Game review

Early morning. The virgin city wakes up in the rays of the rising sun.
Ordinary folk crawl out into the street one by one and go about their business.
They are so preoccupied with their own cares that day after day they pay
absolutely no attention whatsoever to the packs of
tuned-up bolides rushing past their noses, belching out the deafening howl of "lunar rovers", army
jeeps and cheerfully chirring helicopters, driven by the heavy hand of their owner,
the town's main attraction - the circus named Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
It must be admitted that the people at Electronic Arts are by no means fools capable
only of churning out sequels. Having listened to a mass of unflattering criticism
after the release of Need for Speed: Underground 2, the "electronics" people decided to heed
the disgruntled masses. Slightly. Although at first glance the game's polish
seems all-encompassing. Did the "darkness" of the previous underground exhibits annoy you?
Here's a sunny day for you, dear ones. Did you faint at the sight of the many-thousand-strong
set of upgrade parts? We'll cut the tuning. By two, no, three times. Were you worn out
by the tedious gameplay? Police to the studio! Yes, yes, it was precisely the cop chases
that appeared as the main attraction of Most Wanted, unambiguously
influencing the game's subtitle. The guardians of law and order, it must be admitted,
don't earn their bread for nothing and give unlucky racers a proper thrashing.
A chance encounter with the "pharaohs" is always accompanied by a small scripted
cutscene that smoothly grows into a real Hollywood show. Incidentally, when it comes to
spectacle, EA-branded game products have always been fine. The all-encompassing
sound cocktail of flashing lights, engines running at their limit, on-air
radio chatter, extreme speeds and pure adrenaline is served
to all owners of Most Wanted for free. In unlimited quantities. The
red rag for the police is the "Heat" bar. The more
this attribute fills up, the faster attention toward your person grows
from the law enforcers. But no matter how long the "tail" is, it can always be
cut off entirely. For this purpose, so-called "Pursuit breakers" serve - special
structures (mostly gas stations and billboards) ready at the most
inopportune moment to come crashing down on the heads of the hapless pursuers. And so as not to
clutter users' minds with unnecessary musings about the location of
destructive objects, all destructible spots instantly appear on the mini-map
from the very start of the pursuit race. At the end of any successfully concluded
chase, the meticulous computer tallies the damage inflicted by the user's car
on the metropolis and presents a bill, which is not at all obligatory to pay. Besides
this, all the gamer's exploits are scrupulously entered into a criminal database,
implemented, as far as possible, quite identically. Curious, of course,
but no more. Having shaken off the pesky cops, the player is left alone with
the story component of Most Wanted. And here the infallible algorithm of the game machine
begins to malfunction. Well, who would have thought that the main hero would again be dealt
last year's dirty trick, teased with a high-class car and subsequently forced
over the course of not one dozen hours to prove in practice his ambitions to
possess it. A happy ending can be reached in one single way: by putting
the nose of 15 cocky street racers out of joint. 15 stages. 15. When calculating
the time potentially spent on completion, one should also consider the fact that
to reach the long-awaited duel it is necessary first to complete 6-7 preliminary
races. The racing amusements flowed smoothly from previous parts of the series, taking
along with them the moderately entertaining modes "Toolbooth" (a timed run from one checkpoint
to another) and "Speedtrap" (the winner of this contest is determined by tallying
the points awarded for the phenomenal speeds shown at checkpoints and the final
position at the finish). Somewhere higher up the author has already noted the striking
trimming-down of car tuning compared to the second Underground. The visual settings
of the iron steeds have receded into the background. The image points needed
for further advancement along the rails of the plot have also sunk into oblivion. True,
it's still not worth erasing the road to the workshop from memory. The upgrade parts
available are quite enough to brighten the grey everyday life of illegal racers. But updates to the under-the-hood innards
are extremely necessary. Souped-up mid-rangers like the Audi TT wipe the floor with stock
monsters of a higher class. A great deal of the credit for this lies on the shoulders, excuse me, of the cheater's
way of implementing the nitrous booster. If in Underground (the sequel, as we recall,
ruined everything at the root) the use of nitro was equated with almost a strategic
twist of the game, then today's offspring of the racing series communicates with casuals directly,
face to face. The acceleration bar fills up over time all by itself. No, you didn't
mishear. All by itself. Curtain. One can talk about the graphical beauties of Most Wanted
for a long time and with delight. From this sunlight your eyes go dark, and raindrops simply
beg to be wiped off the monitor screen. True, the super-detailed car models
and mesmerizing landscapes, together with crisp textures, will only be given to owners
of powerful systems; the rest will have to make do with playing on medium settings,
which, meanwhile, produce a quite watchable picture.


P.S. The game also features, and even some Newtonian elements. Thus, logs and cars
tumble out of trucks, and knocked-down lampposts bounce along the road for a long time,
crashing into careless drivers.


Final comments: An engrossing, high-octane, spectacular game. And just as empty.
The choice is yours. I've already made mine.


Gameplay: The local campaign's boredom, growing with every hour, at times diluted by
thrilling tag sessions with the police and sitting around in the garage.


Graphics: The best currently available among arcade simulators.


Sound: As always, a decent selection of tracks and a lack of surround sound support.


How long will it last?: Given the length of the single-player campaign, yes. However, not everyone has
that much patience.