Need For Speed: Most Wanted

Need for Speed; Most Wanted is a much needed departure from other racing games.
Imagine yourself in this scenario: You're cruising the streets minding your own business when you hear over the police scanner that you've been spotted speeding. Within seconds a police cruiser appears on his own closing in fast from behind. You put your foot down and speed off leaving him for dust. Another call over the police radio gets your attention, he's calling for backup. Sure enough as you speed around a bend four police cruisers come speeding towards you trying to ram you off the road, road blocks get set up ahead and you narrowly escape through a gap in the block. Suddenly a helicopter appears overhead. Tracking your every move and relaying information back to the ground units. You dash into a side road in an attempt to flee the 5 squad cars behind you, 3 slam into a wall yet the remaining 2 stay with you determined to take you out. Another shortcut leads you onto a golf course, you manage to loose them but you're not out of the woods yet. You still need to hide till they give up searching. Through the police scanner you can hear dispatch calling out your last known location. A helicopter flies overhead but luckily you're hidden from view and eventually the chase is over.

That's just a little taster of what NFSMW has to offer.

The goal of the game is to become the number 1 most wanted racer.
The game begins with you racing Razor. He currently holds the Number one spot on the blacklist. However Razor sabotages your car causing you to loose the race and your ride. That means revenge of course.
In order to get revenge on Razor you need to challenge him first, however he's 1st on the Blacklist. You'll get to challenge him by working your way up the Blacklist. The Blacklist is a list of the 15 most wanted racers.
Guess where you're ranked at the start of the game..yep... you're not even on the list...Yet.
In order to get on the blacklist and eventually become number 1 you need to beat 15 racers. However beating them is not a simple task. Each Blacklist racer requires a certain amount of Bounty and Races won before you can challenge a blacklist racer.

There's a wide variety of different races to be done in NFSMW such as:
- Circuit Races
- Sprint
- Drag
- Tollbooth
- Speedtrap

That's just the races. You also need to complete certain milestones to be able to challenge a racer. These could range from Dodging a certain amount of Roadblocks to Ramming a certain amount of Police cars.

Unlike previous Need For Speed games customizing your ride plays a very small part. Yes you can add different paints, rims, spoilers, turbo etc etc but there's never really an incentive to do so other then having a nice looking car.

All the cars are licensed and range from a VW Golf to a Lamborgini. There's not an immense amount of cars available but the ones that are available are good enough on their own.

As for the tracks. There are no real tracks like you'd see in other racing games. Instead a whole city is your playing ground. During a race roads will be blocked off to guide you around the track but other then that it simply does feel like you're racing through a real city.

One of the most impressive aspects of the game is the Police AI. They try to ram you off the road, take shortcuts in an attempt to catch up and basically do everything in their power to take you out.

All in all, Need For Speed Most Wanted is a heart pounding game when it comes to the later chases. It's a bit slow to get going and the cutscenes are few and far between but once you get a taste of running from the cops you'll be hooked.