The hit arcade series strikes again with a vengeance in Need for Speed:
Underground, brought to you by the developers at Electronic Arts. The
latest in the constantly evolving series attempts to bring the world of underground
street racing into your home. The team at Electronic Arts has taken everything
people loved about the Fast N’ the Furious movies and jammed them into NFS:
U for you to enjoy. No longer will you be racing around the world in the hottest
cars Ferrari has to offer, all the while being chased by cops; this latest installment
transports you to the gritty inner city streets and your cars to race are now
Dodge Neon’s, Mazda Miata’s, Honda Civic’s and if you progress Integra Type
R’s, and Nissan Skyline’s. Will Need For Speed: Underground be able to keep
its winning formula together in such a new setting?

Gameplay
The single player mode takes your car and driver to the gritty streets ready
to conquer the underground scene and make a name for yourself. You compete in
5 different types of challenges as you progress and unlock new tracks and upgrades
throughout out the game. The 5 challenges are as follows: Circuit, where you
race around the track for a certain number of laps; Sprint, which forces you
to take first place in a one lap dash for the finish; Drag, where you no longer
get the luxury of automatic transmission and must race to the finish in a normally
straight line where shifting gears correctly matters most; Drift, where you
head around a small track attempting to force your car to swerve or “drift”
around turns, the larger the drifts the better points you accumulate; Knockout,
where you race 3 laps and the last car to complete each lap is removed from
the competition.

While storming the underground scene of street racing you are constantly acquiring
reputation points, your reputation points are what allows for new items to be
unlocked for you to upgrade your car. The way in which reputation works in Need
For Speed: Underground is similar to that of the kudos system in other titles,
the more stylistic maneuvers and close calls you have during a challenge, the
more points you acquire. While you play through the game gaining upgrades to
your car visually and performance wise, your reputation meter will grow. The
meter is what keeps track of how many stars you have accumulated, with 5 being
max. Whenever the reputation bar fills completely you gain one new star, the
more stars you have the larger the multiplier will be at the end of the race
for your accumulated points.

The upgrading system in the game allows you to take your nice Dodge Neon and
turn it into a tricked out, furious racing machine. Upgrades come in two fashions,
visual and performance, each allowing you to add or upgrade the parts on your
car accordingly. Visual upgrades include special rims, spoilers, body kits,
headlights, roof scoops, paint jobs, decals and vinyls. While they have no affect
on how my car performed, it often became the most important thing to upgrade
to me, constantly changing the look of my car. Each visual upgrade you purchase
becomes unlocked in split screen mode so you and your friends can each customize
cars to your liking and race each other, meaning only one person has to progress
through the story driven portion to unlock goods for the casual players.

The performance upgrades are where you take your average car and make it a
monster on the track. There is a total of 9 upgrades under the performance section,
each with 3 levels to upgrade. Your car begins at the stock rating and later
can upgrade its parts to the level of street performance, pro performance and
finally extreme performance. The 9 categories are Engine / Exhaust, Drive train,
Tires, ECU / Fuel System, Turbo, Brake Kits, Weight Reduction, Suspension and
the infamous Nitrous Oxide, or NOS. In the order they are mentioned is the order
in which you unlock various levels of the upgrades, leaving NOS as the final
for you to get.

Multiplayer
In standard Electronic Arts fashion, the Xbox version features no online component
to allow for future upgrades or racing via the internet. Need for Speed: Underground
does however allow for split screen play between two people. In split screen
the specialized cars that have been unlocked are now playable as well as any
saved cars from the active profile. While its fun to race against your friends
in this mode, I was disappointed to see there was no way to add computer opponents
to the split screen race for competition. The only options you are given in
split screen are to change the amount of traffic on the course, and how many
laps each race is.

Graphics

Graphically, Need For Speed: Underground is an impressive title with style.
The cars all feature their own upgrades, meaning the specialized rims, brake
clips, tinting, and neon lighting all show as you race through the streets.
The developers over at Electronic Arts really captured the feel of The Fast
N’ the Furious movies and placed it in a game. The various designs for
the cars, both pre made and assortment of vinyls for you to create your own
design, all have a great sense of style to them. The variety of designs EA put
into NFS:U allows for anyone to create a design satisfactory to their liking.

The tracks in NFS:U are nicely textured giving everything a gloss over feel,
the cars as well as the track all seem to shine as if it just finished raining.
The layout of the courses often allow you to keep up major speed while navigating
them, what good would a car that can go 180mph be if it had to brake at every
turn? Many of the levels, if not all, contain various shortcuts that can be
taken to get an edge on your opponents; they will however also take these shortcuts.
The tracks in NFS: U have you racing through the gritty city streets, construction
yards, water ways and even over a bridge or two. The only major problem with
this title starts and ends here, the tracks are horribly repetitive. You end
up with the feeling that the title was rushed because its lack of scenery, while
what is there is nice, its there to often. As you progress through the game
you are often racing through the same locations you were just the race before
it. The taking of a larger city and just cutting it up into various pieces for
racing was a nice idea, perhaps the city just needs to be a little larger to
compensate.

Need for Speed Underground Screenshot

[ Additional Screenshots Temporarily Unavailable, Sorry. ]

Audio
The sounds of burning rubber as two cars peel off and down the track at 180mph,
engines roaring as you shift gears and finally kick in your Nitrous Oxide for
a burst past the competition. The sounds of the cars are a great addition to
the game and way to pull players into the action, NFS: U is loud and action
packed. In true arcade fashion you find yourself turning corners at lightning
speed and hearing the tires screeching throughout it all. The music is also
a great addition, though the title only features 26 tracks from various professional
artists, they are however great songs to race to. With the game featuring over
100 races to compete in, you do however get a little tired of listening to the
same 26 songs.

Replay Value
This is really a mix. While I found myself wanting to play the game more, mainly
for its sense of style and good music, I did not want to play through the 100+
races again. Unfortunately with the game being an EA title it doesn’t
offer any online modes, something that would have expanded it’s life span greatly.
While you can always play through the game again to pick other upgrades, try
a different car at different stages of the game, or even just to get more of
the unique upgrades, the incentive wasn’t there for me to sit through the title
for another go around.

Reviewer's Additional Comments
Need for Speed: Underground is a great addition to the arcade racing genre,
bringing what we have seen in the movies directly into our homes. A Fast N the
Furious like racing game is well over due, and it’s well done by the Electronic
Arts team. The variety of car designs and upgrades make the game fun to play
and upgrading your car to show off is even more fun.

Along with the good however comes the bad. I often found myself getting extremely
annoyed at parts when the computer seems to work as a team to stop you from
winning. I have had cars come to complete stops on the open highway in front
of me, slam into cars causing road blocks, and simply try to knock me off a
bridge. While its good fun to brawl it out a little, I couldn’t help but
get frustrated at times, its pretty annoying to race 6 laps and have a car brake
in front of you at the last minute to mess you up, just to have to race those
6 laps over gain. My only other gripe comes in some of the physics; my car would
often brush against a wall for a brief second, yet come to a complete stop from
it, 170mph-0 instantly, now that is amazing.

Overall Score
Overall Score: 7/10 [Not an Average]

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