten rather cheap now. Although it doesn't provide real open world racing, it does offer great, varied racing events and a lovable, corny story to keep the player racing. When it comes down to it, the game is just plain fun.