EA games has almost constantly provided rock solid updates of the age old series, and the most recent addition, Need For
Racing game normally don’t have a story line to them, although street races tend to have a little story line that won’t really affect anything whether you pay attention to it or not. However Need for Speed Most Wanted has a story line that has a big effect on the game play, and is actually quite interesting. Essentially, the Blacklist 15 are the 15 top racers in the state. The story starts out with you challenging Blacklist 15-- Razor Callahan. He screws up your car, wins the race, and takes your car. As if that wasn’t enough, he smokes the entire Blacklist with your car. Gee, what a colorful character. Over the course of the game you’ll be introduced to few more interesting characters. The storyline really does get quite interesting at some point or another. Chances are you’ll figure out everything before the game shows you, but still overall the storyline is definitely above average.
Above all that, some of the story is told in some amazing looking FMV sequences. Not only do these look incredible, but there often over the top, in a funny way. They do a great job of telling the story. Unfortunately there are only a handful of these sequences, if that. There are a few at the beginning, and then maybe one or two towards the end. The rest of the story is told through voice mail, and text. The text stuff is pretty weak; thankfully there are only a few of them. The voice mail is good enough, but it would have definitely been better if there were a few more of those FMV sequences.
The rest of the graphics are definitely top notch as well. The car models look great and the environments are sharp. The glare from the sun can sometimes be distracting, but other than that, there aren’t really any major graphical flaws, besides the frame rate, which drops during the more intense moments, most of the time in the cop chases.
The audio department is rock solid overall. The police talking to each other through those radio dealies when you in a cop chase is a nice, realistic effect. The soundtrack in the Underground games were more Hip Hop and rap themed, but here the soundtrack is full of rock and heavy metal songs, although you’ll still find the occasional light Hip Hop track. The soundtrack for the most part suits the racing a lot, and compliments the action nicely.
The career mode will take you a good 10-15 hours to finish. But the story mode has some a great amount of replay value; you’ll probably be able to go through the career mode 2-3 times before you get bored of it. Then after that, there are still the extra modes to play through. Challenge mode has roughly 70 challenges for you to go through. The challenges involve things like going through a certain number of road blocks/spike strips, lasting a specific amount of time, and so on. This mode may not hold your interest throughout the whole 68 (or so) missions, but it’s still a nice mode, where you can spend an extra few hours or so.
If you were disappointed with 2004’s NFS Underground 2, then you’ll probably hesitate to buy this game, but Need for Speed Most Wanted is a huge improvement over Underground 2, and any Street racing fan should certainly check it out. The excellent gameplay is complimented with impressive graphics and great sound, and the story mode will take you roughly 10-15 hours to beat (and then there are still the extra modes). Overall, Need for Speed Most Wanted is one of the best street racing game to ever be released.