Need for Speed: Most Wanted Review (Wanton Bogeyman)
I've played the game for an hour and feel like I've got a good feel for the game. In a nutshell, if you're looking for anything like the 2005 NFS Most Wanted, play the 2005 game. This game has nothing to do with it other than "beat 10 racers".
However, If you want a racing game to kill some time that very loosely has a plot, buy this when it's on sale.
Here's more in depth points:
3.5 stars out of 5 for a standalone racing game.
2 stars as a NFS game.
The Pros:
- Beautiful game
- awesome sound track
- Car's handling is a challenge, not as easy as it was with the '05 MW/Carbon/Ungerground which is more fun
- Good selection of cars
The cons:
- Opens with EA's launcher??
- No story, other than "there's 10 racers, get Speed Points (kinda like Bounty in the original) and beat them". You have a woman who gives you tips on how to navigate the menu, you don't know who she is. There's no characters. No awesome cut scenes where you see all about blacklist #10 and their car.
- No intro. You're in a city. There's 10 racer to beat. Go do races and beat them. Also cars are everywhere, press Y and you can go from a 911 which you get given at the start (no working your way up from a stock Focus) to a V12 Vantage or an R8 GT Spyder.
- all cars are unlocked from the get go - find a car, start racing in it. You start with a Porsche, I went straight for the Skyline. This defeats the "oo if I beat one more blacklist I can unlock this car I had on a poster as a kid"
- you unlock performance improvements for the car you're driving, through racing that car. Suddenly decide you want to swap the Skyline for a Lambo, you start at the beginning again. You don't unlock for example, stage 1 NOS for all cars - you unlock it for your specific car.
- You can't jump to the race, you have to drive there and do a burnout.
- My biggest issue is the crashes. If you lightly tap a car in 1st place you sit through a 5 second cut scene where your car is absolutely wrecked and you watch as the other racers pass you by, now you're in 5th.
- Same with police chases, I get that it's more "realistic", but you don't buy a NFS game for realism, you buy it for fun, and smashing through police blocks with ease and watching them fly through the air as you add to your bounty was fun. Now you might as well be hitting a wall, and you get that 5 second cut scene of your car being totalled before it cuts back to you being completely stationary, surrounded by police.
- Police chases quickly go up in heat levels, then come down in heat levels when you escape the police, back to zero then the pursuit's over. You don't maintain heat levels so that the next police chase has you sweating. You don't swap cars or customise to lower heat level.
I've played just over an hour, can't really be bothered playing more.