I’m going to start this article as I intend to end it; do not UNDER any circumstances buy this game. The only reason I sat there for 10 or so hours playing it was for the 1000G it had on offer of which all 15 achievements are easy to get (just play the career mode till the end). This game, however, is not worth the disk it is burned to. The graphics are sub standard for the 360; the sounds are fairly rubbish and not in the least bit realistic; the game’s engine is pathetic; how the game plays is even worse; the ‘characters’ if you can call them that are just… well, almost as good as the storyline itself (which takes all of 15 seconds to work out). Basically, I hated this game from the very first cutscene. Needless to say, I will now attempt to be remotely analytical in my approach and to hopefully form a reasonable argument… ok here goes.

Need For Speed : Most Wanted

So as you can probably guess from the front cover (that and the fact it is yet another game in the endless Need For Speed series) Most Wanted is a ‘racing’ game. Pictured on the front is a fully customised BMW that, strangely, you drive in the opening 2-3 minutes of the game before losing it to some jerk off only known to you at the time as ‘Razor’. Your ‘character’ remains completely nameless and, despite entering a custom name at the beginning of career mode, is never mentioned once. Anyway, on to the opening. As I said, the opening couple of races, you drive a stupidly over-powered and fast BMW that, unless you hit every single ‘obstacle’, you cannot lose in; infact, I’m not sure why they made this apart of the game – why they couldn’t save you 10 minutes of holding the right trigger and occasionally turning the thumb stick and create a bloody video is beyond me. Shortly after your glorified victories where you truly believe you are on top of the world, the shit hits the fan, as Razor sabotages your car in a pink slip race. Now I’m not being funny, I’m fooked if I’d give my car up to a pink slip if the cheating bastard had quite evidently sabotaged my car. But naturally, because you are a faceless, gutless pile of crap you give up the car and get caught by the cops – unlucky for you.

Your now left at this point wondering what the hell the rest of the game will be based on; you have no car and your on your way to jail right…? Wrong! EA have pulled out all the stops and miraculously there is no evidence on you and your free to go and it just so happens that as you leave the place some ‘babe’ pulls up to pick you up, takes you to a ‘hide out’ and gives you 10k to spend on a new car – how jolly nice of her right? Wish all women were equally as keen. Now if you have any sense by this point you’ve pretty much worked out that she’s an undercover cop who’s going to help to you the very top of the list, taking down all the other racers along way, making the streets clean and safe… and if you hadn’t worked that out, sorry for the ‘spoiler’ but really, you shoulda known. I should also probably take a moment to state that the primary focus of this game is to piss off enough cops (score ‘bounty’), drive stupidly fast, ram things, destroy things, drive like a complete twat, avoid spikes, ram some more things and then pretend none of it was you by hiding under a subway bridge and changing the colour of your car which somehow is enough to put police off your trails these days – it’s got nothing to do with number plates or the make of car, just the colour! The more bounty you collect, the more racers you can challenge and further up the ‘blacklist’ you will progress; the ‘blacklist’ being a collection of duche bags who drive around destroying everything and making complete c***s of themselves – the aim being to become the biggest c**t of them all :)

Gameplay wise the cars handle like a complete sack of shit; no matter what stats you have or indeed which car your driving you will end up randomly sliding off the road into oncoming vehicles or various signs, dumpsters or trees. Whilst most of these you drive straight through, it can be frustrating being slowed from 120mph to 30 in a matter of 2 feet and going from 1st with a 3,000ft lead to 4 with a 10,000ft gap (yes this does happen and no it is not an over-exageration on my part – it leaves you wondering how fast your rivals were truly traveling and whether you had a chance in the first place). The in-game ‘modding’ consists of several pre-determined levels of tuning for engine, transmission, suspension, nos, tires and brakes all of which will slowly be unlocked as a result of beating ‘Blacklist’ racers. This however is pretty worthless and the mods seem to make absolutely no difference what so ever; your car may go a little more blurry when you hold the B button and use ‘nos’ but the handling will only get worse, the sound of the car will not differ in the slightest and some how no matter how fast your car can go, the NPCs will ALWAYS go faster.

The story; I could have written a better ‘story’ by noting down the tonal range of my fart as I take a crap in a tin can. To put it bluntly, Need For Speed Most Wanted makes East Enders look truly interesting and intelligent. East Enders at the very least demonstrates a sliver of civilisation and a brief character outline; christ NFS is the furthest you could get from either of these. Has no one learnt that you shouldn’t bother trying to mix a racing game and a story?! Lets face it, if I buy a racing game, I just wanna drive pretty cars round a track with no interruptions; not listen to some has-be looking witch and her psycho fucktard boyfriend talking shit constantly; “Do you know who I am..?” Of course I fucking don’t, you have no character, no personality, look like a monkey on steroids and talk like some twat who still believes in the ghetto.

Now I know I said I would be reasonable and attempt to form an argument but really and truthfully I have nothing good to say about this game. I guess what I’m trying to say is this game is terrible in every single sense. Whilst it may be worth an ‘easy’ 1000G, you may end up forking out £60-70 on replacement handsets after you’ve thrown them through a wall multiple times in sheer frustration. Thankfully I will never have to play this fag-ended pile of crap again for I have already cashed in on the 1000G but if you are a true gamer score addict, I wish you all the very best because despite everything said here, it’s another completed game on your record. Personally, I would NEVER buy this title and am thankful I can now return it to the misguided fool I borrowed it from.

Peace,

Chris