Need for Speed Underground is a great racing game that keeps you coming back for more.
The career mode is very long. I'm still near the end, but I never quite beat it fully yet. There are circuit, drag, drift, time trial, and tournament modes. The circuit mode is basically Mario Kart without the use of items and weapons, but it has slightly better graphics. The tracks are closed off, and there are a few laps to race on and beat your opponents. Instead of using items to gain speed, there is Nitrous which you can upgrade in the performance shops. You can also customize your car with different decals. On each race you can either do easy, medium or hard modes. However, playing on easy and medium modes mean that you will earn less cash.
Drag mode is a tad more difficult to grasp, but you'll get used to the controls eventually. You race on a straight line with heavy or light traffic, and you try to beat three AI opponents. There's a meter on the left where you shift your speed. If you overheat your vehicle, your car's engine will blow out. You basically have to time your shifts, so your car's speed can run successfully. The green area of the meter is the normal shifts, and the red area is where your tires will overheat. You can still use Nitrous to play drag modes.
In drift mode, you drift around the closed, wide circuit to earn points. If you make a mistake and graze the wall, some of your drift points will be lost. The points that you previously accumulated will not be lost if you hit the wall. Only your current drift points will be lost. In tournament mode, you race against opponents on about four to five different tracks. You total points will have to be above everyone else in order to win. Time trial is just like any other time trial mode where you try to beat the time's record before you run out of time.
There is also a two player mode with all of those modes, and there's also online mode. Unfortunately, the online mode is crappy on the PlayStation 2 because you have to connect using a broad band network. It's really difficult to play online on the PS2.
Visually, this game looks fantastic. Everything is really spot on and very realistic looking. However, when the disk starts to scratch up, you'll notice a few glitches that pop up. That glitch makes you drive into the nothingness. The sound track has a variety of hip-hop and rock music. Some of the popular artists are Lil Jon and the Eastside Boyz singing Get Low and many more.
The good - great sound track, career mode is very long, strong multiplayer modes, graphics look good for the most part
The bad - online mode is crappy, frame rates drop occasionally
Presentation - 8 Career mode is very long, and two player modes have a lot of variety with courses and cars to select. You can also upgrade your performances and cars visually.
Graphics - 8 They look realistic, spot on, and the lighting is not too bright or too dark, just right. Occasionally you will notice some frame rate issues.
Sound - 10 It ranges from hop-hop to standard rock music. All of them are fantastic to listen to. The sound effects are pretty normal.
Game play - 9 The controls are perfect, but the drag races take a while to get used to with shifting your speed.
Lasting approval - 7 The multiplayer modes are strong, but it's very tough to play online with lousy broadband connection.
Overall 8.4 out of 10 Game spot Score 8.5 out 10.