There is something to be said about a racing game that allows you to crush through support beams in order to cause a giant sign to fall down on pursuing police cars, and then hiding out in a construction zone so the accompanying aerial surveillance can’t get a fix on you. That something would be a good something.

Aside from the horrible import tuner façade, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an extremely enjoyable racer. It offers an open-ended world you can ride through to get a lay of the land, antagonize the police, or ride into hot spots to engage in events or enter areas to store cars and purchase upgrades. In a ‘good call, sport’ type of move, the developers included the option to quick jump so that you can skip all this traversing and be brought to a safe house, race event, or area to immediately begin running from law enforcement at the press of a button.  This feature saves quite a bit of time and is wholly appreciated, not to mention that it also fits in well with the smooth presentation and layout of the menu systems, creating a cohesive and streamlined package.

In the midst of the daredevil antics and gravity-defying slow-motion jumps, you’ll work your way through a fairly straightforward story. You’re looking to get revenge on an unsavory gent who pulls some shenanigans at the beginning of the game, but he happens to be the best out of the top fifteen totally crazy and hip Blacklist members. Starting from the bottom of the totem pole, you must win a set amount of goals – a set number of races, a set number of milestones, and a certain bounty figure must be reached – before challenging the next member on the list. Once challenged, it’ll be a one-off with your opponent for their spot on the list and one of two markers. The markers can go towards secret unlockables, the prize of this set being the pink slip to the rival’s car, or towards another set that features special upgrades for things like performance and style. There are cutscenes with a bad filter and hokey tag-style names to give the game the style it’s going for, but fortunately you can ignore most of this, including their text and voice messages of taunting and advice, and just enjoy the driving mechanics and sprawling landscape.

The two main enhancements that’ll come into play are the nitro boosts and the ability to slow down time. These actually work hand-in-hand to form a pretty interesting combination, since slowing down time also decreases your speed significantly. Perfecting the motion of coming out of slowed time and hitting turbo to not lose, and possibly increase, speed when coming out of a tight turn or around a police blockade isn’t so much an absolute necessity as it is a fantastic carrot to continue to improve as it makes victory that much easier to attain.

Practicing this technique is definitely advised. While the game is fairly easy for the first eleven or so racers, it’s the last handful that will provide a challenge. Up until that point, and even during these races depending on what cars you have unlocked, the game really hurts itself.  The game scales its difficulty accordingly to ensure that you can still progress if you aren’t particularly good, since cars can be impounded by the police if you have don’t passes to get out of the impound or the means to pay the fine. Using the heat meter, you can gauge how much trouble you’re in with the police; the higher the heat, the harder it will be to avoid pursuits. Once heats go above three, helicopters, faster pursuit cars, and tire spikes come into play. Because of this it becomes essential to park some of your cars away in a parking garage so that their heat meters will go down, otherwise you run the risk of a short drive turning into a fifteen-minute pursuit and costing you thousands of dollars. This is where the scaling difficulty is handy: If you have had a run of bad luck and are left with only poorer cars, you can still progress and earn cash. However, this also takes away from a significant aspect of the game, which is the upgrade options, as well as the difficulty itself. It quickly becomes unnecessary to upgrade when a car that maxes out at 135 MPH can win the same race as the car that maxes out at 180 MPH. This allows for a surplus of cash, which I ended up just using to pay off the relatively minuscule fines when busted by the police.

As you race, you will literally see cars ahead of you slow down so that you can catch up and pass them. This is a bit surreal at first, but you’ll get to feel a similar restraint as the computer opponents will also be able to stay closely behind you once you get the lead. It was only when I got a car that was maxed out – which I got midway through, oddly enough – that I could put and maintain a respectable amount of distance between myself and the others.

Towards the end, it isn’t that the drivers get particularly better, either; instead, it’s the heat meter and bounty requirements that will provide the biggest challenges. While it’s entirely possible to finagle the required amount of wins out of the milestone and race sets with the cars you have, it’s a different story trying to add another million onto your bounty. While the ability to jump to specific law enforcement hot spots helps to make with the destruction, it becomes incredibly difficult to garner the amount needed and not get busted (either running over a spike strip or being unable to get out of being boxed in) due to the heat meter rising much quicker than before.  Once busted, you also lose whatever bounty fines and costs to the state you’ve racked up. Also, even if you succeed, the upped bounty amounts are so high that it’s also very time-consuming; you’ll have the other requirements met long before you can wrap up the bounty requirements. High heat also plays havoc whenever you’re trying to compete in the milestone events and races as well since you’re racing on regular roads and you’re still able to be spotted and pursued by the police. Those comforting cool down spots, areas that accelerate the process of the authorities cooling down from pursuing you, become distant memories.

Despite the misguided difficulty, the large game world and numerous events provide a great experience. The world slowly expands with new territories opening up to tackle new Blacklist members, with every area having its own flair, standout buildings, and back alley shortcuts. The last time I drove around for fun, I spent a good half hour pulling off the interstate and exploring cities both big and small. Aside from looking great, there’s such a variety and sense of hidden treasure, like finding entrances to a golf course or into a stadium and onto a football field, that it makes exploring almost as fun as racing.  Aside from the events necessary to beat the story mode, there are also dozens available to choose from through the main menu as well as a quick race and a custom race option. Custom allows you to choose from the variety of races that you’ll experience through the story mode, which includes drag racing (controlling turning left and right with the primary focus being on shifting at the right time), circuit (traditional lap-based racing), lap knockout (the last place racer gets taken out of the race), speedtrap (place determined by how fast you’re going when tracked by radar), sprint (no laps; just race from beginning to end), and tollbooth (race to get to the tollbooths before time expires to get the surplus added to the amount given to reach the next set). There is also Live play, which also has options for quick and custom race.

EA Trax, the EA-branded soundtrack to the game, is also prominent. An option allows you to choose which songs to play during the menus and the racing, which is nice but a bit lopsided with the quality in that there are generic tracks for the racing and good ones for the menu. They seem to have taken the Jenny Jones approach of tossing in some recognizable groups with some maybe possibly up-and-comers in hopes of them scoring it big and they having their hip factor bumped. Music is pretty important to the feel they were going for, and the songs do seem to match the look of the cars and style of the racers. Or you can just listen to what’s on your hard drive – thank you, standards.

Overall: 8.5/10

Need for Speed: Most Wanted was a surprisingly thorough title. With a wide variety of race types carried over from the previous release and a large game world to explore, along with the excitement of pursuits and online play, the major complaint is that of the difficulty. The difficulty makes the aspect of upgrading almost a non-factor, which is a fairly serious problem in a racing game.  There game has its challenges, but also some very obvious compensations on the part of the computer-controlled cars who occasionally seem to want you to win, or at least take the lead for a bit.  However, there is also a plethora of options that help to provide a great time for those who either find the game too hard or too easy.