Need for Speed Underground 2 First Look

By Ricardo Torres, GameSpotPosted Jun 17, 2004 4:26 pm PT

EA takes the wraps off the next entry in the Need for Speed series.

Electronic Arts finally took the wraps off the sequel to Need for Speed Underground today. The first look coincided with the announcement that EA has signed TV star Brooke Burke to appear in the game as Rachel, an adrenaline junkie who becomes your mentor and initiates you into the world of tuning up production cars. We were able to see an early PS2 version of the game in action, including a showcase of one of the game's five neighborhoods and a handful of new features from the game. Even though the game is still a long way off, there certainly seems to be a lot to get excited about in this sequel.

Uncover the underground with EA executive producer Chuck Osieja in this exclusive interview. Click "stream" for a larger view.

According to what we were shown, the game's development began in July of last year, before the original Need for Speed Underground even shipped. Apparently, given the overwhelmingly positive response to the first game, the decision was made to begin working on the sequel immediately to accommodate some of the team's ambitious ideas. Whereas the original Need for Speed Underground featured roughly 40 kilometers of track, Need for Speed Underground 2 packs 200 kilometers' worth of track. Each of the five neighborhoods will be interconnected via a lengthy and intricate freeway system. We were able to catch a glimpse of some of the game's new locales, which appeared to be based on familiar cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.

The main goal in the single-player game is to become the best of the best in the underground racing circuit. However, this time out, your focus will also be on discovery--how to advance in street races and tune up your car, with the help of Rachel. Instead of offering a linear story mode, like the original game, which forced you to work your way through a set number of races before progressing, this next game will offer much more flexibility. You'll be able to progress through a level by completing a few event races of your choice. In addition to the story races, you'll be able to find or initiate additional races (there should be roughly 150 races in the game) by doing some exploring and finding AI-controlled cars eager for a race. If you win, you'll receive information or a tip on finding other hidden opponents.

You'll be able to create a powerful muscle car and spruce it up with some decals.

Exploration will apparently be a major part of the game, since you'll be able to find a number of hidden shops and opponents. Finding both will give you more than just bragging rights, since computer opponents will yield information on where to find other hidden competition and how to uncover shops that feature parts or cars you won't find anywhere else in the game. Fortunately, as you discover these hidden shops, they will become permanently visible on your minimap display, as the normal ones are. As for parts and cars, once you discover a shop with parts and cars you haven't seen before, they're added to all the shops you visit in the game so that you don't have to go back and forth to one single shop to get what you need.

The new game also offers an improved upgrade system for your car. In fact, tweaking your car will be a much more accessible process to casual players who aren't terribly hip to gear ratios and suspension types, though there will still be plenty for those who know the degrees by which a single gear has to be adjusted to get a half-percent performance boost. Basically, you'll have two options when buying a performance upgrade in the game. You can buy a premade kit and be done with it, or you can customize the different upgrades in the kit to fine-tune your wheels. You'll even be able to use a wide variety of kits and decals to make your car look sharp. We watched a Mazda RX8 get the star treatment with numerous kit options.

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1 Comments

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jakeboudville
Posted Sep 15, 2006 12:10 am PT

looks cool
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