Need for Speed Undercover for PlayStation 2 Reviews by Gamers

Need for Speed has long been one of EA's bread and butter franchises, though the ratio of bread to butter has changed a number of times over the years. In other words, it's almost constantly changing from one iteration to the next, sometimes for the betterment of the series, and sometimes not. The latter is the case for Need for Speed Undercover, a game that feels a little lost in its focus and design.



Whereas last year's Need for Speed ProStreet moved away from open world racing and focused entirely on multiple event-based showdowns, its less than stellar final showing sent Black Box back to the drawing board, so Undercover heads back to open city racing replete with cop chases. It also brings back a focus on storytelling, with you playing the part of an undercover agent aiming to take down a crime syndicate with ties to street racing. Unfortunately, none of this design really comes together in any sort of coherent fashion, and the game is so riddled with technical problems that it holds back any shimmer of light that there might have been.



Part of the issue here is how the open world racing is handled. In many events, the game actually closes off your city access with barriers and only lets you drive on the predefined track. This means that you can't take your own custom route through the city for the longer events, which is somewhat of a shame, and it also means you won't have to deal with cross traffic.



Speaking of traffic, the world of Undercover is apparently populated by folks without jobs or places to go as you'll rarely see any other vehicles on the road. How can you have a racing game set in an open city and not have cross traffic to deal with, or even many cars to dodge?



Oh, but that's not where the problems with traffic end. One of the game's bigger technical issues is that while the framerate largely stays steady, the draw distance suffers greatly for it, especially with regards to the barren traffic. Cars in the distance will first appear simply as shadows, and as you close in, the cars will magically appear out of the Netherworld right in front of you. I'm not talking about a quarter-mile down the road, but more on the order of 200 feet. At high speeds, this doesn't leave you much time to react, though at least there isn't much traffic to contend with. Sigh.



The visuals also pose problems with actually navigating the environment as some segments don't get drawn in until you get close to them. Also, the visual fidelity of the game on the whole is poor enough that it can be hard to discern the road from a same-colored wall. It just doesn't look good on the whole, and it's bad enough that it affects your ability to drive well.



In terms of the actual driving mechanics, there are problems here too. My main gripe is that cars don't power slide as well as they should, and I'm not even looking for something on the order of Ridge Racer. It's harder to throw out the back end of a car in the game than the real thing, which can make taking turns at high speed a bit of a problem. Handling is uninspired overall, more functional than fun and charismatic.



Collisions with the environment also hamper the driving experience to a degree at times. For instance, you'll try to power slide around a turn, wind up sliding into a curved barrier and instead of deflecting off of it and simply losing some speed, you'll come to a complete stop. This would make sense in a head-on collision, of course, but not if you're glancing off an object with your back end.

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