Baby Bodyshop in Need for Speed Underground 2

Order yours at present from Simply Games.

Even so discerning we similar to recall we are, there are times when guilty pleasures barge our resolutely held principles out of the fashion like a bowling brawl through skittles. Information technology'south a niggling harder to have as well many contrary opinions as a game reviewer, when every mildly differing score seems to turn into a witch-hunt. God forestall that anyone should have a difference of stance eh? So, every bit much as information technology'd be the easiest matter in the world right now to reel off a 1 thousand word diatribe against Need For Speed Underground 2, bloody EA has gone and confounded expectations yet once more.

Pretend we're dead

Yous see, as imbecilic as this game ought to exist, and as much of a deep insult to anyone's intelligence as the whole concept is, information technology'south merely too much fun to consign it to the slag heap. Information technology's the trashy popular vocal you hum to yourself uninhibitedly in the shower, or the rank reality TV show yous tin't switch off. It's addictive. Maddeningly so. Yet also and then evidently consummate rubbish in the context of 'proper' racing games. Then how come up we're and then hopelessly compelled to play it non-stop for hours? Howling abuse at the screen at the blatantly cheating rubberband AI, desperate for someone with a blueprint encephalon to shake the flaws out of this nearly bright game. Wincing at the Day-Glo neon gaucheness, blinded by the baby oil sheen on the roads and terrible weather effects. Cursing the dreadful handling and wishing we didn't have to bulldoze around this preposterously designed spaghetti junction cityscape using GPS tracking simply to fathom how to get to your destination. You'd recollect all these things would take usa running for the 'off' switch faster than a leaping caput crab in City 17. Merely we don't. We keep playing. We pimp up our ride. We race some more. What's wrong with the states?

And what's more confusing is that the game'due south actually even moreirritating than concluding year's surprise hit. At least the original Underground has some actual blueprint sensibilities, allowing gamers to simply start a race. You know, from a menu, unlocking several at a fourth dimension to allow a semblance of non-restrictive option. In virtually senses, this year'southward sequel is exactly the same, except it's maddeningly bolted on a GTA-way urban center-based approach, giving players the slightly pointless choice of driving to each and every 1 of the races on offer earlier you lot can get going (pointless given y'all can skip straight to the garage and admission them straight). The idea of letting you get to grips with a street racing game past letting the role player, um, drive around 'da streets, innit' might sound like a bully new costless-roaming feature to slap on the box, merely in practise information technology obviously just makes the process of doing very simple things deadening. But still we play on. And on.

Lovin' it...

Another faintly ludicrous idea that shouldn't work is making the driving feel equally unenjoyable as possible for the first 5 hours. The premise of edifice your street racing career from hungry young rookie to the king of the streets is a noble one, simply not when the reality of lurching effectually in a crappy Peugeot 106 is about equally much fun as racing a milk float (in fact that might have been more fun just for the comedy value). Not until you've won almost two dozen races do you have a specced up car worthy of the proper name, and past then you'll have already sunk several hours into the game. Racing old bangers isn't really the reason people buy into these games is information technology? Sure, you tin can overcome adversity and eventually drive down the Body Shop and buy all manner of performance-related upgrades, but getting there is a chore. A trial. Relentless. Repetitive. And still we keep playing. Almost exclusively to find out if the game gets skilful one time we can really get some this speed that we patently demand.

As with Burnout three, the presentation's slick, savvy, merely too at times unbearably cheesy, full of the worst kind of American cool that turns mild mannered Europeans into frothing axe-wielding psychopaths in a matter of a few badly called moments of ill-advised exuberance such as "get out at that place and become savage, bro" or something else involving cabbages, of all things. As you might expect, the tutorial process goes on and on, as with a lot of EA games, with many well-timed video clips to show y'all the ropes and an endless succession of SMS-style letters delivered to keep you informed of unlocks, tips and events going on effectually the cities. Information technology'southward hard to knock the intentions of what it's trying to do; it's just this sort of corporate soullessness to the delivery that gets under our skin. This perception of cool from suited teams of marketing drones is enough to bulldoze anyone with a brain crazy. But nonetheless nosotros play. EA are the McDonalds of games. You know you lot shouldn't like them, but they have this mode of fooling our brains into assertive that it'due south tasty goodness that you're decorated consuming with that 1,000 thou stare fixed beyond your gaping head. Need For Speed Underground 2 is the Super Size Me of the racing world. After a month it might do irreparable harm to your vital organs. Don't endeavour this at home.

Deeper underground

Okay, we'll try and refrain from kicking this addictive guilty pleasure any more than than necessary. You get the film. When you eddy information technology downwards, NFSU2 hasn't moved on a huge corporeality since the original; essentially it's a super-sized NFSU based in a free-roaming city environment, now with added Xbox Live back up (huzzah). So, to epitomize, there are multiple race types (Drift, Sprint, Drag, Circuit, Street X, and Underground Racing League), a vast number of performance upgrades (Engine, Tyres, Nitro, Brakes, Turbo, Weight Reduction, Hydraulics, Fuel System, Intermission, etc), non to mention the rather pointless, yet entirely integral visual mods (decals, rims, exhaust tips, pigment, hoods, spoilers, audio, yous name it). To anyone familiar with terminal year'south version it'due south exactly the same drill: enter race, win race, win cash, spend cash on pimping your ride. As before, you soon catch the eagle eyes of sponsors, and soon you lot'll be raking in more than greenbacks, on the proviso you fulfil the terms of their contract - in other words enter a set up number of URL races, another fixed number of races of your choosing from around the city, as well equally getting your automobile on the front comprehend of various magazines (essentially won by making it from A to B within a time limit).

So, yes, the urban center freedom does let a much greater sense of being able to do the game in the lodge of your choosing (and may well reduce frustration past assuasive you to come back to failed races in one case you have a better motorcar, and/or have specced upward your existing one), and gradually a sense of there being a more coherent world does trickle downward as you begin to familiarise yourself with the surroundings. But. But, the lesser line is the repetition factor does kick in eventually. There's simply so much a gamer can accept of doing roughly the same thing over and over and over again, against slightly more than challenging opponents - especially with an execrable EA Trax/Crapx soundtrack largely consisting of the kind of teeth-grinding angst rawk that the 'kids' make 'cool' hand signals to during games similar this (Queens Of The Stone Age aside, which can happily join the states for tea someday). The odd flake of techno and rap didn't assistance its cause, either.

Shine on

In terms of the bodily race modes available, Drag has been bizarrely made less interactive than before, giving the actor only the task of gear shifting and irresolute lanes, with actual steering AI controlled for reasons not fully apparent to the states. Drift dispenses with whatsoever requirement to actually win the race at all (or terminate for that matter) so long as you rack up enough migrate points for powersliding your fashion around the course, which seems patently daft to us. Sprint is but a charge to the finish line, Circuit predictably involves lap-based races confronting v opponents, Street X is a more ambitious, shorter version of Excursion that'due south all near barging your opponent off the racing line, while Underground Racing League is another not-street-based excursion racing variant that takes place over a series or longer, smoother racing tracks devoid of traffic.

All the modes included are reasonably entertaining, don't become us incorrect, but every bit with more or less every single race manner included, the bastard, cheating, Satan's spawn AI makes winning races much more of a lucky intermission than the result of actual skill. Even so again, EA has made information technology possible for y'all to race the (almost) perfect race, slip upward inexplicably at the concluding stretch and lose. Winning, it seems, is far from an exact science. Naturally you'll always win if yous race perfectly, but yet there's e'er the sense that the game neither lets you get too far ahead, nor too far behind - hence the omnipresent fear that the AI is always there, lurking, prepare to pounce on unfathomable mistakes. It's merely excruciatingly frustrating that rather than simply gear up a sort of time-based requirement where coming together that fourth dimension will win you lot the race, EA has again opted for a system whereby coming second in ane race can exist clocked in at, say five minutes, even so 4.40 in the next race could also quite conceivably net yous second - all because the AI's tracking you similar a hawk, whether scorching along in first or lagging in 4th. EA, if only yous could mend this nonsensical system there might be a game here really worth recommending to all.

But even if that were the case, there'southward all the same the issue of the unsatisfying handling and the mode it looks. Firstly on the latter point, we all know EA tin can make fine looking games, and to an extent NFSU2 looks bloody marvellous, with the neon skyline view from the hills truly spectacular. The cars certainly looks great (although tin can't be damaged, somewhat pointlessly, no doubt thanks to those oh-so dull licensing restrictions), and the actual quality of the scenery is unquestionably top notch. It's just the way the whole matter'due south sugar coated in Voodoo 2 lens flare neon circa-1998and subsequently doused in patently ludicrous Johnson's Babe Oil sheen. Looking back a few years ago to Need For Speed games such as the wonderful Hot Pursuit on the PC there was no uncertainty EA had one of the best racing game engines going. But what the hell's happened to the art direction since so? It's wrapped upwardly in psychedelic airbrushed madness, where EA's vision of street racing has somehow met upward with and rigorously fornicated with Athena poster designers from 1984. We desire out of this surreal nightmare now. Our eyes cannae take information technology anymore.

Craving for misbehaving

But even so for all the camp pastel slipperiness, we nevertheless kept playing. If nosotros weren't tasked with reviewing such a commercially gigantic game, we'd probably never tell a soul that it was possible to enjoy a Demand For Speed Hole-and-corner game, never listen its bastard offspring. And that's the maddening, messed upwards matter virtually all this. Despite all evidence to the contrary, we really did somehow glean an unlikely amount of enjoyment out of this hysterically warped piece of racing game blueprint. Perchance the trick is that EA knows it doesn't make whatsoever sense either. It just knows there's a demand for this stuff. Like terrifyingly addictive bad things like cigarettes, fast food and trash Goggle box, you lot tin can't help only get sucked in past it all. Weird creatures, homo beings. Ever enjoying the wrong things, despite themselves.

Order yours now from Simply Games.

vi /10

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Source: https://www.eurogamer.net/articles/r_nfsu2_x

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