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Posted on June 19th, 2004 - 3828 Reads

Rated Everyone Need for Speed Underground GameCube Review

-- Written by Marc-André Sarrazin



 Have you ever dreamed of owning that cool looking Skyline you've seen in The Fast and the Furious and tune it, spending every dollar you have left to make it the very best street racing car ever! Well, you probably have but didn't have enough money to do so, right? Well, EA has answered the prayers of millions of gamers worldwide and released a new game in the Need for Speed serie called Underground. The Hype for this game was extremely huge, even long before it was released due to the increasing popularity of illegal street racing. I too, was amongst those who couldn't wait to get their hands on the game, but now that I have finished it and created the ride of my dreams, there's only one question that I have in mind right now and it is: "Was this game REALLY deserving all that hype?"

Let's start with what I thought was the most attracting part of the game; the presentation! The second you put this game in your little box of love you will already notice that this is a big budget game. The slick opening FMV, the professinal driver warning, the THX logo, the licensed music, it's all there! Then, there's the licensed cars and all those car parts you can get in the game, all of which were lincensed too! There are so many of them, it let's you do millions of different combinations, much more than you will ever have time to do! But, does all that make for a great game? Sure, it may look cool at first, but this is a racing game right! But then, you may think that since the presentation is so good, and since it's a Need for Speed game, then it must be good! I'm sorry, but it's far from being the best racing game this generation. EA has blinded us all with all that slick looking stuff, but forgot to make a decent racing game.

First of, this is an arcade racing game so it's normal for the cars not to react realistically, and it makes the game really easy to get used to. You've got 3 difficulty settings that you can choose for each race you do, and the harder it is, the more cash you will make to upgrade your car. Each time you want to do a race, you just look at your income messages and pick a challenge to unlock a new one. It goes like that until you either get bored or complete all 113 races of the game. I say bored, because even though the game offers 3 different types of races: either the classic race, Drag race and drift, the tracks really get repetitive. You'll always be racing the same few tracks but in inversed or mirrored mode, and it can get pretty borring after some time. Also, it seems like there is an handicap as the CPU will always be able to catch up to you, even if you do a perfect race, and it can get extremely frustrating when you have to restart the same race 20 times. Either that or you'll be in first place in the last straight line before the finish line and a car will cross the road and you'll crash in it, seeing yourself fly in slow motion in the air for like 20 seconds without being able to press any button to get back onto the road like you would normally do in another racing game called Rush, and you'll have to start the race over. Sure, you can press a reset button, but it works only when your car has completed the entire crash, which can be quite long! Now, you might think it's all part of the game, it's just that I'm not very good at racing games! Well, there are 2 different kinds of difficult games in my opinion; there's the first one where the game will put on a good challenge, but where you'll fail because you made a mistake or had not practiced enough. Then, there's the one like we have here in Underground and where it becomes frustrating because it is only a matter of luck if you win or not; you just have to keep on playing until you win, it's that simple! So the game doesn't really offer any challenge nor does it require any skills; just keep on playing and you should be able to finish it, that is, if you care to get to the end.

The reason why most people seem to like this game is because and you can really desing your car and make it really cool looking, with a nice paint job and decals. You can paint nearly everyting on your car, even things you can't see. I've heard of people playing hours with this game, just doing paint jobs for their cars. I mean, if I have to pay 50$ for a racing game, I want to have fun doing races, not tuning my car for no other reason than for it to look cool! That is complete nonsense, but it's the primary reason this game appeals to the casual gamer, just like GTA did! I mean, when I play the game, I use the inside view because I think it controls better that way, so what's the point of having a cool car when you don't even see it?

On the graphics side, I can't say I am impressed, but at the same time I am not completely dissapointed. Sure, the cars look great, the city looks great, the sense of speed is really there with the blurring effect when you use your Nitro, you really feel like you're in a movie. So, it's pretty good, but it would be even better if the framerate was constant, because it isn't at all and it really hurts the gameplay. Framerate isn't always the most important thing in a game, but in a racing, you MUST have a constant framerate. I don't know if it's either because they didn't have enough time to polish the game or just because they just wanted to put too much in graphics wise, but I think it would have been a good thing to do like our friends over at Bizarre Creations and lock the framerate at something lower than 60 FPS like in PGR2 because I think it would have really helped.

On the sound side, I don't have any complaints. The lincensed music is great, like in all EA games, and the sound effects are just amazing! Having played the X-Box version, I can say that the GC version really would have been better with DD5.1 rather than DPLII since when playing this game on a surround system, it really feels like watching The Fast and the Furious, but in real-time. Since the GC doesn't have the output for that though, it doesn't mean it isn't doing a good job because I thought it had one of the best sound of all racing games released this generation. I don't know who did the sounds for this game, but it truely is a work of art! Good Job!

So.... should I recommend you this game or not? It's kind of hard to say since I wish I hadn't bought it, because after playing through it, I won't be playing with it anymore and it will just sit on my shelf collecting dust. But since there aren't that many good racing games on GC, it could prove to be a good purchase, but I'd still recommend to rent it first.

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