Need for Speed Undercover: Complete trash

[NFS4]

I just recently bought Midnight Club: LA for my PS3 and have thoroughly enjoyed it -- I'm a sucker for racing games. So I've been seeing all the NUMEROUS commercials for NFS Undercover on Comedy Central for the past few weeks and thought that it might actually be kinda cool.

Well, I checked the reviews this morning and it appears to be a steaming pile of dog shit:

IGN

The end result, however, is a game that has practically zero redeeming qualities. It fails on almost every front and is a major step backwards not only for the franchise, but racing games in general. With Burnout Paradise having been out forever (and supported incredibly well by Criterion) and Midnight Club: Los Angeles having just shipped recently, the competition is very strong, leaving no reason whatsoever to choose Undercover over either of the aforementioned titles.

http://xbox360.ign.com/articles/931/931143p1.html

GamePro

THE BOTTOM LINE: Friends don't let friends play Need for Speed: Undercover. Mediocre racing and tacky styling leave it stuck in neutral, gunning its engine while going absolutely nowhere. While a long campaign mode and intriguing new experience system get the pistons pumping, everything grinds to a halt when the rubber hits the road in the worst installment of the series in recent memory. It's the video game equivalent of test driving a brand new Lamborghini only to have the engine overheat and the tires go flat as soon as you get on the freeway. Too bad the gaming equivalent of AAA doesn't exist; that way, if you're unlucky enough to buy this game, you could get a little roadside assistance.

http://www.gamepro.com/article...ndercover-page-1-of-2/

 

[raystorm]

Its too bad because I thought Most Wanted was excellent all around and this game looked to be in the same spirit as that. Last year's ProStreet was pure shit and this doesn't look much better. I'll wait for more reviews and if a few say its good then I'll wait until it hits the bargain bin (ie: ebay).


btw: PS3 version scored WORSE..a 4.0!! ouch! lol..nice job EA.

 

[blurredvision]

Sad thing is, it'll still sell over a million copies like it does every holiday season. Need For Speed is one of those franchises I gave up on a long time ago when they started doing yearly releases.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Sad thing is, it'll still sell over a million copies like it does every holiday season. Need For Speed is one of those franchises I gave up on a long time ago when they started doing yearly releases.

Need for Speed was a odd-number affair for me.

NFS1: OH GOD YES
NFS2: MEH
NFS3: OH GOD MORE YES!
NFS4: MEH
NFSPU: OMG I'M GONNA EXPLODE FROM THE AWESOMENESS


I bought all of them up to Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed.

I remember BEGGING my parents to let me use my lawn cutting money to buy Road and Track Presents: Need for Speed at Sam's Club when I was a kid. I think it was $44. I had to turn the graphics way down to get it to run on my 486SX processor, but it was a LOAD of fun.

I won Need for Speed 2 from MotorTrend.com for answering some trivia questions correctly.

I bought Need for Speed 3, High Stakes, and Porsche Unleashed. I quit the series after that.

 

[RedRooster]

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Sad thing is, it'll still sell over a million copies like it does every holiday season. Need For Speed is one of those franchises I gave up on a long time ago when they started doing yearly releases.

Werd. The franchise has been irrelevant for many years really. Man, Paradise was great, and Midnight Club looks cool too.

 

[R Nilla]

They just need to make another Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed - definitely my favorite NFS title. I lost interest in the series when it turned into Underground, but Most Wanted was definitely the best of the recent crapified releases.

 

[Kabob]

Sad to hear but honestly I'm not surprised with the way the recent titles have gone.

They need to make Need for Speed: Back to the Basics or something like that.

 

[Baked]

6.7 at Gametrailers, damn that's bad, and Gametrailers usually give fairly high score to anything. The Wii version looks especially bad, makes you feel like you're playing on DS.

 

[pennylane]

Does the NFS in NFS4 stand for Need for Speed?

 

[mxyzptlk]

wait, have any of you actually played the game yet?

Why do we even bother with reviews, they're almost always bullshit. Someone at EA probably pissed off the game review mafia or didn't pay the tribute or something.

also, I always wanted something like porsche unleashed, but with ferrari's

edit:

Originally posted by: fanerman91
Does the NFS in NFS4 stand for Need for Speed?

I wondered the same.. It is a special kind of damning when the Need for Speed guy says the newest game is shit.. But not so much when that guy hasn't even played the game, he's just going off what a review said.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: fanerman91
Does the NFS in NFS4 stand for Need for Speed?

Yes, because I was a big Need for Speed fan back in the day When AnandTech was on the Bulletin Board forums, my username was NFS3. When they switched to Fusetalk, I switched to NFS4 -- at the time, it was thought that the fourth installment would be called Need for Speed 4.

When it came out, it was called Need for Speed High Stakes, but I was already used to the name

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
wait, have any of you actually played the game yet?

Why do we even bother with reviews, they're almost always bullshit. Someone at EA probably pissed off the game review mafia or didn't pay the tribute or something.

I wondered the same.. It is a special kind of damning when the Need for Speed guy says the newest game is shit.. But not so much when that guy hasn't even played the game, he's just going off what a review said.

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
I wondered the same.. It is a special kind of damning when the Need for Speed guy says the newest game is shit.. But not so much when that guy hasn't even played the game, he's just going off what a review said.

Why would I even waste money? $60 is a lot of flippin' money and no sense in wasting it. The consensus is that this game is pure trash. This was enough to sour my opinion:

Part of the reason for this is the game's complete and utter misuse of its open world setting. The major reason for having an open world is to allow gamers to explore their environment, find new challenges, perhaps some hidden locations and generally hunt down people to race. That doesn't happen one bit in Undercover. You cannot even drive to an event to start it or enter your garage.

All of this means that unless you're running from the cops, there's absolutely no reason to drive around the city when not in an event. You can't come across any hidden events, new racers or anything of this sort. Unless just feel like testing out your ride or just feel like exploring, there's no reason to drive around on your own.

The open world setting is also ignored in many of the game's events. When you take part in any standard race, the game closes off the streets so that you can only drive on the correct route. It's the game's way of putting you in a pre-defined track and not letting you veer from the beaten path. While transparent arrow walls would have been fine, this restricts not only you and your competition, but the traffic to the set race course as well. In other words, there's no cross traffic to deal with. How can you have an open world game and not have any cross traffic to contend with in races?

This brings me to my next issue - the game is incredibly easy. It was fairly often that I'd win events by a good 20 seconds or so, and I'd have the worst car in the pack. In fact, I've been able to smoke a lineup of Lamborghinis and Corvettes with an Audi TT, and that should never happen. If your car's ratings are half of what your competition has, you can probably win with ease.

While the gameplay is a big miss, the graphics don't help the case either. The game is very bland looking, with only reasonably detailed cars and a city that almost entirely lacks a sense of life.

Even given the overall lack of detail, the game doesn't run all that well. The framerate on the Xbox 360 stays somewhat consistent, though it isn't nearly as fast as it should be. Putting this side by side with Burnout or the latest Midnight Club simply makes it look like a joke. Burnout runs at 60fps, while Midnight Club features a city bustling with life (and still manages to run better).

There are also graphical issues with the game that extend beyond the framerate and overall visual style. Shadows are particularly peculiar. At some spots, they'll stay put, but at other times the angle of the shadows is directly tied to your current speed. If you stop moving, so will the shadows. If you move, either forwards or backwards, the shadows will start creeping across the city relative to your speed. In other words, if you move slow, they crawl, but if you're going fast they're blazing over the street and across objects. It looks very odd and out of place.

If you would still buy the game after that, well that's your loss I'd understand your complaint if this was just one review, but this speaks for itself:

http://www.metacritic.com/sear...ercover&ty=3&x=28&y=19

 

[blurredvision]

Originally posted by: mxyzptlk
wait, have any of you actually played the game yet?

Why do we even bother with reviews, they're almost always bullshit. Someone at EA probably pissed off the game review mafia or didn't pay the tribute or something.

No, I haven't played the game, but when reviewers widely pan the game, you don't have to play it.

 

[thegimp03]

Originally posted by: NFS4

Originally posted by: blurredvision
Sad thing is, it'll still sell over a million copies like it does every holiday season. Need For Speed is one of those franchises I gave up on a long time ago when they started doing yearly releases.

Need for Speed was a odd-number affair for me.

NFS1: OH GOD YES
NFS2: MEH
NFS3: OH GOD MORE YES!
NFS4: MEH
NFSPU: OMG I'M GONNA EXPLODE FROM THE AWESOMENESS


I bought all of them up to Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed.

I remember BEGGING my parents to let me use my lawn cutting money to buy Road and Track Presents: Need for Speed at Sam's Club when I was a kid. I think it was $44. I had to turn the graphics way down to get it to run on my 486SX processor, but it was a LOAD of fun.

I won Need for Speed 2 from MotorTrend.com for answering some trivia questions correctly.

I bought Need for Speed 3, High Stakes, and Porsche Unleashed. I quit the series after that.

RT: Need for Speed was one of my favorite games. It was really hard to split my time between that game and Goldeneye on N64 back in the day. You pretty much got out on top with the series, except that NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 was an awesome game, and I'd go back and play it again if it wasn't 6 years old.

I wish they'd go back to that and make a Hot Pursuit 3, or even a <insert exotic automaker name here> Unleashed that would bring back the players who were around playing the series back in 2000 and loved Porsche Unleashed (I'm one of them).

Looks like Undercover is going to blow. I won't waste my time with this one, maybe I'll get Midnight Club LA instead.

 

[AstroManLuca]

No kidding. A lot of series these days have decided to "go back to their roots" when they find themselves stuck in a rut, and it often works out well. NFS:MW was probably the most-liked installment since HP2, because it got back to the old cop chases (even if they weren't quite the same as in the old games, with you controlling the police car, not the guy being chased). Carbon de-emphasized chases and ProStreet eliminated them entirely. I'm not sure where they're going with Undercover... sounds like they're trying to capitalize on the hype around the new Fast and the Furious movie, which looks like it'll have a similar "undercover cop working the street racing scene" plot (just like the first and second movies in the FnF series). But I don't know.

The fact is, Midnight Club and Burnout Paradise are both much better arcade racers. And obviously it'll never be a sim racer. So the only place for it is in the semi-sim category, and only because there haven't been many recent games in that category (GRiD and PGR4 were the last ones). But ProStreet tried to do that and it did poorly. The very last thing they can go for is the story-driven racing game, but they're just too cheesy for people to care. Where Most Wanted's FMV cutscenes were so bad they were good, I think Undercover's will be so bad that they're just bad.

 

[NFS4]

Originally posted by: thegimp03


I wish they'd go back to that and make a Hot Pursuit 3, or even a <insert exotic automaker name here> Unleashed that would bring back the players who were around playing the series back in 2000 and loved Porsche Unleashed (I'm one of them).

I'd kill for Ferrari Unleashed or BMW Unleashed if they used the same formula as Porsche Unleashed. That was such a good game.

 

[BoberFett]

Originally posted by: NFS4 <----------
I'm a sucker for racing games.

You don't say...

 

[Oyeve]

The last playable NFS game was Most Wanted. After that is been shit al the way. I was hoping NFSU would bring it back but it appears it won't. Anyway, I will wait for a demo or a real players feedback.

 

[Kabob]

Originally posted by: Oyeve
The last playable NFS game was Most Wanted. After that is been shit al the way. I was hoping NFSU would bring it back but it appears it won't. Anyway, I will wait for a demo or a real players feedback.

The name NSFU I'd associate with Underground/2. We need a new awesome abbreviation for Undercover...

 

[R Nilla]

Originally posted by: kabob983

Originally posted by: Oyeve
The last playable NFS game was Most Wanted. After that is been shit al the way. I was hoping NFSU would bring it back but it appears it won't. Anyway, I will wait for a demo or a real players feedback.

The name NSFU I'd associate with Underground/2. We need a new awesome abbreviation for Undercover...

NFSUC(k)?

 

[AstroManLuca]

Originally posted by: kabob983

Originally posted by: Oyeve
The last playable NFS game was Most Wanted. After that is been shit al the way. I was hoping NFSU would bring it back but it appears it won't. Anyway, I will wait for a demo or a real players feedback.

The name NSFU I'd associate with Underground/2. We need a new awesome abbreviation for Undercover...

NFPOS?

I remember people referring to NFSMW as NFSBK due to the incredible amount of Burger King ads in it. But that was a good game.

 

[Kabob]

Originally posted by: R Nilla

Originally posted by: kabob983

Originally posted by: Oyeve
The last playable NFS game was Most Wanted. After that is been shit al the way. I was hoping NFSU would bring it back but it appears it won't. Anyway, I will wait for a demo or a real players feedback.

The name NSFU I'd associate with Underground/2. We need a new awesome abbreviation for Undercover...

NFSUC(k)?

Works for me!

 

[Oyeve]

NFSUCrap

 

[geokilla]

This can't be true right? Undercover looked so good in the trailers. I'm gonna get it for PS2 and see what happens...

Btw, ProStreet was the first NFS game I DIDN'T beat. My favourite game is Most Wanted. Damn the cops were so hard.

 

[JoPh]

nfs underground was my favorite.