Most Wanted keeps the best features from the series, throws out the scraps, and adds in exciting new content.
If you're worrying that Most Wanted is still plagued with the chore of driving everywhere, you should be glad to hear that EA fixed that obvious flaw. Most Wanted still lets you drive around the open city, but instead of driving to every single race, there is now a menu at the safe house that transports you to that race. Also, now you don't have to drive around the city looking for the modification that you wan't, there is a modification place near to every safe house and it will have all the modifications that you need. Finally, after 2 games filled with darkness, Most Wanted introduces day light which is a fabulous addition, although then they kicked out night time completely. While it is a bummer that there are no night races in Most Wanted, it was well worth the sacrifice for the daytime.
When they improved on everything in Underground 2, EA also left some things behind. Now, there are no more SUV's, but really who liked the SUV's in Underground 2 anyway. Also, some of the small tweaks and strange modifications from NFSU2 are gone like modifying your side view mirrors and making your hood open up in cool ways, although EA kept the important stuff. While some options were forced out of Most Wanted, most of them you probably won't be missing that much. The one thing that I actually will miss from the two previous entries is the Draft mode, where you slide around corners to gain points EA made Most Wanted a whole new and improved game and there were some sacrifices in the deal.
Most Wanted starts you out racing in a BMW M3 racing the bad guy: Razor. You put your Beamer on the line and it ends up halfway through the race, your car gets messed up and your forced to hand it over to Razor. After that you find out that with your car he made his way to the top of the blacklist. You are teleported back a couple of days before that to race a couple of races that led up to the race with Razor. Then, in fact, you race the same race again and have your car break down again. EA did an interesting thing with the beginnning of the game, but they did it well. Not only does the beginning give you a sneak peak of how cool the cars are later on in the game, but it also makes you interested in the plot for the first 15-20 minutes.
After that I had no interest in the plot whatsoever, but racing games don't need a plot, so I am not complaining. Although, sadly one of the biggest flaw in Most Wanted is that it thinks its cool or that it just tries to be funny, but it isn't. With Ronnie Mccrae who thinks he's so radical, man. Ronnie Mccrae tries to be so cool, but is so stupid, he is actually a little funny. Also, Razor thinks he so much better than everybody, but he too ends up just being stupid. Anyway, even though the characters are dreadfully annoying it makes it all the more satisfying to beat them.
Most Wanted places you with the task of making it to the top of the blacklist by beating all the 15 blacklist members. Although, to actually get to the point of facing a blacklist member, you have to win a certain number of races, and get enough bounty and milestones. For each blacklist member there is a list of races in which you can race in. What is cool about this is that, there are more races that are available for you to race in than you actually are required to beat. This means that you have the decision to either win every race for the Blacklist member and then challenge the next blacklist member or once you win enough races you can just challenge the blacklist member and move on.
Although, winning races isn't the only thing that you need to do to face a blacklist member, you also have to get enough milestones and bounty. Milestones are challenges that you can only beat during a police chase, for example: I have to make the chase last for atleast 6 minutes. The milestones make you do things that you wouldn't have ever done otherwise and it really raises the intensity of the chases that are intense enough on their own. Bounty is basically your reputation with the cops. By completing milestones and raising the cost to the state, your bounty raises. These challenges push you to purposefully keep the chase going when you would like to just ram into the donut shop and end the chase right there.
Most Wanted adds in destructible environments to the Need for Speed series, which really changes gameplay. Not only do the huge destrucible environments give you a chance to lose the cops, but the smaller scale objects such as a bench can be destroyed to increase your cost to state. The destructible environments also add a much needed touch of openness in the world, anytime you can feel free to drive onto the sidewalk destroy a few benches and then maybe drive through a train station while your at it.
Among the long list of improvements, Most Wanted adds in cars that are actually cool. Now you can finally modify that Aston Martin or Lamborghini and drive it at lightning fast speeds. Most Wanted also keeps what is best about the series: its great sense of speed. With the whole city blurring past you, Most Wanted makes you keep your eyes on the screen especially when you boost your car even faster with NOS. The NOS system is different in Most Wanted than it was in the last two games, your NOS recharches. This seems a little cheap in the first half of the game, but soon you'll come to rely on it later in the game. I liked the system in NFSU2 better, but it is nice to be able to use so much NOS.
Among the short list of problems in Most Wanted, collision detection is one of them. First of all when you crash into one of the pursuit breakers (destructible environment you can crash into to take out cop cars), all the cop cars in the area just break down. I admit it would be a little hard to lose the cops if this didn't happen, but EA could have made the pursuit breakers require a little more skill, and a little less luck. Also, another issue I had with the collision detection is that when cop cars surround you, but there is still an open space it seems like there is an invisible wall that blocks you from going anywhere, which gets pretty frustrating at times.
Speaking of cop cars, the AI for the cops is absolutely brilliant. The cops are agressive and smart, they will try to ram you into the wall and then surround you. They only get better as the 'heat' for your car raises, then they will have better vehicles, better tactics, and then helicopters. The police chases in Most Wanted are the highlight of the game, but the racing isn't half-bad either. The AI for your opponent racers may not be the best through most of the game, but the one thing about this AI that is great is that they have Catch-up. This means that later on in the race, unless you are a perfect driver, the racers will catch up to you which makes the race more intense.
One of the other highlights of Most Wanted is its visuals. From the beautiful look of speed to the nasty look of mashed up police cars. Most Wanted looks great and the PC version is the next best thing from the Xbox 360 version.
The sound isn't as top-notch as the graphics, but Most Wanted is one of those games that you keep the sound on for. Besides the cheesy custom-made songs in Most Wanted, the music isn't too bad and its a lot better than the rap in NFSU2. Otherwise, the cars sound great and the crashes sound even better. The voice acting could have been better, but thats how EA wanted the characters to sound like sadly.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is a great game that I recommend to everybody, while some things were left out from the past games, Most Wanted improvements fully make up for what was lost. Some small new problems also found their way into the series, but they are only small flaws in a masterpiece of a game.