Need For Speed Undercover Preview

Maggie Q struts across the screen, alluring and yet juxtaposing that with a strictly business attitude that commands your attention. After all, she is asking you to do something tricky and dangerous – infiltrate a major crime syndicate through what may be the weakest link, the maniacs who openly race on the streets of the Tri-City Bay.

The goal is to get the information on an international smuggling organization. The tip of that iceberg are the flashy cars that are appearing. Your job is to hit the streets in a decent ride, get the attention of the hot car crowd – which has an association with the main body of bad guys – and prove your worth as a wheelman.

The game has many of the same elements of previous NFS titles, in that you have defined driving goals. With Undercover, those goals come in two forms – you can merely win a race and do well, or you can beat the time set for the event and dominate. When you dominate a race, you can improve your driving stats and that translates to capabilities that span from handling to braking to acceleration and top speed.

The auto-save feature does come in handy by saving the game at each milestone. You don’t have to go hunting for save button when you decide you’ve had enough for that particular session.

One of the nice features of the game is that while you are technically an enforcement agent, you are undercover, and that means that you will hear the police band that takes notice of your activities and you may even have a few police cars en route to investigate the illegal street racing. It was pretty cool how quickly the band reacted. After the banter about the race, the car being driven rubbed a wall. The dispatcher immediately stated that the reports were the car was damaged and should be easy to spot.

As you race, you will start to acquire a stable full of vehicles. When it comes to fine tuning your ride, there are several ways to do it. As you win races, you gain cash. You can then enter a garage and upgrade the packages (engines, nitrous oxide, drive train, suspension, brakes, tires and such) and then you can go into the tuning section and adjust for your particular tastes. For example, in the tuning section for the engine you have a slider bar. On one side is torque (initial acceleration and acceleration out of turns) and on the other is horsepower (top speed). If you move the slider toward torque, you will fly out of the turns, but you sacrifice power for the straightaways.

Through the main menu you can access the GPS map (which allows you to jump to events), open up your driver skills, go online (the disc provided by EA was for the PS3 debug unit and this option was not available), or just quick race to tune up driving skills.

In regards to the damage, your car will take a bit as you race, but nothing that seems to slow the vehicle down or interfere with the performance too much.

Graphically this is a good-looking game, with solid camera angles. The game will occasionally cut to a cut scene for a different view of something you have done in the car (like a jump you have taken), but you have to be on your toes and keep your finger on the pedal to the metal (so to speak), because it will cut back quickly and you don’t want to be caught without your controls ready to resume.

The game’s sound is very good as well and the AI of your opponents seems pretty tight. There are no difficulty settings, per se, but you will ramp up the challenge as you progress and level both your character and your ride.

Need for Speed Undercover should prove to be a solid next-gen title in the NFS franchise. While it does not appear to offer anything truly unusual, the fact that you get to drive through an open city and find your challenges, and it all falls under a thin story, should be decent enough to keep players involved.