Need for Speed Undercover

Numerical

I can't quite put my finger on it, but there's a definite jarring sensation permeating the air in Tri-City. Something, somewhere, is not quite right. It's throwing the whole Need for Speed Undercover experience off-balance. On paper, everything looks solid: the individual components of the game should have mixed together to create a suitably thrilling racing concoction. The balance of events, narrative and unlockables is even finely tuned to the point that there's always something to be doing with the game. But, still, there's just something so fundamentally empty at the core of Undercover that the finished product can never be anything other than frustratingly average.

Need for Speed is a controversial series that's not entirely deserving of the hatred it seems to elicit. EA have been doing much to address common criticisms, opting for a publishing model similar to Activision's annual dual-studio Call of Duty approach, and a two-year cycle should finally allow the series to develop some serious presence. The most ridiculous fact about Undercover is that it feels more like a step back from previous titles and, even in spite of its elongated development time, freakishly underwhelming when placed contextually within the competition of Burnout Paradise and Midnight Club: Los Angeles.

It's a fiddly game that's hard not to approach as racing-by-numbers. Undercover doesn't blend together properly, which means the game is always so easy to reduce down to its component parts. The most prominent problem with the game as a whole is the engine, which frequently stutters and chokes on the simplest of environments, dragging your frames per second down to very low double digits. It's incredibly frustrating to experience it again and again when you're just trying to race, and performance hits often result in the driving becoming harder than it has any right to be. It's always annoying to crash, but it's only compounded when it's caused by sloppy game production. The graphics are hardly so gorgeous to require such an incredible lack of fluidity, either. They should really just bin their code and nab whatever it is that Criterion are using.

To be blunt, Need for Speed Undercover shouldn't have been released in its present state. It needs work, and any testing team should have been able to spot that particular problem months ago. It's not that the game is fundamentally broken; it's just that it hasn't been optimized and polished. The open-world is so devoid of personality that the game itself basically acknowledges its own failure, encouraging you to jump from one event to the other by just tapping up on the d-pad and avoiding any actual fruitless, depressing exploration.

Annoyances continue well into the gameplay, too, with the flawed difficulty whizzing all over the place, stunting the natural feel of progression and stomping all over any sense of in-game cohesion. Balancing driving games is a particularly difficult bit of development, but surely something more productive could have been done with Undercover. If your car is outfitted with the latest and greatest aftermarket parts available to you at a certain part of the game, then you'll pretty much win with little to no problem. Extra perks are given to your character's driving skills upon 'Dominating' races - finishing them within a certain arbitrary time period - which ultimately makes the whole task even easier. It's virtually impossible to feel the benefits of these RPG-esque elements, mind, as the rubber-banding AI will manage to be on your tail if you ever ease off the nitrous oxide.

The typical Need for Speed slapstick narrative is intact, hurling you as a rather stoic undercover police officer tasked with penetrating the criminal underbelly of the fictitious, constantly sunny and road-friendly Tri-city. Which, to be honest, feels like a city lacking in everything but tarmac. If it weren't for the live-action cut-scenes - with Maggie Q constantly barking in your ear - and the continuous bleating of various people on your screen then Need for Speed Undercover would be the most sparse and lonely game planet since Super Metroid. There's barely any traffic on the roads, there's no real buildings and remarkably little to catch your eye. I was under the impression that the whole point of open-world driving games is that the developers can infuse the city with soul.

For all its terrible flaws, there's still moments of fun to be had driving around Tri-City. There's the occasional moment where everything aligns and you realise that you're quite enjoying yourself, although most of these times occur when the police are trying to take you off the road. The police and Need for Speed have always had a certain tete-a-tete, so their re-inclusion into Undercover after their absence in the last couple of games is a step in the right direction. After all, it was the fuzz that made Most Wanted such a guilty, delectable treat. Yet, Undercover has been designed to be so unceremoniously simple that it's not until the end of the game that the police chases can reach their actual potential. It's not until you're being stalked by roadblocks and tire traps that the game forces you to think on your feet and use the environment to its fullest potential. As it stands, hoofing it around a few corners and keeping one finger on the turbo boost can easily evade most police pursuits. By the time you're having some semblance of fun running from the law you've already spent most of the game being deterred from the whole shambolic mess in the first place. That's very much the spirit of Undercover: there's a game inside, somewhere, but getting a look at it is an incredibly time consuming and unrewarding experience.

It's a sparse game, and after you've sunk about ten hours into it you'll feel suitably empty, too. It's not rewarding, satisfying or endearing. Need for Speed Undercover has the potential for fun, but it simply hasn't been realised in this year's foray. I can only hope that EA's next effort is better.

60%

By Martin Gaston