The Introduction

The long awaited release of the newest installment to the Need for Speed (NFS) series is here and it most certainly does not disappoint. You have a glorious chance to become the Most Wanted (MW) and show both your peers and the law whose boss.

The game continues with the trend of its two predecessors but has returned to the rays of wonderful sunlight and the glory days of old are back. What do I mean? To be the King of the streets means you are going to have to teach the cops a lesson. Yes, the boys are back in town and they are trying to prove a point. NFS: MW is therefore a very tasteful combination of the Underground series where you can mod your car to the max and the Hot Pursuit series in which the cops attempt to wipe you from the records by taking no prisoners.

Last time around you had Brooke Burke to help you but he has been replaced with Josie Maran who seems a lot more appealing due to the improved graphics of the game. A lot of the extras in UG & UG2 have been removed (thankfully) such as the trunk mods, neon lights, girls starting races just to name a few. The SUVs are also gone…thank God.

The game utilizes a series of cut scenes to tell and add to the story. They are quite impressive and at times you are left to wonder if this is a game or a movie. They are in fact full-motion video composited into computer graphics.

The Scoop
In Career mode you are shown how you battled your way to reaching the backlist (the 15 best racers who you must defeat on a one on one basis). You come up against Razor who sabotages your car and you lose the race and your car. The style in which this is portrayed is excellent as EA switches from cut scenes to you actually racing for a brief moment. For those of you who remember that fateful room in Half Life when as you enter that dreaded room you are jumped and there is no way to avoid it…..well it is the same here. Your car will stall, you will lose the race and your car and you will go to jail without passing go and receiving $200. Subsequently you are released from jail and you have to buy a ride and start the entire process from scratch. (Hint: If you have UG 2 installed, the game with start you off with an extra cash bonus) To complete the story, Razor has used your car to defeat everyone in the blacklist and now heads it. If that wasn’t bad enough, the local cops are out to get you as well and they mean business.

The races in career mode are a mixture between sprints, drags, and circuit races as drifts and racer x events have been done away with.