Need For Speed Most Wanted review (Xbox 360)

Welcome to Fairhaven, a city with beautiful surroundings, ample highway routes, off-road obstacle paths, busy urban environments, and much, much more. This serves as the setting for the latest reincarnation of Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Following last year’s mediocre “The Run”, Criterion has set its sights on overtaking its previous iteration and well acclaimed “Hot Pursuit” – But has it?

Assists off

Ditching the cinematic storyline driven gameplay, Criterion have stripped down Most Wanted to the bones and built it right back up. The main goal of the game is to be the Most Wanted illegal street car racer. Breaking the law by evading police, destroying property or winning illegal race events earns you Speed points. Speed points unlock new opponents on a hierarchy of the top Most Wanted drivers. This gameplay brings back a feeling of nostalgia that we’ve missed from NFS titles for so long.

Easy Drive

The first thing you’ll notice is the completely revamped menu system, called “Easy Drive”. When roaming the streets you can quickly select new races, cars and customization by simply accessing it on the top left-hand corner of the screen. A more advanced menu housing Location Maps, Multiplayer Modes, and Games Settings can all be found in your pause menu. This system works well for quick, distraction-free driving.

Car Jacking

Another change to Most Wanted is a new garage system – or lack thereof. Criterion has adopted a feature called “Jack Spots” where you’ll find over 50 vehicles scattered around Fairhaven. Once you’ve spotted a vehicle you simply “Jack it” and drive off – unlocking that particular vehicle for the entire game.

Races differ from car to car; each car has its own set of challenges unlocking new custom parts. Finding these vehicles is fun but unfortunately having all the cars readily available creates a lack of accomplishment and no sense of reward.

The Joyride

Graphically the cars look remarkable and they sound the part too. The cars feel well simulated; they feel weighted and very realistic for an “arcade” racer. The only thing that disappointed me was the lack of car customizability. Adding overall tweaks rather than over the top modding.

Jumping up a series dirt ramps or tapping the brake to correctly drift around a highway bend at 250km/h is effortless but requires some luck on the busy roads. This combination of great looks and even better handling makes racing addictive and extremely engaging.

Action!

The special effects are amped up as well, from the familiar slow motion collision shots to improved tyre smoke billowing from the tyre wells on acceleration. The overall vehicle damage models look superb. I was surprised when doing a burnout for too long that my tyres popped as I continued to spin on the rims. There seems to be a more realistic and well-polished finish.

5-0, 5-0

What would Most Wanted be without cops? Evading the authorities requires a considerable amount of skill and smart thinking. Sliding your mud covered Range Rover from dirt to road in search for hidden alleyways and underground parking is the stuff of movies.

Online

Online racing offers a very unique online experience. This is where Most Wanted makes more sense. Driving around in an ecosystem of illegal street racers, you can partake in various events by driving to specific meet ups. Fairview seems more alive knowing all the drivers indicated on your HUD are actual players.

There are other challenges as well such as “highest speeds past traffic cameras”, as well as “Billboards”. Billboards are a cool new feature where smashing through them posts a picture of yourself on it until another person or friend does the same, thus creating exciting rivalry between friends to see who can be on more Billboards.

1st Place Qualifier

To avoid the redundancy faced by racing genres, Need for Speed has always brought innovation and forward thinking – some good and others… not so good. What Criterion has done with Most Wanted was a reboot of a popular title that many still favour to this day. By mixing it up with new features and old-school thrills, Criterion has done a stellar job at bringing back the Need for Speed we all love to play.