I really enjoyed the original NFSU. I had it on the Gamecube and liked the customization it offered and thought the game was really well done. NFSU2, which I bought for the Xbox a day or two after it was released, was a complete letdown for me. First of all the idea of having a freeroaming city is a good one and you would think it would work well in a racing game but there are several HUGE flaws with it. First of all the GPS sucks. I don't care what anyone says, I can't stand it. It's nothing more than an arrow that points the direction you need to take on the road to reach checkpoints to get to somewhere. While it sounds simple and easy to understand, in practice it's really more of an annoyance. You can't tell when it's telling you to make a turn until you've basically already passed it, and when you have a car that travels 200mph, you'll find yourself stopping, backing up, and then making the turn all the time. Secondly, you have to drive somewhere to do anything which is just a timewaster and an excuse for you to look at all the advertising in the game. When you drive to the start of a race, the location is pointless and usually you'll be racing nowhere near the "start" location. The gameplay is bad mainly because the game has a very nasty habit of punishing you severely for making mistakes. There's no concept of rubber-banding which, while it sounds good, if you fall behind, there's no catching back up. The AI seems to never make mistakes unless you force them to. The game is just downright frustrating. The graphics are pretty good but there's no concept of damaging anything. I liked the sound effects but the soundtrack had too much rap for my taste. The voice acting is god-awful and the story is just stpuid. I'd prefer if all racing games just gave up on storylines as there's rally no point. Xbox Live racing was cool and prolongs the games life but I'd rather play Forza Motorsport online. All in all the game was a letdown and just ended up frustrating me.
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