Need for Speed Most Wanted Review - Xbox, Xbox 360

Need for Speed Most Wanted is literally the best of all of the Need for Speed worlds. It combines the great car customization and open world of Underground with the police chases of Hot Pursuit and the solid racing gameplay that the entire series has been known for. Whether on the Xbox or Xbox 360, Need for Speed Most Wanted is a must play for race fans.

Career Mode

The main mode in Need for Speed Most Wanted is the career mode which follows your driver’s fall from the top of the street racing underground and gradual climb back up the ranks. You start out with a tricked out BMW that is the cream of the street racing crop, but an ambitious rival tampers with your car which causes you to lose the race, your car, and you end up in jail. The rest of the game focuses you earning respect and systematically racing and defeating the top 15 drivers on the Blacklist. Every time you beat a Blacklist driver you earn money, respect, new parts, new cars, and you are one step closer to getting your lovely Beamer back. There is once again a wide open city for you to explore in between races, but this time you can easily jump to the next race from the menu (you could before but it works better here).

Police Chases

As you can imagine, tearing through the city streets trying to make you way up the Blacklist attracts a lot of attention and if you aren’t careful you’ll have the cops on your tail. When you first start out, the police are pushovers. As you play, however, you’ll be faced with more police on the road, spike strips, police Corvettes, and helicopters and they get increasingly smarter and more aggressive. The police chases are made interesting by a couple of gameplay mechanics. At the bottom of the screen during a chase is a meter that shows how close you are to being arrested or evading the cops. If you can get out of visual range the meter changes to a cooldown meter and you have to try and lay low for a minute or so and the cops will give up. This creates very tense moments because you never know if a cop is going to be around the next corner and spot you. There are also things called PursuitBreakers (gas stations, water towers, etc.) and when you drive through them the police will pause for a few seconds giving you a chance to get away. Get busted too many times and the police will impound your car so it is best to have multiple cars to spread the “heat” level between them.

Great Racing

The actual racing in NFS Most Wanted is basically the same as in Underground 2 but there are a couple of key changes. The cars are now affected by weight and physics which makes controlling them through corners and powerslides a little bit trickier. The cars have a heavier and more “stuck to the road” feel to them which makes the racing more satisfying than before. The other change is that your nitrous will refill on its own and you’ll have to use it a lot more to win races this time around. There are no more silly points for sliding around and drafting or things like that. You just race the way you want and your nitrous will always be there for you. Overall, I would say Most Wanted is a faster game than Underground 2 simply because the level design is a better and you have a lot more opportunities for top speed.

Race Types

There are quite a few race types to take part in in Most Wanted. Circuit, drag, and, sprint races are exactly like they were before. Knockout races eliminate the last place driver on each lap. Tollbooth races are against the clock and have you tearing from one end of the map to the other as quickly as possible. Speed trap races put speed cameras at various points on the course and you get points for driving as fast as possible through them. Whoever has the most points/went the fastest at the speed cameras wins even if they don’t cross the finish line first. All in all, the available race modes are pretty decent and all of them have a fairly different feel to them. I’m a little sad to see the drift events go, but this isn’t supposed to be Underground 3 so I can understand why they were taken out.