Game information

Information about NFS Underground 2

Last year EA released a completely new game in the Need for Speed series,
a game that quickly captured the attention of fans of stylish cars, cool
upgrades and fast driving. Need for Speed Underground was wonderfully
made: the right level of car tuning, interesting tracks,
challenging opponents and stunning graphics, that's what set it apart
from the crowd of other racing games. Now, a year later, EA pleases us with Need
for Speed Underground 2 with new race types and a big open city.
The story of Need for Speed Underground 2 unfolds through static
comic-style cutscenes, in which the world star and at the same time one of
the coolest members of the Underground scene, Rachel (Brooke Boorke), gives you
various tasks. After a short story you move into the open city
and go through a tutorial on the game modes.
The biggest change in the new game is a single large city through which
you can move freely and choose the races you want to
participate in. You can drive into various car shops, choose the parts you need
for your car, constantly improve its performance and
appearance. The shops are shown on the city map as colored circles, but
they only appear if you find them. The color of the circle
shows which upgrades you can make in that shop. The selection
of body parts immediately struck me. You can say with confidence that
there are far more parts than in the first game. The list of performance
upgrades remained unchanged, not a
single new item was added. And now the good news, a new
gadget has appeared - a painted speedometer with drawings of flames, lightning and
some cheerful Pokemon.
In fact, the open city is a very interesting idea.
Someone probably took it and said "Everyone likes GTA and it has an
open city, let's have an open city too, we'll close off some
territories, and open them up as you progress." In practice it's a bit different.
Driving around the city takes time and keeps you away from the action. The game
also rarely uses the open city to its advantage, as for example in
Midnight Club, where you are required to get to the race location within a certain
time. In principle you could say that EA didn't quite polish this aspect
of the game.
The game starts with fairly slow cars, but by earning more money
you'll be able to afford a cooler ride. Soon the game becomes much
more interesting, and your car prettier and faster. The driving technique is mastered
quite quickly and, in my opinion, it has become somewhat easier. The game
kept all the old modes: circuit races, sprints, drag racing and drift,
and new ones appeared: X-racing, a race on a drift track, but with normal
physics. The goal of X-racing is not to score drift points, you must
be the first to lead in order to win. Outrun races, which can
happen anywhere in the city. You just need to drive up to another
car and press the "Start race" button. After that don't stand
still, but try to catch up with the opponent. If you overtook him, then you lead
and set the route for the race yourself. The goal of the race is to break away from the opponent by
a certain distance. You will also take part in time trials, in which
you need to get from one part of the city to another before the
photographer leaves. If you make it, you'll earn some money and get on
the cover of a magazine. The next, and in my opinion the most interesting type, is the "Underground
League". These races take place on closed tracks that have their
own design, unlike the rest of the city. Many of the cutscenes in the game
are from this mode.
Although in career mode you can choose from three difficulty levels, none
of them is difficult enough. As a result, most races
come down to taking the lead and holding it, which together with the
nitro upgrade and good driving technique is a fairly easy task. Sometimes
it seems that the opponents don't even try to overtake you. So, after overtaking
everyone in a minute, for the next five minutes you just try not to
crash into anything, but even if you do crash, it's not hard to regain the lead.
If an opponent overtakes you, he starts moving slower. And the further he is
from you, the slower he drives. There are situations when you get into
one crash after another, and at the finish you overtake all the opponents stuck in
one pile-up. You have to hope for the game's multiplayer.
You can play online in Need for Speed Underground 2 on PC, PS2 and Xbox.
You can choose the race type, the number of players, the cars available in
that race, for example limit the choice or give players the option to take
their cars from career. You can also set up a race around the city. Online
mode works well on an average broadband connection even with 6 players.
The game has well-developed statistics that will help you choose an opponent
that matches your driving level. On GameCube the game simply didn't
turn out well, and the already unstable frame rate becomes simply
unbearable in network play.
Crashes in Need for Speed Underground 2 are done rather weakly. The game absolutely
does not model damage. Well, why would you want that in an arcade racer? There are
plenty of car simulators for that. When colliding at high speed
a slow-motion effect appears, rather
beautiful sparks fly in different directions, and the crash sound is like the wreck of a real car,
which is an undoubted plus in the game. The ability to extensively tune your
sports car more than makes up for the weakness of the crash presentation.
The most interesting part of Need for Speed Underground 2, besides the races themselves,
is tuning the appearance and performance of your car. To
improve performance you'll have to buy parts, gathered in
stages, which gives the game the ability to keep you away from the best upgrades
until you reach their level. All parts are divided into the same
categories, as in the previous game: engine, brakes, nitrous, chip tuning
and so on. To complete the game, you'll have to install maximum
quality upgrades. Visual upgrades give you much more room for thought,
but ultimately it all comes down to the popularity numbers for each part.
These numbers add up and as a result you get the overall popularity of your
car. You can install bumpers, hoods, vinyls, neons and much more.
It's especially nice to show all this off online to the whole world.
Graphically, Need for Speed Underground 2 looks good, unless we're
talking about the GameCube version. In the other versions the car models are pleasant,
and the city looks quite decent. The blur effect has gotten worse and
shows up at very high speeds or when using nitrous. The frame rate
at high speeds doesn't drop. Overall, the graphics have become much
better compared to the previous game.
The sound in the game is quite good. The engine sound may not be as deep
and raspy as you'd like, but it's still worthy of respect. Moreover, it
improves when you purchase powerful upgrades. And effects like the
whistling wind when you're flying through a tunnel give the game an unforgettable touch
and help convey the atmosphere of racing. Regarding the music, I want to note that
EA has always made good soundtracks for NFS series games, which subsequently
sold in millions of copies, were downloaded onto users' hard drives,
recorded onto cassettes (even by people who hadn't played it!), in short
spread all over the world. This time EA carefully worked on the music,
thanks to which only the best artists made it into the game (within
the game's genre, of course). The game features music of various styles and
directions. There's energetic rock from Ministry, rap from Snoop Doog and Chingy,
wonderful tracks from Paul Van Dyk and Xzibit and many other good compositions.
By the way, if you want to listen only to certain tracks, you can
turn off the rest or configure which tracks will play where (menu-race)
in the EA Games TRAX menu, a very convenient new feature.
As you know, Need for Speed Underground 2 was started before the release and
following the template of the first game. Some may not like the new aspects
in the sequel, but still it should be admitted that the game is very engaging
and has its own unique atmosphere. If you appreciated
the first part, then once you immerse yourself in this one, you won't be able to tear yourself away from racing,
photo shoots for magazines and tuning your supercar, because far from
everyone in life can have some Skyline and smash it left and
right.