Lives up to most of the hype; Yet racing pales in comparison to the chases. Multiplayer lacks police.
But sadly it’s not without flaws. The career races become painfully dull and as I neared the end of the Blacklist, the required races to qualify felt more and more like a chore. The AI drivers cheat, making such things as sprints/speed trap races with police where crashes are almost unavoidable a huge hassle since the AI recovery from a crash is absurd. It’s frustrating to drive 3 perfect laps suddenly have a car drive out in front of you and find the AI, who just 10 seconds ago crashed into a truck blow by you at 150+mph. But to be fair, I can’t say that anyone who has played the previous NFS games did not expect this. The AI in all NFS games cheated on some level.
A new flaw in the game in my opinion is the redone drag racing. In Underground which introduced drag racing the traffic was mostly randomly placed. Yet in Most Wanted, it’s always preset and full of scripted events. (Also, did I mention that the AI cheats horribly?) Anyway, the problem with the preset traffic and scripted events is that inevitably the races turn into a session of trial and error followed by a memorization challenge. It boils down to remembering where all the cars are and the right time to switch lanes to dodge the scripted events since there is NO way to dodge a truck that suddenly drives out into your lane as you’re doing 180+ mph unless you have jedi powers.
Finally, where are the replays? Even limited length replay would be great. But not putting a replay option in a game where the environment is so detailed and beautiful is almost a crime.