A great combination of burnout paradise and need for speed, worth buying
The good: Great choice of cars, beautiful scenery to drive in, Cars sound and look fantastic, good soundtrack, intense and varied racing,working for and unlocking upgrades for your fav car is satisfying, police are fun to run from, great sense of speed.
The bad: lack of any kind of narrative often leads to lack of enthusiasm to play, owning supercars is far to easy, online is rarely fun due to the way people play
Need for speed most wanted set out with a lofty aim, to recreate the thundering success of burnout paradise with the real world motoring from previous need for speed games ; in the process of this they have created an often euphoric driving experience with shiny , noisy super cars, intense police chases, and frantic races with some light stunts and customization mixed in. Have they re-made the magic of burnout paradise? No, but have they made a huge improvement on the last 3 need for speed games? Yes!
What i always loved about need for speed games was the atmosphere, the customization and the free roam structure with police to play with. Recent need for speed games have dropped the free roam i loved so much and made a very 'on rails' experience which i well, quite simply hated. And while most wanted loses the epic visual customization it does do other things better than any other racing games out there, for example, so many racing game producers fail to realise one thing about fans of fast cars in real life which is we love the sounds that they make. Track games tend to do this well but open world racers, not so much. But as i raced an Aston martin V12 vantage through a motorway tunnel at the beginning of the game, the reverberating , thunderous growl from the V12 which met my ears made me grin with glee and from that moment on i knew i would love most wanted.
The open world of most wanted contains a variety of cars from strict track racers to the ultimate street racing machines, all these cars have their own set of races and free roam challenges which unlock new chasis's , suspension, engines, tires etc. So while i agree with gamespot that building up your car collection isnt very satisfying, what is satisfying is searching for your ultimate Favorite car and then unlocking the pro version of the best upgrade in every category for it.
All these races , cars , secret areas (of which there are huge amounts, billboards, smash gates and speed camera's there is plenty to do in this racing world ; as well as having some epic chases with the well balanced police force.
However despite how great the game is, it actually (in my opinion) fails at its main goal which was to create the ultimate social online driving experience, every time ive ever played online , i get into a free roam lobby waiting for a game to start , and then just drive around being constantly taken out by some moron in a bugatti veyron supersport while the game doesnt start.....
So if you were thinking of buying this game for its online then i suggest you go back to burnout paradise, but if like me you prefer to play against decent A.I then grab NFS most wanted now!
Gameplay 8.5/10
Sound 10/10
graphics 9/10
replay-ability/length 7/10
Overall: 8/10
Thanks for reading, please like this review if you agree with me :)
happy gaming