Every year for the past six years, the fall lineup of games has graced me with a new Need for Speed title. Yes, that’s six consecutive years that an NFS game has not failed to launch just around this very time. Need for Speed games hold a special place in my heart, you see; Need for Speed: SE was the very first racing game, that wasn’t F-Zero or Mario Kart, that I ever got my hands on. Moreover, the very first game I installed for my brand new, top of the line, 155MHZ PC back in 1996. Oh, yes, those were good times. I’ve owned every single iteration thereafter, and enjoyed almost all of them. And now, it’s time for me to tell you about the 12th entry…
The other reason I look forward to NFS games every year is also because they tend to have a pretty wide scope and generally feel epic in certain cases. Take for example the aftermarket component of the series for the past couple of years. It’s always fun to have so many options to tailor your car specifically to your needs. I personally use NFS games as a shopping tool for when I’m looking to make a new wheels purchase. So where does NFS come in? Well, I’ll fire up an NFS game and start slapping on a whole bunch of rims to my in-game car, just to get an idea of how the wheels will look like on my actual car. It may not sound important to you, but to me it’s always been the little things in the franchise for the past six years that have kept me coming back to it.
For Undercover, gone is the ProStreet gameplay that pitted cars against each other on closed courses and back comes the open-ended world, albeit with some very user friendly features. Choosing a race is as simple as pressing down on the D-pad or manually selecting the event you want to participate in by opening the game’s map. This takes away the headache of searching around the city just to find a race, allowing for a more streamlined experience.
No more is the setting limited to just a nocturnal atmosphere, as Undercover takes place during the daytime, but this time in a city that’s reminiscent of Burnout. The world is enormous and very well done, boasting 80 miles worth of road, on top of having individual cities separated by highways. And these highways are home to the game’s highway battles, a tribute to racing games such as Tokyo Xtreme Racer, and many others.
In addition to the excitement of highway battles will, obviously, be the return of cops, as the game’s name indicates. With the return of cops comes a new game engine that EA has dubbed the Heroic Driving Engine, which allows the gamer to perform epic high-speed maneuvers while traveling at breakneck speeds approaching 200MPH. These high-speed maneuvers and the "Heroic Driving" aren’t exactly the core of the game, more like an add-on. Basically, pulling off stunts, dodging cops, 180-degree turns, among other maneuvers earns you points which increase your in-game rep. It’s nothing that’s terribly complex, it’s just sort of there.
Essentially, Undercover is Need for Speed: Most Wanted and that’s not a bad thing, seeing as how Most Wanted remains the most adored open-ended NFS game to date. So yes, the cops are back and they’re even more aggressive than ever before. Much of the game’s race events revolve around cop chases and so you’d better get good at losing them, because you’ll need to learn how to make the most out of every intersection by turning from one block into the next. Building speed won’t help much here, you’ll need to be cunning and quick with your reflexes.
Race events are made up of a variety of race types, both new and old. The old ones include Circuit, Checkpoint, and Sprint (point-to-point), but unfortunately dragging and drifting is completely gone, and that’s a total shame. New modes include Highway Battles, Outrun, and Cost to State, which are fun, perhaps not as much as the modes they replace. Highway Battles are simple, there’s a highway, an opponent, traffic, and a race – the person who is first when time runs out or gains 1000ft wins. Cost to State is a mode where the player has to destroy as much property as possible to rack up a certain amount of damage done before time runs out. Outrun requires you to put a distance on your opponent and hold it until time runs out; granted it doesn’t take place on a highway, but it’s essentially the same as a Highway Battle. Which leads me to ask, there really was no room for at least a proper drag race event? Shame.
As far as the extras go, the Autosculpt feature is still here, but it seems like the overall selection of parts has gone down. Additionally, the story’s nothing too exciting, and I doubt people will care enough to concentrate on it. There are 55 cars to chose from, unfortunately my prized possession isn’t one of them anymore, marking it and Most Wanted the only two of the past six NFS games to not feature a 350Z. On the other hand, NFS: Undercover is the very first game to feature a 370Z, the successor to the 350Z. Then there’s the online component which boasts the standard set of race events, on top of the all new Cops and Robbers mode. Here, up to eight players can participate and play either sides of the fence. The goal is to stop the robbers from delivering a package to their destination, and vice versa if you’re the robber. This is certainly the mode that’ll end up the most played and with good reason, mark my words.
Unfortunately, yet again (!), a crippling issue prevents Undercover from achieving great status. It’s something that has plagued the franchise since day one on the consoles, and did not disappear despite the entry into the next-gen world. Yes, the framerate. Once again, for some inexplicable reason, NFS: Undercover has a framerate that cannot lock itself to a consistent 30 frames per second. The fluctuations are very obvious, as the framerate often drops below the 20 frame mark, and it’s very noticeable when you’re driving around furiously and the camera is panning around left and right. It was an issue in ProStreet, but it feels like an even bigger issue with Undercover. I applaud BlackBox for putting together a large and expansive city for us to drive around in, but they could’ve made a few cuts here and there to get the framerate running better.
One specific visual detail they could’ve toned down was the sun and it’s blinding ray of light. More so than Most Wanted, the entire city is lit up in a sunburst tone and it makes for a rather annoying aesthetic to look at, often blinding you as you race around, causing you to crash into various objects. Worst of all, because the the lighting is so yellow, it makes it really hard to see the yellow turn markers during race event, often forcing you to rely on your map to judge your next turn. Not cool. Get a patch out there or something, EA, this and the framerate are extremely annoying.
Visually, the story unravels similar to that of past Need for Speed games, but this one is weighed much more heavily towards live-action than CG, utilizing computer generated lighting effects to dress the scenery up. A fantastic damage system also exists, allowing you to really demolish the look of your car. As far as other details go, the cars look very good, boasting nice texture work and accurate lines everywhere. Unfortunately, many will be disappointed to hear that there are no modeled interiors, so no in-dash camera option exists.
Because the game boasts an 80 mile city, there’s a lot to see in Tri-City, with backgrounds ranging from a congested skyline full of buildings in Palm Harbor, to a more rural and open setting in Gold Coast Mountains. There are some draw-in and pop-up issues that can be noticed on a rare occasion, but nothing terrible. Lastly, the 720p image is largely free of any noticeable image defects, which is nice, but the framerate doesn’t just hurt the visual integrity, but also the gameplay.
The audio is a mix of great and average. The roar of the engines, which has been one of the most prominent features of the last six NFS games, returns again to assault your speakers, and the boomy exhaust notes help. Tires screech and squeal, and crashes sound forceful. Unfortunately, there is no custom soundtrack option, so you’re stuck with an unusual assortment of tracks to listen to…or you can just turn them off like I do and listen to the roar of your vehicle. Voice acting is decent throughout the story, but some parts bleed cheese and can be hard to stomach.
On the other hand, the audio presentation for the cops is absolutely incredible. BlackBox has always done a great job with the cop banter in past NFS games, but this one takes the cake. For as long as I have played Undercover, I can’t say that I’ve heard the cops repeat themselves very often. The banter is so diverse, that you often hear/intercept casual conversations between the police officers – a great touch. Moreover, their dialogue is extremely responsive to the action, as you’ll hear an officer announce that he’s been hit or taken out of action immediately after it happens.
To conclude, I will not lie that at this point, my frustrations with the franchise and its never ending framerate troubles are getting on my last nerves. I suspect that the Xbox 360 version doesn’t suffer from as many framerate issues. And if you’ve got a solid, high-end PC, go for that version for a proper enjoyable experience without the hassle of a stuttering framerate. Still, when you leave Palm Harbor for the less congested cities, the framerate clears up. At the end of the day, and I still enjoyed Need for Speed: Undercover, as will fans of Most Wanted.