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Need for Speed Underground The following report compares gadgets using the SERCount Rating (base on the result count from the search engine). |
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POPULAR HAT - 2006-02-13 11:33:00 | © Copyright 2004 - www.hat.net () | sitemap | top |
When you get out to the street, NFS: Underground sheds its simulator-style trappings and turns into the sort of easygoing driving game that anyone from beginners to experts can jump right into. The A and B buttons control acceleration and braking, and if you select a manual transmission, the L and R buttons allow you to downshift and upshift. A few races into the underground mode, you can purchase a nitro boost upgrade, which you can activate by tapping up on the directional pad. Each course has a good variety of straights, soft curves, sharp turns, and dips. The physics engine has a realistic degree of skid, which is great if you're the kind of player who likes to slide around corners, but it doesn't overdo it to the point that you'll have to worry about spinouts or rollovers. Likewise, you're not really penalized all that much for smacking into walls or colliding with cross traffic. If you smash into a bus at 100mph, you'll lose speed and skid for a bit, but it doesn't take long to regain control and get back in to the race. Each car comes with its own set of speed, acceleration, and handling characteristics, which you'll feel during the race as steering response and skid tendency. Surprisingly, the game's 3D graphics are both its best feature and its worst problem. The developers really pushed the GBA to the limit using this sort of texture-mapped polygon engine. It's wonderful that you can actually make out details, like window frames, fences, and highway signs, along the road, but the resolutions are so blocky that it's sometimes difficult to figure out which way the pavement is going to turn. It helps to play through the courses and learn where the turns are, although that's the kind of thing that you want to do to learn the layout of a course, not just so you'll remember to take a hard right after the brown splotch up ahead. Thankfully, this pixelation issue doesn't have a bearing on how any of the vehicles look. While you may not be able to distinguish a guardrail from an on-ramp, at times, every car looks shiny and crisp when viewed from all distances and at various angles. This means you'll have plenty of opportunities during the race to admire the custom window tinting and vinyl decorations you applied to your car the night before. Trick out your car with performance parts, body parts, paint jobs, and vinyl decorations. Despite its problematic graphics, Need for Speed Underground is still a joy to play. The courses have a good mixture of powerslide and speed run sections, and CPU drivers tend to keep the races close without resorting to typical cheats, like passing through commuter vehicles or teleporting in right behind you. If you're a wannabe car buff, it's easy to spend hours just upgrading and tinkering with your car in order to develop a custom ride that suits your personality. The last thing that bears mentioning--and this is only a significant note for some of you--is the fact that the music EA chose to put in the game won't appeal to everyone. During the menus and during each race, you'll hear a random pick from any of four different song loops, including "Get Low" by Lil Jon, "Sucked In" by Jerk, "Doomsday" by Overseer, and "The Only" by Static-X. Luckily, if you don't like the selection of music, you can shut it off in the options menu. In fact, the in-game engine and tire sound effects are superb and can suffice all on their own. Warts and all, Need for Speed Underground is a good racing game--not because it's pretty, but because it's actually engaging and fun to play.