Need For Speed: Most Wanted Review

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(More customer reviews)So here's my take after having played the game for two weeks.
Visually this game is stunning. Add to that a nearly endless selection of customization options for your rides and were talking some serious eye candy and I didn't even need a high end graphics card to run it smoothly with all the video options maxed out. My only complaint about the graphics is the lack of wide screen resolution settings. As a result, the screen is stretched on my wide screen monitor.
The racing, in all modes, is fun, though lacking in realism. It seems to me EA wanted to make another Need For Speed game and add a pinch of GTA into the mix in that you get points for causing as much damage to city property and police vehicles as possible. In drag race mode, if you hit an object at a high enough speed and your car will be "totaled" and you automatically lose. It would have been nice for this feature to be extended consistently throughout the game rather than turning roadside objects into targets for your car to flatten.
The difficulty between different race modes is very unbalanced. For example, competing in a circuit race against other drivers is very easy throughout the game whereas running a timed interval race gets tougher the higher up the blacklist you progress. This is both good and bad. While it's nice to have the easy races to generate income, having to attempt some of the harder race modes twenty times just to progress your career is tedious.
All the negatives of game play are overwhelmingly outweighed by the positives. The courses are fun and there are some pretty creative shortcuts; some that help, some that don't. The police chases are loads of fun and listening to the in game police scanner adds a lot of atmosphere. Another great feature about the game is the ability to turn "Catch Up" on or off. One of the most annoying things in a lot of racing games is the computer drivers will "cheat" if you get ahead of them and you can't pull away from them. My guess is developers do this to keep things competitive, though I see it as more of a lack of good AI, but in NFS Most Wanted you can turn this off. Great bonus.
Finally, a word about the music and FMV. A very negative word. In a nutshell, it takes away so much polish this game has to offer. Having to sit through the opening FMV sequences in the beginning of the game (I couldn't find a way to skip them) is torturous. What's worse is the music selection in the game. It's horrendous, unless you're into rap, hiphop, and bad metal (in which case I still don't think fans of those genres would consider it good music). That you can't play your own MP3 list through the game is an unforgivable oversight by EA. I don't know what they were thinking, but in this era of gaming that is completely unacceptable.
To sum it up:
Pros: Great graphics, fantastic (and nearly endless) vehicle customization options, large selection of vehicles, police chases are loads of fun.
Cons: The music is horrendous, can't play your own music through the game (the game loses one star for this alone), lack of realism in races, lack of wide screen resolution settings.

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