The game tries to build on NFS Most Wanted, but is seriously hampered by flaws and bugs.
Graphics have surely improved since most wanted, but they fail to support the racing experience. Everything looks too flashy and as a result at times you can't really see where you are going or should be going. Quite often I came to a full stop as a result of bumping into an object I did not see in time and therefore could not avoid. On the other hand sometimes you need to bust a fence but at times it is almost impossible to distinguish the solid track walls from these breakable fences.
Furthermore the game has some serious problems at keeping the frame rate up. This results in Blank screens and mid race pauses, you radar will disappear and the console will start to render and then suddenly everything kicks in again at full speed. Very annoying indeed.
Sound
Sound overall is okay. The engines sounds are fine but not great. The game does lack some catchy tunes that most other NFS titles did have.
Game play
I loved Most Wanted and I almost hate undercover because the game is so annoying at times.
First of the storyline is pretty boring and you will only get 3 cars during the career mode. The money you will raise during the campaign will only allow you to buy and improve 2 of the top teer 1 cars included in this game. For me this is a serious drawback. They have integrated so many great cars in the game, and yet you will only drive like 10% of these cars in the single player mode since there is just not enough available to spend on additional cars.
The time challenges and quarrels with the cops are good fun. It is very enjoyable to free roam the city while trying to cause as much damage as possible to structures and cop cars.
The competition in the single player campaign is of the "computer aided" type. Which basically means that no matter how superb you're car is or how fast you will be driving, there will always be one computer opponent making your life miserable. Example: there is a race mode called highway pursuit, in which the goal is to outrun your opponent by 300m on a highway with traffic. Should you manage to force you opponent into a truck, bus, bridge or similar normally deadly object, he will recover in like 2sec and be on you're tail at full speed within 150m. However when you run into a bus at full speed you're car is totaled and you will have to start over.
Sort of the same annoying computer superpowers hinder the other race types where opponents are present. They can and will do some moves which you just can't recover from or compete with only leaving you the option of a retry. I have dominated races (beaten the fasten lap) by over a minute, but still lost the race to a computer opponent.
Multiplayer could have made up for the annoying computer opponents, and the limited availability of cars. All cars and upgrades are available for free in multiplayer, NICE.
Unfortunately EA decided to bring out an additional
car pack with contains cars that are not just superhuman but extraterrestrial. For instance the Koeningsegg is so ridiculously fast I did not even mange to finish in time (within 30sec of the nr 1) once when competing against it with no matter what car I used.
So the sum it all up. If you stick to time trials, cop chases and the storyline jobs you will have nice albeit short racing experience. But you will need to be a dedicated fan of the NFS series to spend additional time beyond this point.