One of the best NFS in the series. NFSU meets Midnight club 2. Best hybrid racer this year. Some bad textures.

User Rating: 8 | Need for Speed: Underground 2 PC
By xts3 | Review Date:
This game is probably one of the best driving arcade game merged with the better aspects of customization and simulation driving games out there besides the Midnight Club series of games, which doesn't get as much attention since the graphics are not so good in the Midnight club series. But the Midnight club series did push the envelope with new gamemodes and new gameplay for a genre thats all about doing the same thing: Driving around and racing. Underground 2 tries to borrow some concepts of other racing games and what it borrows it does well for the most part. The best part is that they brought in car tuning and which will have you tuning your car for each race type for good lenghts of time trying to perfect the control and feel of your car to tune it best for the different types of tracks that are available. The city is a great addition, despite what others have said. It's gives you a break from the constant racing to just drive around and take in the scenes, learn to drive your car properly. You can also perform an "outrun" which is trying to pull a certain amount of distance ahead of the opponent cars that are littered throughout the map. Once you tell them you want to challenge them to an outrun by pulling up behind them and hitting the engage key, you drive around the city trying to pull ahead enough distance to win which earns you a bit of cash on teh side from the main races. NFSU2 doesn't totally bow to arcade gameplay mechanics but it does not have damage modelling and hitting walls doesn't reduce your speed as drastically if you bump them at certain angles, you will stop dead if you hit them head on. My only complaint is the AI, and lack of new game modes. They got to start pushing the series in new directions while maintaining what makes the series good. Midnight Club 2 is an example of how racing games can evolve beyond circular tracks and number of laps. Check it out as well if you find you like NFSU 2. CONS: -Some of the graphics and textures are very pixelated and blocky on the PC since this game is ported from the console versions of the game. -The car AI is adjustable, but even on medium setting not all too challenging, you can change the difficulty in the in game meu options though. -The color pallete is OK in size but not great, you can't make your own colors yet, but the colors that are there are fairly well designed, but it'd be great if you could adjust and mix your own colors. Especially since this is the PC version, we should have access to all 16.7 million colors available in 24/32Bit color -I only wish there were more parts, like hoods, bumpers, vinyls, stickers, and other stuff you can put on your car, you can spend an hour just trying to find the right combination of parts, vynals, logos and stickers and colors for your car, the decals and vinyls. -Very few entirely NEW game modes, especially when you compare it to a game like Midnight Club 2. -The soundtrack is a pretty mixed bag and is inconsistent in the genres they pull the music from, you'll end up shutting off a few songs permanently because they are that annoying. I really dislike the fact they are trying to take music from musicious instead of designing the music around and FOR the game, instead of trying to help advertise bad muscisians and artists music. -No damage modelling -Some of the racing events gets repetitive after a while, you'll likely stick to the ones your good at to advance the game. -No profiles for making templates for all cars. -Not enough game types, no real advances in the genre compared to Midnight club 2. Pro's: -Cars look fantastic on Modern 3D accelerators - Geforce FX and 9800 Pro's and up. -Car physics is Arcadey but only in that it's easy to get back into the race after hitting or scrapping walls. -Big city to drive around, outrun is fun driving around that huge city. -Racing events are fun, and so is tuning your car for each type of events tracks. -The number of graphics, colors, and modifications you can make to the cars are bigger then last years game. (If only they had more!!) -You can tune your car's driving characteristics in real time from the menu on the Dyno track, so you can REALLY tell the difference RIGHT AWAY, without losing how the car felt with the prior settings.

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