| The
NFS series has been in a gauche situation for a year or two, now. The release
of Burnout Paradise posed a speck of a puzzle for the publisher. Burnout crossed
over to an open world scenario, which meant that it contended directly against
NFS for that space. Need for Speed ProStreet was a subtle change for the series
in recent years, switching to track-based racing, abundance of tuning options
and focusing totally on the events rather than exploring the city or outrunning
cops. But it didn't turn out so well, which made Black Box go back to the drawing
board and revisit an open world setting for NFS Undercover - but that wasn't
the only design change.  |
Background
uncovered?
Undercover appears to be intended for the casual market
in terms of both, presentation and a tremendously unperturbed learning curve.
However, the game ends practically as one with no abiding qualities. It botched
on almost every facade, which proved to be a major setback - Not only for the
EA, but racing genre overall. One of
the prime reasons for this is the game's absolute and sheer abuse of its open
world background. The open world basically is to permit gamers to discover their
surroundings, hit upon fresh challenges, maybe uncover a few secret locations
and most importantly stalk down others to race. But that doesn't happen one bit
in Undercover – and that too to such an extent that you even cannot drive
down yourself to an event to begin it or enter your garage. To begin an event,
you have to look it up in the overhead map, which requires a few of seconds to
load regardless of its downright simplicity. This will point up whatever your
nearest event is, or at a few instances, the subsequently major event you're supposed
to take part in. This simply means that unless you're evading the cops, there's
no reason to wander about the city when you’re not in any event. You can't come
across any hidden events, new racers or anything of this sort. Unless you feel
like testing out your ride or just feel like exploring, there's no reason to drive
around all by yourself. Piece of cake
The
open world setting is completely overlooked in most of the events. In any typical
race, the game narrows down to streets so that you can only drive on the correct
route. It seems to be the game's way of putting you in a kind of pre-defined track
setting and not letting you steer from the trodden path. Not all events are like
this, but they don't get much better either. One event type challenges you to
get out ahead of your competition and then stay there for a minute or so; once
you're able to get ahead, it's an utter piece of cake to control them, especially
if you head into the highway since they're likely to collide into oncoming traffic,
leaving you with such a enormous lead that you can come to a complete halt, start
back again and still have bounty of breathing space to finish the event. This
gets us to the game’s next major issue - the game is exceedingly easy. It is rather
often that one would win events by a good 20 seconds or even more, even if he’d
have possibly the worst car in the bunch. The game's upgrades and ordinary car
attainment system also has its dilemmas. Most of the cars are locked till you
get to definite driver level - so you’ll have to wait for them to become purchasable
even if you have cash more to get yours hands on it. The car upgrades work the
same way, however things are not unlocked in an order that makes any tangible
sense. As for your individual rating, you'll earn driver points for winning races
and performing stunts like drifts or near misses and so on. Every time you either
dominate a race or up a level, your driver ability amplifies. Many of these stats
don't make much sense to be assigned to a person. It's
worth noting that while the game holds back the smooth Autosculpt customization
feature from the last two titles, it doesn't have any effect on your performance
in the smallest of ways. Still, it’s kind-off nice to see it retain as it is a
really cool customization trait unique to the franchise. Live
(in)action One of the bigger aspects
hyped about the title since its first screening is the appearance and its live
action cut scenes. On the whole, these really fail to do what was anticipated
in a pretty big way. Most of the scenes portray one of two sequences - a horde
of jackasses in a dingy back-alley talking junk into the camera before or after
a race, or Maggie Q sitting in a room and telling you what has to be done next.
The whole thing ends up being pretty absurd - Maggie will tell you that you to
get on the inside of a racing group in order to get mud on them, and then after
a race she'll say “We have enough, let's move in”. This practically doesn’t make
any sense at all, does it? Though you do cart out missions where you steal cars,
make ‘special’ deliveries every now and again, but you never truly witness any
sequences that explain how the cops are clamping the evidence together or anything
of that sort. Like the gameplay, the
graphics are a big miss too. The game is very land looking, with only convincingly
detailed cars and a city that almost totally lacks a sagacity of life. There are
practically no pedestrians, though there's very diminutive traffic and on the
whole there's very little to convince you that people really live and work there.
While the game definitely isn't a graphics powerhouse, it does look decent at
times. The lighting design looks rather cool, though expectedly has a few issues
to be rectified. Shadows are only drawn at certain distances at times, so you'll
see them appear on building sides as you cruise along. You'll notice lit polygons
appearing at the front of your car when they should be dark, especially through
a tunnel, and its most certainly not supposed to be your headlights. It's just
another poor glitch that shows the whole game lacks a feeling of any sort of sophistication,
both in terms of production and overall design. Convincing
online gameplay The online section
is proficient, but very naive. It gives you three modes (which are really only
two) - Cops and Robbers, Circuits races and Dashes. The latter two are straight-up
races, one of which has multiple laps and the other just having a separate start
and finish line. Cops and Robbers is fundamentally a modification on ‘Capture
the Flag’ where the robbers are trying to transport cash to their hideaways while
the cops are trying to bust them. All of this works convincingly well and, most
of the time, can be fun, but there's not much diversity here. The
only two plus points about the game are its sense of speed and its great sound
samples. Getting into a fast ride really gives you a sense of absolute soaring
through the city. The sound samples for the cars – engines, screeches, transmission
and gears – are simply remarkable, though they're not mixed as well as could be
(as expected). To really sum it up,
Need for Speed Undercover is a pitiable game with a heap of problems, both
technically and in terms of design. The open world design is completely lost as
you can't actually drive to any event, many races are closed off which means no
cross traffic, and it's incredibly easy. The presentation could have been good
but winds up feeling totally artificial and perplexing at times. The game could,
and should (on the part of EA group) have been far better than it is. connect@animationxpress.com |
