Need for Speed Underground

Sam develops a penchant for 'cruising'...

More Images

I've always found boy-racers and their whole wee scene rather amusing. Up where I live we have a great long stretch of boulevard that goes along the beachfront, so our racers are Bouly-bashers. It is fair to say that they are not generally highly regarded for their intelligence or their taste. I was walking home from the pub last week when a tripped-out hatchback pulled round the corner and made its was up the hill. Maybe it was the weight of all those additions and mods but by the time the buggy reached the top of the rather small hill Pavarotti could have passed it on a space-hopper after knocking back three bottles of vino. I've never been able to understand why such nakedly animalistic posturings are so enticing to a certain section of the young but I suppose we must have our peacocks, if only to give us something to laugh at. In the US these fellas are called Rice Boys as they mostly drive Japanese cars and they have far more impressive kit than the local studs can manage. Saying that, no matter how expensive and shiny your spoiler is it won't stop you from looking ridiculous. So why do I think the first racer to take this subculture and package a whole game out of it is well deserving of its top spot in the charts?

Need For Speed takes a bold turn into brand new racing territory with its seventh incarnation, Underground. Just how underground a culture can be when a number of Hollywood movies have made it into laughing material for the non-visually impaired is left to the player's imagination but regardless, EA have created a fine piece of racing fun which is not only the best looking racer yet created but brings new thrills to a genre sorely deprived of innovation.

In addition to the various forms of circuit racing on offer NFS:U chucks in two modes that have never, to my knowledge, been included in a mainstream racer before. The drag racing events will ensure your buttocks are well-adhered to your choice of seat with their mental sense of pace but in the end they breakdown into little more than gear-changing exercises, with a very healthy amount of luck needed to see you past the traffic in one piece. The drifting courses are a lot more fun. The idea here is to swing your car round a specially oil-slicked track. For each drift you complete you will rack up the points, chain them together or drift along the white lines that border the road and you will accumulate massive points. Smack into a wall and that all important multiplier you have been building up will scoot right down to zero. Drifting is an art form, a sort of stylised powersliding without the power. Your choice of car is really important here as the wrong type will have you struggling to get round a corner at all, let alone silkily. Together with a survivor style lap-race, a single sprint to the finish line and good old circuit racing there is more than enough variety to stop any but the most vapid from getting bored.

NFS:U is a curious game. Not only does it offer a large number of different driving challenges but a large part of the game is concerned with improving the appearance and performance of your car. In a way this is an RPG driving title. Let me try to make sense of that sentence. Your car has three levels of performance improvement that you unlock as you progress through the career mode. Win a certain race and you can then buy the next level of suspension, or turbo charger, etc. These additions make a fractionally noticeable difference to your car in general and are nothing new in a racing game.

What is new is the visual enhancements that can be had. Each time you pull off a stylish move during a race you get some style points. So if you manage to just miss traffic, complete a section without knocking into anything, powerslide round a corner or one of a few other moves you will rack up some points. At the end of the race these are tallied up with any traffic hits coming off the total. Get enough points to go up a level and you will unlock a visual upgrade. These visual upgrades are mind-bogglingly plentiful; there are more then 60 different types of spoiler for example. They range from paint jobs to fancy mufflers, pulsing neon to window tints, ridiculous wheel rims to vinyl designs and decals to plaster all over your car. Each of these enhancements gives you some extra reputation which when it levels up gives you a multiplier which will increase your style points at the end of the race. This part of the game makes for a time-absorbing distraction, as not only is it a lot of fun to piss about with your car's looks till you feel ready to pose with the best of them but it really encourages you to drive with some panache. I found myself spending a good chunk of my time with this game dressing up my car Barbie-style. Fortunately the graphics are so damn good that all this tinkering is more than mere stroking. A really impressive looking car really makes you feel the speed, no doubt the thing that encourages all those boy-racers to part with so much money.