Need for Speed Undercover: Games Review

Game: Need For Speed: Undercover
Console: Sony Playstation 3
Developer: EA Black Box
Release Date: 21st November 2008

Need For Speed: Undercover was released during an interesting time in the franchise; Most Wanted '05 and Carbon were two of the best loved and critically well received games in the series, but ProStreet didn't quite hit the same levels of success, thanks in part to taking the focus off illegal street racing. In attempting to return to the series roots with Undercover, several game mechanics return from Most Wanted and Carbon; notably the police chase system and some race types, though the AI seem to have been lifted straight out of ProStreet, offering little to no challenge for much of the game.

One new aspect of Undercover is live action story cutscenes, as the plot of the game is told via pre-recorded video with real actors. In a photo-realistic game this might work quite well, but given Undercover's frankly poor visuals, the live action scenes create a disconnect with the gameplay which pairs with the already fairly predictable plot to do very little. The game's major plot twist is all but spoiled in the game's introductory cutscene, not that it would have been particularly interesting if saved.

The race types in Need for Speed Undercover appear varied on first glance, but Highway Battle and Outrun modes are essentially re-purposed canyon chases (minus the canyon), Circuit and Sprint races are a staple of the Need for Speed series, and Checkpoint races make players realise how barren the city map really is. The final three event types which raise your heat level include Cop Takedown and Cost To State events, which usually involve coercing the AI into following you to a crash breaker, and Escape which is literally just a police chase you need to escape from.

Some races are Master Events which progress the plot, and there are also jobs that need to be done for characters in the game. These usually take the form of delivering stolen cars and are much the same as a police pursuit, but in a different car. Some races gift players with the pink slip to a new car; these can't be sold but offer an alternative to purchasing cars from a fairly expensive shop, or paying real money to unlock said cars in the PS Store.

Police chases are much the same as those featured in Need For Speed: Most Wanted, except that simple acts such as turning a corner or driving in a straight line are often enough to lose police attention entirely. Add to this the useless AI during races, and the lack of cars on the streets anywhere on the map, and Undercover feels like it's set in a ghost town, populated solely by incompetent police and racers.


Despite my points so far being mostly negative, the street racing in the game does feel good. There's an extra sense of speed from the motion blur, and the handling seems to be somewhere inbetween Most Wanted and ProStreet for a return to the street racing roots of the series. For some reason though, the game runs atrociously; constant pop-in, framerate issues, stuttering, literally freezing for seconds at a time, spawning cars in mid-air as players race by, and other various audiovisual glitches make Undercover a truly difficult game to enjoy.

Although Most Wanted and Carbon both made their way to 7th generation systems, meaning that Undercover is technically the 3rd game in this console generation, it's graphically very poor, looking like a PS2 game most of the time. The car customisation options are ripped straight from ProStreet as are some of the car models, and even police radio clips sound like they're from Most Wanted. The soundtrack is pretty decent, but only plays whilst in races for some reason, leaving freeroaming eerily silent. The music also cuts in and out at will whilst racing, presumably because the rest of the game runs just as badly.

Overall Need For Speed: Undercover is a mess. Wanting to return to the series street racing roots is understandable after the failed experiment that was ProStreet, but in 16 months of development, all Black Box managed to do was make Most Wanted again, but far worse. The plot is arguably more detailed but feels like more a grind, the graphics and gameplay don't match up to a game released 3 years earlier, and there's just no reason to play Undercover when games like Carbon and Most Wanted already existed.

Rating: 44/100
Grade: E