Sometimes sick customization is all you need to make a fun game; this is where Underground steps in.
In Underground's main single-player mode, "Go Underground" you take part in over one-hundred racing events. Underground does have a plot, if you call just racing to be notorious and dealing with negative characters a plot. There are some relatively unimpressive full-motion video cutscenes in Underground that all have the same attitude. In these videos people will be saying some offensive crap to your face like "Hey loser" or "You look like a dork". Thankfully, there are only a few of these videos and they only last a couple of seconds. Aside from that there isn't much reason that strives you to compete in Go Underground other than experience the game's racing events.
Luckily, the racing in Underground is pretty exciting and usually intense. And this is one thing that Underground does really well-offering some of the most exciting races in a racing game. The main reason Underground's an exciting racing game is because the sense of speed is just awesome. The use of lighting, solid physics and motion blur effects make Underground one of the fastest racing games on the market. There are four different modes of racing in Underground; five if you include lap knockouts. These racing modes include your regular circuit/lap knockout races, racing sprints and two new modes: Drift and drag. First let's talk about drag racing, which is basically a straight race that lasts only a few seconds. Since these drag races only last a short amount of time they don't get in the way of the regular racing too much. While drag racing may be fun with its one-lane shift and manual-only shifting system it's a bit frustrating sometimes. This mostly applies to when you can't see where the traffic is coming and your engine blows. This also applies to the regular racing; where you'll just be racing and out of nowhere a traffic car will get in your way and screw you up. And to add insult to injury; the AI seems to always know where the traffic will hit and make almost no mistakes, which is annoying. Thankfully, this rarely happens and doesn't get in the way of the overall gaming experience that much.
As for the other new mode drift, you basically just power-slide your car through multiple curves for style points. Drift racing is arguably the most enjoyable racing mode in Underground. This is because you don't need to worry about AI cars getting in your way and the drifting itself is really exciting to take part in. Style points aren't only accumulated through drift, but through all other racing modes as well, although it's easier to gain them in drift. You can gather style points in other racing modes by drifting, catching air or "hang-time" and drafting opponents. But you're not just collecting style points for nothing. The more style points you get the more courses and customizable parts you get.
Speaking of customizable parts, Underground has a fully-featured customization system. This part of the game is so huge when you beat the game that it's practically a game on its own. When customizing a car you have performance and visual upgrades. With performance upgrades you have selections such as nitrous oxide, brakes, tires and so on. The larger section, the visual upgrades are what will really have you making your dream tuner. With the visual upgrades you can slap body kits, spoilers, vinyls and much more on your car. As you put more visual upgrades on your car your car earns stars on a five-star scale as shown at the bottom of the screen.
One of the first things you'll notice is that Underground has some impressive visuals. At first glance, you could be fooled into thinking Underground could be too good to be true for a current-gen game. The graphical detail in Underground is mostly thanks to the excellent lighting in the game. Reflections of lights and blur effects in the game make the car models look very life-like. The cars themselves are detailed nicely and look almost exactly like their real-life counterpart. But the environments in Underground leave a bit to be desired, at least compared to how good the cars look. That, and the framerate is pretty static and rough most of the time, which is unfortunate. Overall though, Underground is an impressive-looking game that screams the words "Look at me, I'm shiny!"
However, Underground is a major letdown in the sound department. For one, the sound effects, while not terrible, are just so standard. You have your typical tire squeals and crash sounds but it would've been nice to hear something new. The sound effects for the cars are also pretty disappointing and obviously generic. Almost all of the cars sound the same, even after you add performance upgrades the blow-off valve noises barely change until level three. But the worst part about Underground's sound is in its pretty horrible soundtrack. The song list in Underground has some alternative/metal songs from Static-X and The Crystal Method and some rap songs from T.I. and Lil Jon and the Eastside Boys. While there's variety in Underground's soundtrack the selection itself just sucks. There isn't one song in all of Underground's soundtrack that really gets you into the racing and the game doesn't feature custom soundtracks either.
Underground features a pretty healthy roster of cars that you can use and tune. There are twenty cars total in Underground, but surprisingly, the don't differ that much from each other in terms of performance. This also applies to the visual upgrades that you can put on each car. About the only thing that each car will look different with with visual upgrades are the wide body kits. These two flaws are rather unfortunate and it's a shame that EA couldn't have taken the time to consider these problems. As each car handles mostly the same with a few occasions that you'll need to pick a different car, it rarely matters what car you use. With that, you could probably beat the game with the first car that you get in Go Underground. Another large problem with Underground is that although the racing is exciting, it can get old and repetitious pretty quickly. One reason for this is because of the fact that you'll likely rely on the same car over and over again.
But the main reason the racing gets old is because of the lack of variety in Underground's tracks. While the quantity of tracks in Underground isn't small most of the courses look very similar to each other. This fault makes Underground harder to stay hooked to in terms of its overall racing experience. Thankfully, the customization system in Underground is more than enough reason to revisit the game over and over just to see what possibilities await your imagination.
All told, Underground is a solid racer, but it just doesn't reach the pinnacle of racing games that are out nowadays. Underground isn't a bad racing game, far from it. Yet it's a shame to see that the flaws that plague Underground have not been worked out as it seems like they could've been fixed easily. But if you're looking for an engaging and overall fun arcade-style racing game Underground should fit the bill.
Pros: Sharp visuals and fantastic lighting effects bring the game to life, tons of customization options make for endless possibilties, great sense of speed by the second half the game.
Cons: Soundtrack isn't so great, sound effects for the cars are almost the exact same for each car and don't sound that great on their own, no damage effects aside from cracked windshields.