NFS: Undercover. Wish I were UnderABus?

Need for Speed Undercover is a game that I would like to love. I’ve skipped on quite a few NFS titles now (everything after Hot Pursuit 2, I think), so came into this title probably a little too high on nostalgic expectation. Probably not the best way to go into it.

Can't be arsed to read all of the below?  Just scroll to the end of the article for your tl:dr fix.

Hello Bloom, Goodbye Performance

After reading a few thoughts on the last NFS offering, it seems that perhaps I would not be so let down by NFS: U if I had taken the time to play Pro Street. Gradual lowering of expectations for a series, it seems.

So, going into this with high hopes, I found myself racing around in a functional if a bit fugly racer.

I’m the sort of gamer who would prefer my PC to survive the gaming experience, so I usually just leave the graphical settings at default or even sometimes lower them when I feel I would rather have a few more frames per second instead of bloom. NFS: U actually made me throw the resolution up to 1600 by 1200 on my monitor.

If the graphics aren’t going to look good, and the frames are going to be unstable anyway, I may as well up the resolution and at least avoid a few more jaggies. I put them up because with my x2 5200, 8800gt graphics card and 2gb of DDR2 memory, this game plays shockingly whatever settings I use. The cars look nice, but that’s about as far as it goes.

I think the theory was that you’ll be going at 120mph half the time anyway, so heaps of motion blur will take care of the graphics after that. It does not though. It’s just so noticeable when a shadow on a guard rail at the side of the road is magically expanding as I’m driving along.

I’m not a graphics ho though. I can forgive tiny things like that. Framerate issues not so much though.

Sorry, you'll have to speak up

Moving past the poor performance: there’s lots of car modding, racing, bizarrely quiet cutscenes and cops. The only part I’ve really enjoyed is playing with the police, and wishing I could just be one instead.

You play as an undercover cop that is slowly but surely infiltrating a gang of ... oh I don’t flaming know. I’ve played this game so much over the last few days but I just don’t care. Every time a cutscene came up I just mashed the buttons on my GFW 360 controller. Annoyingly that did nothing, so I was forced to sit through them.

What sort of a reviewer am I if I don’t pay attention to the story, eh. Boo! Hiss! A really bored one. There’s only so many poorly-lit close-up leg, breast and lip shots I can take before I just stop paying attention altogether, knowing that nothing anyone says (not that I could ever hear them) is of any consequence, it’s all just done so that the boy-racers have something smexy to look at from time to time. If you’re into bad actors, that is.

The first crim you’re tasked with busting also dresses like Kyle Justin, of Angry Video Game Nerd theme tune fame, so it’s hard to take anything seriously when you have “he’s gonna take you back to the past,” playing in your head the entire time he’s on screen.

And that’s the only thing that was in my head during these cutscenes, because it seems someone forgot to place a microphone in the same room as they were filming them. Maybe I just listen to things too quietly to avoid brumbrum overkill headaches, but when I can hear engines and all out of cutscene speech fine, but am forced into turning up my sound hugely just to be able to hear worthless minutes of bad acting, I tend not to even bother.

On the upside sound wise, I really enjoy the police radio that plays when you’re in a pursuit. It’s completely convincing (to a non-cop, I suppose) and really adds to the immersion when you hear the police complaining that you’re a maniac who’s trying to run them off the road.

Vroooooooom

Racing is fun for the most part. The only real problems I have with it are some decidedly sloppy controls on some of the cars, even at low speeds. Maybe it’s meant to feel like that with some of the bigger American ones, but I don’t appreciate having to very gently tap the analogue stick in order to get them to turn without going into a skid.

It actually feels a lot like when I tried to play DiRT with a keyboard. Tap tap tap, tap tap tap, tap tap tap, or else your car swerved like a drunk driver all the time.

I get that on keyboard though. You have to make exceptions when you’re playing a game that isn’t designed to work all that well with a controller that has only 2 settings: turn and don’t turn.

I think the main problem with the racing in this NFS is that I never really felt as if I needed to do any of the modding to the cars in order to win races at all. I’ve always enjoyed progression in my games. I’ve always enjoyed winning races that I know I’m only winning because of skill (and occasionally ramming people) in games like Gran Turismo. I also don’t mind losing when I know that their cars totally outclass mine. What I do sorta mind is this tailoring that the game seems to do. Opponent cars seem to be altered to suit the car that I’m travelling in.

This is something I hate in all game genres. Monster scaling.

Games should become more difficult the further into them that you get. You should be able to go back to easier areas if you feel you can’t win in the current one. That’s the way games should be. Not this hand-holding nonsense where you’re never challenged, or in a constant state of medium difficulty.

Oh well.

Police, Camera, Action!

The most fun for me from this game is found in the missions that involve police by default. Cost to state, where you endeavour to cause a target amount of damage before the end of a timer; Escape, where you attempt to lose the police by putting enough distance between you and them, before the end of a timer; and Cop Takeout where you have to disable a certain number of police cruisers before (you guessed it) the end of a timer.

I can understand the need for (oh god) speed when it comes to designing missions. Adding a time limit adds a modicum of tension to what could otherwise be a grind fest, but this backfires a little when the missions can take so long to defeat, depending on how effectively the police decide to keep on your trail after you complete the goal. The mission does not end until the police can’t find you anymore, which can sometimes be incredibly annoying.

Often I find myself unable to keep the polices’ attention while I’m doing a Cop Takeout mission, yet as soon as I want to avoid them, they bring out the helicopter, super SUVs and Porsche pursuit vehicles that just never stop.

Outside of messing with the pigs, there’s Highway Battle which for me is the highlight of the non-police related drive-a-thons (which include circuit racing, checkpoints and outrun, where you have to stay ahead of an opponent for a set amount of time). Speeding up a highway, keeping ahead of your opponent and avoiding the traffic makes this the only non-police mission that I would ever take as anything but a last resort.

So NFS: Undercover; a strangely broken game engine that offers up some fun at times, but fails to capture any sense of progression, leading to stale gameplay. On a scale it’s average or less. Pick it up cheap in a few months if at all, I suggest.

TLDR

+ Decent Police action
+ Convincing police radio
+ Some fun to be had with the races
+- Super Pointless Modding
- Ultra repetitive really quickly
- Graphics engine goes ape
- Bit Fug
- No progression
- Cut scenes too quiet, make me sleepy

TLDR if you own/want to own a Golf GTi with neon skirt lighting

+ OMG OMG OMG OMG OMG OMGGGGG THIS IS AWESOME!
-  NOTHING - THAT BIRD IN THE MOVIEZ IS WELL HOT.

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