Reviewed: December 6, 2005
Reviewed by: Mark Smith

Publisher
Electronic Arts

Developer
EA Canada

Released: November 15, 2005
Genre: Racing
Players: 1-2
ESRB: Teen

9
9
8
9
9.0

Supported Features:

Most Wanted was a massive cross-platform title, released for every handheld, console, and even the PC. The game hit stores about a week before the Xbox 360 did so a lot of people got a taste of the gameplay before those who were waiting for this ultimate version. I took a brief look at the normal Xbox version and frankly wasn’t impressed. The graphics were muddy and blocky, and the framerate was horrible. It was nearly a PS1 game if you ask me.

So I sat back with my Xbox 360 copy and patiently waited for my system to arrive and wow, am I glad I did. Need for Speed Most Wanted on the Xbox 360 is so far ahead of the rest that it looks like an entirely new game. I can’t help but think the design team started with this version and ported it down to the lesser systems.

The Need for Speed series has been in existence for as long as I can remember. I think I have a few NFS games on 5.25” floppies, but that probably says more about my age than the age of the series. While the Underground games took us into the world of street racing there is no deny the original roots of the series that was founded with exotic sports cars and high speed cop chases.

Most Wanted retains just enough of the tuner scene to appease the car customizing appetites of Underground fans while bringing back the threat of ruthless cop chases, heavy fines, and even having your car impounded. Most Wanted is Need for Speed at its finest moment, and the Xbox 360 is the system you want to play it on.

Sadly, the cutscenes and the story itself are rather imbalanced. The first hour of the game is practically all cutscenes, then about 3-4 hours into the game you have another cutscene then there is nothing for 20-30 more hours until the very end of the game. But even when the cutscenes are gone the story is still being told through numerous phone calls via the Cingular interface.

And therein lies much of Most Wanted’s appeal. The game just oozes with presentation and puts you in the now, atypical role of street racer who starts at the top with the best and fastest car, loses it all, and has to start at the bottom and work their way back up to the top. It’s definitely smacks of L.A. Rush but with more style.

So one day you breeze into town in your cool silver and blue BMW M3 and start blowing away racers until you go up against Razor. This guy is dirty and sabotages your car causing you to lose the race and your pink slip. He then uses your car to make his way up to the #1 spot on the Most Wanted Black List.

With the help of sexy street racer Mia, you get back on your feet, purchase a new low-end ride and have to work your way up the list of 15 Black List racers until you can face off against Razor once and for all. Yes, it’s a clichéd story, and the acting is atrociously bad (or campy) with huge over-the-top performances that smack of intentional B-movie quality. The only performance I found remotely serious was Josie Maran and most of that was probably me being blinded by her sheer beauty and costume choices.

The structure of Most Wanted is really clever. In order to race each of the 15 most wanted you have to meet a certain criteria of racing events, milestone challenges, and bounty points. Each racer has his own chapter with his or her own set of events. There might be ten racing events and you are required to race in eight of them to meet the requirement.

Bounty is accrued by running from the cops and breaking the law. As you continue to break the law and avoid the police your wanted level will slowly rise. This wanted level is associated with your car and can be lowered by changing the body parts, painting the car, or applying new vinyls. You can also switch to another car and your old car’s wanted level will slowly go down when the cops stop seeing it on the street.

Racing events come in several flavors including the Knockout Race where the last-place racer on each lap is removed from the race, the Speed Trap challenge where you must pass through a series of cameras and your speed at the moment your photo is snapped is added. The car with the highest cumulative speed through all the cameras wins. Then you have the Toll Booth challenge where you must drive through a series of toll booths within the time limit, standard Drag Races where manual shifting and fast-reflex lane changing is vital, multi-lap Circuit Races, and Sprint races from point A to B.

Milestones are probably some of the most fun you can have in Most Wanted. They all involve cops and breaking the law in an ever-increasing scale. Within each chapter there are three or four camera challenges that require you to achieve a certain speed before you hit the camera position, but the true challenges are the ones with actual cops.

My favorite aspect of this is that you can combine these milestones, and I often tried to do all of them in a single run. Of course this isn’t always possible as some objectives might conflict such as maintain a pursuit for longer than seven minutes and losing the cops in less than three minutes. Obviously, that is impossible.

But a good example of combining challenges would be this scenario where you have challenges like; Hitting 25 police cars, causing $100,000 worth of damage to the city, costing the cops $200,000 to chase you, avoiding 10 roadblocks, avoiding 6 spike strips, and making the chase last longer than 7 minutes. Each of those items is its own milestone, but there is no reason to do them separately. In fact, many of these objectives go together.

Spike strips aren’t even used until the chase has escalated to level 4 and by that time you have probably already tagged the required police cars. Plus avoiding spike strips also doubles as dodged roadblocks. And by the time you have avoided the cops for 7 minutes those damage and cop cost milestones are likely covered.

Running from the cops is a huge part of the game and probably the most fun you can have. I would often curse the cop’s stupidity when I would actually lose them and be forced to turn around and tease them back into the pursuit to keep my milestones going, but once you get your wanted level up there and the chase has escalated to level 3 or higher you have some real intense moments ahead of you.

Pursuit is ranked from one to five; although it does go to an insane level six for the very final climactic chase at the end of the game. New things start to happen as the levels go up. At level 3 they bring out the Rhino squad, large 4WD trucks that like to ram you head on, and roadblocks are setup. At level 4 the spike strips come out and helicopter units start to circle above. At level 5 Detective Cross and his unit of C6 Corvette squad cars join the pursuit and things get really tough.

Perhaps the most challenging aspect of the milestones is that none of them count unless you can escape the cops when you have accomplished everything you set out to do, and at level four and five that gets progressively harder to do. At the lower chase levels you can easily outrun the cops with a fast car and some slick turns down side streets. Hide in a tunnel or car wash and wait for things to cool down.

When things escalate to level four or five you have to get sneakier and start using the environments. There are Pursuit Breakers indicated on the map as orange triangles. These represent environmental hazards that you can race through triggering events to lose the cops. You can bring down a radio tower, crash some scaffolding, level a water tower, topple a sailboat, or blow-up a gas station just to name a few. If timed properly you can lose many or even all of the pursing cops.

Once the cops have lost you there is a “cool down” period based on what level the chase was at when you lost them. At level one you can cool down in about 20 seconds while level four and five cool downs can take a minute or more. During this time the cops will go into a realistic search pattern and if the chopper was involved it will be flying overhead looking for you as well. Hiding from patrol cars means just keeping out of sight on a side street or alley, while hiding from the chopper requires a tunnel or building; something with a roof.

There are also specific cool down zones that will appear on the map as blue circles during this time. It’s up to you whether you want to risk driving to one of these or finding your own hiding place. If you can make it to a cool down zone you can end the pursuit much quicker. Needless to say, the intensity of ending these pursuits is some of the most tense and enjoyable moments I have ever experience in my 25 years of gaming. It’s the ultimate game of hide and seek.

If you do get busted you can either pay the fine or use a “get out of jail” marker. Either way, you get an impound strike against your car and once you get three strikes your car is impounded until you pay all outstanding fines. If you can’t afford the fines and don’t have another car it’s Game Over.

During the course of completing the required races and milestones you will inevitably earn plenty of bounty points, but if for some reason you haven’t met the required bounty by the time your other requirements are met you have a menu of cop-infested hot spots where you can earn some more “respect”.

As you rise through the Black List the bosses get tougher and the challenges required to race them increase in number and difficulty. By the time you get back to Razor you will have your work cut out for you, but even with the limited race and milestone challenges, the game never gets repetitive, even when trying numerous times for the same challenge.

When you defeat each member of the Black List you get two random drawings for prizes. These are divided into categories that range from unique performance and visual parts to bonus cash and even the pink slip to the racer you just beat. Even if you don’t like their car you can always sell it off for loads of cash.

There is a substantial upgrade system in place, that while not nearly as comprehensive as NFSUG, is more than enough for a game that focuses more on racing. Whereas visual upgrades earned you “respect” in NFSUG, here they lower your wanted level with the cops. Your respect with the rival racers is directly proportional to your current bounty level.

Performance upgrades are unlocked as you make your way through the story and there are even secret “back room” specialty parts that you can unlock. You need to continually upgrade your car and even purchase new cars to keep yourself competitive as you rise through the Black List.

By design, some race events have various levels of cop awareness, so you might find yourself having to dodge the law even after winning a race. Then you also have to worry about attracting the attention of the cops while just driving around to the various flags that indicate the available events. For those who want to avoid this hassle you can always opt to return to your safe house (provided you aren’t in a chase) and pick your next event from the menu and warp to that location without the risk of driving across the map.

There is a massive selection of cars, mostly high performance and exotics. Thankfully the SUV’s and other novelty rides are gone. I started with the Lexus IS300 and moved on to the Toyota Supra, but once you win (or buy) the Lamborghini Gallardo and fully upgrade it you have little reason to drive anything else. Sure, you can build cars with equal stats but none look or handle better than the Gallardo. In fact, the only time I switched to another car was when my heat level got too high.

Speaking of shadows, you are in for a real treat on the Xbox 360 with totally real-time and dynamic shadows that are created by the sun and cast by trees, buildings, and even the helicopters overhead. Trees sway in the breeze and the shadows move accordingly.

As you might expect, there are several racing views to choose from, and while there is no cockpit view like the one found in PGR3, there is a remarkable hood view that puts a very nice reflective hood in the foreground. These change with your paint and vinyl applications and reflect the environment in real-time.

There is also a dynamic weather system in place where it will start and stop raining, often during the same race or chase sequence. During these storms the streets will get wet and slick and start to reflect your surroundings and droplets will splash the screen. Then they will dry out after the rain stops.

Even after 30 hours of racing in Rockport I was still discovering new areas of this massive city. I can’t even imagine the scale and level of detail the designers put into this game. You have multi-lane highways that circle the entire city, cloverleaf interchanges, the skyscraper district, the docks, the seaside amusement park, the warehouse district, and so many more. You’ll have to fight the irresistible urge to simply drive around and sightsee.

The numerous tracks are intelligently incorporated into these real-world settings and there are clever shortcuts in place whether that might be a trip through the bus station or a massive jump over the docks or narrow path through the forest, or even a trip across a golf course. Learning these shortcuts is imperative to winning races and losing the cops.

Most Wanted supports all the high-def modes but looks amazing at 1080i. Sadly, with all of the advanced lighting and shadows the game only runs at 30fps, which is still pretty good until you compare it to Ridge Racer 6 running at 60fps. The draw distance is great and there are impressive special effects and cool camera angles when you go into Speedbreaker slow-motion, catch some big air, or smash through a roadblock. This game is just packed with “wow” moments.

Truly, the game shines during the chases with some of the best and most authentic cop chatter in the history of gaming. EA went to several law enforcement agencies and learned the actual codes and procedures used for pursuit and it’s all incorporated into this game with total perfection. You can hear the cops talking to other cops, dispatch, the eye in the sky, and they will even yell at you to pull over with their PA.

The rest of the voice performance is mainly a showcase for Josie Maran who sounds as sexy as she looks. While I prefer to watch her strut across my screen in the cutscenes, I was always looking forward to her frequent phone calls between races. The other racers will also call in and taunt you, Cross will call and threaten you, and Razor is always talking smack, especially as you close in on his spot on the Black List.

Sound effects are amazing with unique engines noises, the hiss of turbo chargers, the shifting of gears, the explosion of a blown engine, the crunch of metal on metal, the roar as a water tower collapses on a fleet of cop cars, the shattering of glass as you smash through the front of the mall and race through the shops, or the futuristic swoosh as you invoke the Speedbreaker slow-motion mode to wind through traffic or navigate an impossible turn.

For those looking to improve their online rep, there are 1000 Achievement points that you can earn by completing the story mode. Those are divided among the 15 members of the Black List with the tougher opponents earning you more points.

Whether you just like to tinker with a nice assortment of exotic sports cars or have a general distaste for law enforcement, there is something here to appeal to everyone including a clichéd story with campy acting and hot racing babes that are more suited to be on the hood of your car rather than driving their own. What more could you want?