Riotously good! "Uh Oh Better Make Like A Dog And Shake That Tail"
You start off as the stereotypical unnamed street racer, alongside your assumed rival street racer, both the sort of guys you can expect to say gritty things like "this is it, I got one shot to make it" and probably not be very good at maths. You bomb along merrily before your car blows up, your rival, "Razor", zooms past tauntingly, and your astutely helpful sidekick Mia suggests "huh, maybe Razor tampered with your car!". Fortunately the blunt dull-wittedness of your accomplice is assuaged later by the fact she sorts out safehouses and car-lots for later use throughout the game, and there's also lots of cut-scenes of her wearing very low-cut tops and bending over to pick things up which always seem to be on the floor. And whilst I'm on the presumably popular topic of Mia (Josie Maran's) lady-lumps, the cut-scene graphics are absolutely delicious, it looks like you could scoop them out of the TV and boil them to make truffles.
Anyway, where was I before sidelined by Josie Maran's ti-.. I mean talent? Oh yeah, storyline and whatnot. Essentially the idea is, with your reputation left in a streak of transmission oil and pointless tears, you must work your way back up the Blacklist of 15 rival drivers, finally culminating in your ultimate nemesis Razor. This is achieved through two general means; either winning a variety of races, including sprints, circuit, lap knockout, drag races, the usual gang, and also through winding up the hard-working police officers of Rockport City, getting into high-speed pursuits and achieving milestones through such means as evading them as quickly as possible, missions all set out in excellent streamlined Grand Theft Auto-style sandbox mode which suits the game wonderfully, and stops it getting too staggered. Mia helps you out through all this by texting you constantly, accidentally walking dimly into walls, and languorously picking up more things from the floor.
It is definitely the police pursuits which make the game as enjoyable as it is. The cops are actually nefariously tactical, and become progressively more hardcore the more infractions you cause. So whilst you may only start off with one lonely police cruiser idly driving after you which can be easily dispatched by triggering one of the many "traps" which loiter the map, such as knocking the supports out from under a huge cement donut which rolls over the police car, not.. killing the police officer who was probably one day from retirement but certainly.. making him smaller, it can soon escalate to helicopters and roadblocks and spikestrips and the need to make many, many more police officers.. smaller. Police are sometimes involved in the street races too, adding a whole new fast-paced element and many more people dying.
As you work through the game, as could be expected the police get tougher, sections of the map open up allowing for trickier race circuits, and the fellow racer AI mercifully catches up from earlier. It can be, admittedly, possible to attain excess money and improve your car to become impossibly good, making races almost insultingly easy. Completing every single race isn't necessary to face your next Blacklist opponent, be they 'Knife-edge' or 'Sheepskin' or 'The Sharpie Twins' or whatever ridiculous pseudonym they've adopted, but if you do, you find you have enough money to improve your turbo and brakes and tyres so much you could leave the controller next to a desk fan and the gentle breezes tickling the accelerator button will probably be sufficient to zoom you off to victory. You'll probably still even have enough money to afford some of the many entirely pricky gender-neutral decals to ruin your ride with.
There are indeed endless modifications which can be done to your car, with dozens of different spoilers, nitrous injections, wheel rims, window tints, everything. This did seem a little lost on me, who just made sure my car definitely had four wheels and, preferably, sides, before my next big race with "Buckle-fisted Glovebox Joe" or whatever, but it was nice to see the game catered for its die-hard fans. To some extent I'm probably not the best source to be rating this game. After all, the only real knowledge about cars I have is that some are faster than others, and not to be hit by them whilst walking. The soundtrack too, much like a man stealing a hot beverage vending machine, is technically not my cup of tea, with such brainless anthems as "I am Rock" by.. well.. 'Rock'. But then again it does give a fast-paced blast behind every race, so I guess my music taste wouldn't really by appropriate. No-one gets pumped up listening to Kate Nash do they?
As a result, it seems damned impressive that Need for Speed have managed to keep gameplay absorptive for real motorheads without diluting content, and still don't alienate vehicular nosebleeds such as myself who think a 'pink-slip' is just something Martin Fisher did to the girls in the cloakroom of the Year 10 prom. Most Wanted, then, seems applicable for everyone, with both single and multi-player being deliriously fun. The competitive element of multi-player especially is almost unparalleled in other Need for Speed games, with the possible exception of the Drag race mode which is, ironically, a bit of a drag, with the constant gear changes making the races a bit spluttering. Admittedly it can be a bit glitchy at times. I've had races where the car constantly and uncontrollably turned left, another where the throttle was stuck wide open. I remember playing a multi-player race, driving to almost perfection, then cack-handedly fumbling the controller, and realizing the car was still driving by itself, like Herbie. So that was a shame.
But minor self-driving cars aside, Most Wanted does everything right. Gameplay is variegated, the difficulty curve is linear, controls come to hand easily, and the graphics are good enough to paste over your first born's baby photos. So even if you're a hardcore greaser who wakes up every morning and has to pull parts of fender out of his pelvis from a previous nights street race bust-up, or me, who has to take car-sickness tablets to watch dodgems, this particular game is, universally, most wanted.
Eh? Eh? You get it, 'most wanted'? Ahhh, you're probably just tired. Whew! that was a mouthful!