Need For Speed Undercover

November 7, 2008 - EA's Need for Speed franchise has been shuffling its feet quite a bit in recent years, with games like Most Wanted featuring an open world to drive around in, while last year's ProStreet was focused entirely on predefined track racing. In a couple weeks the series will return with Need for Speed Undercover, which so far looks like a curious mix of the recent efforts in the series, but with a new focus on casual racing fans in tow.

The title opens with a police chase, which helps give you a quick introduction to the game's controls as well as the setup for the story. Underground racing has ties with crime syndicates, so it's your job to get into the racing world and take down the bad guys from the inside. To get on their good side and have them trust you, you'll have to get into a number of cop chases and cause a bit of chaos in addition to actually winning events.

Most of the story thus far has been told through live action cutscenes, shot in the style of shows like 24 and other crime dramas, with shaky camera work, quick cuts and so forth. The presentation has generally been good thus far, though a few of the scenes haven't been given the best context, so you just sort of need to nod and go along for the ride.

As for the racing itself, the game takes place in the Gulf Coast Tri-Cities area, which means there are multiple main city sections with highways and bridges connecting them. The individual city sections aren't all that large, but the world as a whole is pretty big and looks like it offers a decent bit of variety while wandering through the back roads and cutting through shortcuts.

What's curious about the game though is what seems to be a much stronger focus on the more casual racing audience. For instance, you can press down on the controller's D-Pad at any time to jump right into the closest event, even if it's miles away. In fact, this is the main way to enter an event without heading to the GPS system as you can't simply drive "into" events in the world even if you wanted to. So far, this largely seems to negate the main reason for driving around and instead just encourages you to skip from event to event.

Continuing this push for helping the casual racing audience, many of the events I've tried thus far triggers the appearance of barriers and whatnot, restricting where you can go to keep you from getting lost. This is somewhat helpful in that you know where to go, but it also means that the open world element of the game is largely lost in the race events. It's also essentially kills cross-traffic. There are some events that take place in the open world, like where you have to get in front of your opponent and keep your lead for a minute, along whatever route you choose, but the regular races have all been blocked off.


There also isn't much traffic at all, at least in the spots I've made it to thus far. I have found sections on the highway where four or five cars will be bunched up, requiring a bit of maneuvering to get around them, but then I would hit a long stretch with no vehicles. Thus far, it doesn't seem like the most populated area in the world, sadly.

Need for Speed's sweet Autosculpt system is in the game, though it doesn't appear to affect performance like it did in ProStreet, which was really quite cool. There's a car upgrade system in place here, though your driver also curiously earns stats, which ties into your performance. Earning new bumps in your Tires and Forced Induction stats is just kind of odd.

Need for Speed Undercover hits stores in less than two weeks now, so check back soon for our full review. For now, head into our gallery and video section for new images and footage.