MCP REVIEW: NEED FOR SPEED UNDERCOVER

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ESRB RATING: Teen
DEVELOPER: Black Box
PUBLISHER: EA

Need for Speed Undercover is a weird game for me. I attended a community day for it barely even knowing what game it was for, and saw a very early version of it that actually managed to impress me. See, I'm not a big fan of the series and especially where it's gone in the last few iterations. I can care less about more realistic racing... fuck picking what spoilers you can buy for the car or how much you can tweak the shocks. If I play a racer I want two things- an insane sense of speed and the ability to smash my opponents off the road. Burnout Paradise fulfilled this for me in spades, but when I saw that Need for Speed Undercover was heading to an open world format filled with the cop chases that were so much fun in the old games... I had faith that this could be a contender.

I was wrong.
 
THE PITCH

You play as a nameless undercover cop who's trying to take down a gang of car thieves. If it weren't for some terrible FMV you wouldn't know any of this, because all you're doing is racing. Racing, and running from the cops, and racing some more.

The story is told in some incredibly overacted full motion video scenes where actors are looking at the camera screaming at "you", trying to act badass. But really, these are some of the most laughable bad guys ever. The main bad guy in the game is probably the lamest villain since that dude in Bad Boys 2. The game's got some "star power" with Maggie Q (most people know her as the girl in MI:3, I guess) who plays your connection to the police and Christina Milian who stars as your hot yet very dumb love interest.
 

But the worst part about all of the FMV sequences is that they feel completely removed from the gameplay. You never feel like you're actually playing out the story, or even racing against the same people from the videos. They pop up seemingly at random and never connect to each other, adding nothing to the gameplay with the most standard undercover cop plot around. These were supposed to be created with a Hollywood crew, and this is what they came up with? It'd be embarrassing if it weren't so laughable. The story also probably has the most obvious twist in videogamedom... no easy feat.
 
THE PLAY
 
The best part of the game is undoubtedly how the cars control. It's not realistic (thankfully), but it's an arcade-y style that allows you to easily pull off burnouts, 360s, spins, and all sorts of fun moves. It's fun to dance your car around and quickly reverse, but you really won't get to play with it as much as you'd like.

The game shuns the last iteration (Prostreet) and its reliance on just standard, realistic racing, going back to an open world environment. You can drive around a bit but every race that's available will be selectable at any time from your map. Many people have slammed Burnout Paradise for one reason in particular, and that is because it's impossible to just jump into a race, or easily retry one. In that game you have to drive around the world to each event. Playing this game realizes that Criterion had it right after all. By allowing us to instantly jump into a mission it has made the open world absolutely meaningless. There is absolutely no reason to drive around the place and start to learn the terrain, especially since every mission automatically blocks off your route for you. The game could have allowed you to pick your races from a menu and you'd be getting the exact same experience.

The absolute best part of the game is the return of cops. Some of the races you can choose have you racing from the pigs, trying to get away and hide down sidestreets from them till they give up on you. There are also modes where you have to knock out a certain amount of cop cars, or do as much property damage to the city as possible... which just has you knocking out cop cars since there's nothing else besides some street signs that you can crash into. They're fun but get irritating for reasons we'll get into later.

There are some other interesting things it does, such as its RPG-style leveling system. You can level up your skills by dominating a course (beating it under a certain time) that's intended to make you try your best at every little race. But for every thing the game does right there are a ton of issues that emerge, like how there's hardly any traffic, or how cops stick to your ass like glue. That last one's one of the most infuriating. The game gets downright cheap towards the end, and you'll find that it's impossible to evade the cops no matter what you do. Even if you're blazing down the road during 240 with a Lamborghini they can somehow keep up, and the only way to stop them is to knock something in their way. You'll run across structures piled up with pipes and logs and other things that you can smash into to knock on any pursuers, and it ends up being the only thing that you can use to stop anyone chasing you. So instead of performing awesome maneuvers you'll end up just checking the map for the closest thing you can smash into.
 

You can upgrade and tweak your car to your little heart's content, and thankfully they included quick upgrades for people like me who could care less. But the microtransactions in this game are absolutely ridiculous. For every single item in the game that you can buy for your car, you're offered the opportunity to use cash that you've won in the game, or simply spend microsoft points (or simply your credit card if you use PS3) to unlock it. For every. Single. Thing.

Sure, it's entirely optional, but it's annoying to have it constantly hanging in front of your face like that.


THE PRESENTATION
 
Due to a weird stylistic choice, they chose to set this game entirely during Magic Hour. For those that don't know the term, it's the time of day right near sunrise or sunset when you get those beautiful colors in the sky- and tons of films have used it for powerful scenes. It definitely makes the game look good but a racing game that alternates between bright light in your eyes and long shadows obscuring everything was perhaps not the best choice.

Plus, what kind of fucking idiots conduct all their criminal activity between 5:30 and 8 in the morning, or in the evening before it gets dark?

EA is trying to move away from the godawful EA Trax music, which is a relief. The musical selection was easily the worst part of many of their last games, and usually the first thing you went to the options to turn off. This time, the music actually ranges from average to decent. Always good to hear some MSI (which is some of the best bangin' music around). Even the few stinkers in the bunch make sense in context of the game, and there's nothing as ear-raping as the emo (and Avril Lavigne) of Burnout Paradise.

The sound effects are pretty phenomenal. When you whizz by cars you can almost FEEL them brush by you... provided you have good surround sound, of course.

 
THE REPLAY

I had to struggle to get to the end of the single player campaign without switching it off and playing something else. When you get the final achievement (ironically titled Retired) you won't ever feel like going back to it, unless you're a glutton for punishment.

The multiplayer can keep some people going, but even that's fairly gimped. It's limited to two different kinds of races, standard ones, and Cops and Robbers. Jumping into the latter is obvious, but even it's not nearly as fun as it should be.  

THE VERDICT

A great physics system can't save numerous design flaws. You will have a bit of fun with it but it's impossible to recommend this game when there's already a superior racer out there that's received incredible support from its team and doesn't try to charge you for every little extra bit of content.