With its strange lack of online play, the XBOX version isn't as as good at its PS2 counterpart, but it looks better.
User Rating: 8 | Need for Speed Underground XBOX
The import tuner scene has increased in interest and popularity over the past couple years, and with the release of the hit blockbuster movie "The Fast and the Furious", people have gotten into it more than ever before. So, when you have a huge history for making racing games with real, licensed cars, it would seem like the next obvious direction you're going to take your series too, right? That's where EA comes in with their best game in the series yet, Need for Speed: Underground. This game takes advantage of the ever-growing popularity of the import tuner/street racing scene making this the first game of it's kind, at least the first game to get it right, for the most part. The graphics don't quite match up to the standard that Polyphony Digital's staple racer, Gran Turismo 3 sets, but this game looks extremely impressive by its own right. The sense of speed is pretty incredible, especially in the first-person view, the frame rate rarely hitches, if at all, and the cars have a very high detail put into them. The by-standers and surrounding buildings and trees aren't nearly as detailed as the cars, but you shouldn't really be looking in any other direction but directly in front of you to avoid traffic (both on going and coming). The visual effects are simply great, like sparks emanating from grinding against another car or protective girders on the side of the road and the blur from igniting your nos makes the race so much more intense. Too bad there is absolutely no damage modeling in any way to any of the cars. That's mostly due to the manufacturers keeping the image of their cars in the game as clean and positive as possible. The game is very much an arcade racer, which makes it accessible to everyone, enthused or not. The races are fast paced and intense, especially due to the fact that the racing you're doing isn't exactly legal, so, as stated above, you have to avoid traffic on the streets. Although the game doesn't partake of sanctioned races, a huge disappointment is that the roads are sectioned off by non passable girders and invisible walls that point the right direction to the finish line preventing you from going off course, so it feels like you're on a track rather than in an exciting, full-fledged living city. The fact that you get completely free roam-able cities in Midnight Club II makes you wish that Rockstar would have used real licensed cars instead of fake, license-based cars, or that EA would have taken a hint from their competitor. But, once again, this limitation was probably due to the manufacturers not wanting to have their cars likeness involved in anything too obviously illegal, which is probably why Rockstar didn't use any real cars, too. The fact remains that this game races well, and that's what matters mostly. You have different race types from which to chose and in which to participate including circuit, drag (my favorite mode in the entire game), drift, knockout and sprint, and there aren't more than four other cars racing against you in any of them. Circuit is where you race laps around a pre designated strip of road, much like in a regular circuit racing game like GT and past NFS games, but the arcade-style game play make the races more intense and interesting. Sprint is where you race from one part of the city to another point, and whomever gets there first wins. Drag is where you race a, for the most part short straight-a-way from one point to the finish. With drag, the game play sort of changes. You're car changes to manual shifting (you have no choice), and all you have to do press the gas and try to get your shifts perfectly timed. They make this easy to do with a meter to the side of the screen that tells you when the perfect time to shift is, and then you shift, is you shift too early or late, you don't gain the kind of speed you would if you shifted perfectly and you lose precious, precious seconds. If you don't shift at all before your car is at top gear, you blow out your engine, much like in a real car, and you automatically lose. Your car stays in one lane and the computer handles the steering perfectly, having you worry only about lane changes by simply pressing left or right. If a car is next to you in a lane which you want to shift, then your car will automatically steer back into its current position. Just shift perfectly, avoid colliding with traffic and other racers and use nos to achieve maximum velocity. Knockout is really fun, you race in circuit style and each lap automatically knocks out the racer in last place by every lap completed until the only person left is the racer in first. This is especially fun on-line. Speaking of on-line, if you have a PS2 and a great connection, you're going to love it. If you have a Gamecube and an XBOX, you're going to miss it. Now, the GC, I can understand, but there is no reason for the XBOX version to be missing this feature at all. Drift mode is basically where you have a sanctioned circuit all to yourself and you have to basically drift every curve and corner until the finish line. Every drift gives you points depending on how long you keep it going. Obviously the longer your drift, the more points you're awarded. You are competing against pre-set top scores from the cpu opponents, and if you score higher then they, you win. This mode is the most challenging in the game and takes a little time to master, but once you do, it really helps when you try to utilize drifts effectively in the other modes, especially during competitive on-line play. The sound is just simply great. The tire screeches sound hilariously awesome, and the cars for the most part sound pretty good. The crowd is actually cheering and the music isn't that bad. There is an equal balance between rock and hip-hop, but there's some decent music to be found somewhere in the soundtrack. The replay value is fairly high, considering there are only 19 cars in the game, but they are all awesome, so this game is a definitive example of quality over quantity, which works perfectly. They are pretty much the most popular cars for the scene, like a Civic coup, a Skyline GT-R R34, an Eclipse, a Lancer ES, a 350Z, a Neon, and about a dozen more. Since this game is heavily based on the import tuner scene, you can customize your cars to look as sick and ugly as you want by adding after market parts like new spoilers, front and rear bumpers, side skirts, hoods, roof scoops and rims, and also customize the paint with an array or matte, gloss and pearl colors, a huge amount of vinyls and decals and even window tinting. You have a reputation meter, which starts of pretty low depending on the popularity and/or rarity of the kind of car you chose, and you can fill that meter to get more respect to you for your ride from competitors through the above-mentioned upgrades. I like the innovation of this system and how they implement it into game play as well, but at the same time, I don't like it because I might want a certain bumper or rim type that won't get me as much rep. as another that I don't really like so much. All in all, because of the amounts of options you have and a fairly sizable car list, you will spend a lot of time trying out different combinations and racing all your different cars, giving this game a moderately hight amount of replay value, but the strange lack of on-line play from this version doesn't make it as high as the PS2 version. This game is heavily inspired by the movie The Fast and the Furious. Thankfully, taking a liking to the movie isn't the only reason you should play NFS: Underground.
