Need For Speed: Most Wanted

If you can find it, you can drive it.

The latest installment of EA's Need For Speed series, Need For Speed Most Wanted takes some of the best aspects of Need For Speed and tosses in a bit of Burnout: Paradise for an experience that is all its own. And I can actually say that they took some of Burnout: Paradise due to the fact that Criterion Games, the developers behind the Burnout series has paired up with EA for this game.

The main focus of the game is the Most Wanted racers that you can work your way towards competing against. Before you can do this though, you must first gain enough Speed Points to get their attention. You earn Speed Points by competing in races, evading cops and smashing billboards & security gates. Any of this sounding familiar? That's because smashing billboards and gates was a mainstay in Burnout: Paradise.

Another thing that Criterion brought over from their series is the open world gameplay. You can go anywhere in the city that you want, and because of this, the game can cater to many different play styles. In addition to this, to start a race, you just have to pull up to the start area (usually an intersection) and spin your tires, a la Burnout Paradise.

Want to drive a new car? Just find it, and you can drive it. Unlike most racing games where you have to unlock cars by meeting certain objectives, this game unlocks all the cars from the get-go, you just have to find them first. The cars (real world cars, not fake ones like in Burnout) are scattered all over the city in Jack Spots, you just pull up to the car and 'jack' it to drive it.

Each car has its own races to complete, with each one unlocking mods for you to customize your car. While this is awesome, as it allows for different play styles, it is somewhat disappointing that the only races you get to use the cars in are the few that are given to you. What if I want to use this car in that race? Nope, I can't, I have to use that car in that race. Really? Really? Come on, it's 2013, I think we can decide what cars we want to use in what race by now.

Pursuit in progress

As far as the cop chases go, they can happen pretty much at any time. If you speed past a cop, run into them (or a civilian vehicle) or even just block traffic for too long, they will start chasing you. Even if you are in the middle of a race, they can start chasing you down, and if you don't evade them before your race is over, they will just continue to chase you until you do. You can't start a race if you are being chased though, so keep that in mind.

The longer you run from the cops, or the more you run them off the road, the more intensely they will attempt to stop you. They will put up road blocks, throw out spike strips and even come after you with S.W.A.T. trucks. And let me tell you, those trucks hit you like a brick wall. Your best bet is to avoid them at all costs. To finally escape from the cops, you either have to get caught, or hide from them. One of the best ways to do this is to find a car faster than the one you are driving currently, switch to it, then drive through a repair shop to change your car color, and then just drive as far away as fast as you can.

As far as the multiplayer goes, it is some of the same, but with an added twist. But before you get to play multiplayer, you have to buy an online pass first. This in and of itself is an ordeal, especially if you have an existing Origin account that you want to use. I had one when I got the multiplayer pass purchased, but because the game was not allowing me to link an existing account, I was unable to redeem the pass. This resulted in several 3 hr long phone calls with EA/Origin Customer Support to resolve. Not fun at all.

Once I was finally able to get in to play, I was surprised to find that a lot of what was in the Burnout: Paradise multiplayer made it into this game. That won me over and made up (slightly) for the bad experience with the customer service people. There are just straight up races, both point-to-point and lapped, as well as various stunt challenges that break up the monotony. These various events are grouped into playlists for you (as a group) to play.

Any cars that you have unlocked in the single player mode carry over to multiplayer, although the mods that you are able to put on them are slightly different to begin with. Overall, multiplayer is quite fun, though it does fall victim to the same thing that the single player does: repetitiveness. The races are recycled over and over again, so you will have some repeats.

NFS:MW gets a revised rating of 7 stars

After adding the multiplayer portion of the game, Most Wanted loses a half a star to get a final rating of 7. While the game is loads of fun (I could sit there and play it for hours on end), its lack of ability to use whatever car you want for each race makes the game not as much how you want to race, but how EA/Criterion want you to race. The multiplayer portion did make up for this, but the hassle I had to go through to just access it was a nightmare. All in all, I would definitely recommend everyone who enjoys racing games to try this game at least once.

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