Need for Speed Goes Undercover

Published November 26, 2008

Electronic Arts' white-knuckle Need for Speed racing franchise rockets its way back onto Xbox 360® in Need for Speed™ Undercover, a refined amalgam of many of the series' best features, race modes, and presentation styles.

Put your foot on the pedal and go!

You play an anonymous undercover operative working in concert with the FBI to infiltrate an elite smuggling ring by proving your driving skills in daring races and hot police pursuits. Cause enough havoc and earn enough notoriety to earn your place in the smuggler's ring, and work your way to the top to bring the whole illicit syndicate crashing down.

The races, chases, and evasions take every opportunity to heighten the moment with the kind of outrageous action normally reserved for blockbuster movies.

Fast and Loose
Need for Speed Undercover is sweet arcade-style racing. Other than the licensed cars (such as an Audi 08 R8, Dodge Viper SRT10, McLaren '94 F1) and the modern cityscape, there is little to tie Undercover to reality, and that's a good thing.

You'll plow through police barricades largely unhindered, fly hundreds of feet through the air courtesy of a nitrous boost and conveniently placed ramps, slide effortlessly around sharp corners at suicidal speeds, and a great deal more besides. Undercover is all about the thrill. The races, chases, and evasions take every opportunity to heighten the moment with the kind of outrageous action normally reserved for blockbuster movies.

Go get 'em!

Heroic Driving
Of course, in order to pull off spectacular stunts and maneuvers, you need the proper tools, such as the game's Speedbreaker and Heroic Driving Engine. Speedbreaker allows you to tap X to slow down time, and increase your car's maneuverability. Bob and weave amid tight traffic and slip easily between cruisers in a barricade with Speedbreaker activated.

The Heroic Driving Engine helps you understand and easily execute moves like nitrous drifts, perfect cornering, 360-degree burnouts to confuse the cops, J-turns to evade them, and double-tap reverses to instantly send yourself hurtling backward in order to, say, get out of the way of a police cruiser trying to pin you against a wall.

Open Simplicity
Like many of the series' recent games, Undercover employs an open-ended system for joining events, allowing you to pick among your favorite race types to earn enough Wheelman Rep to unlock the next story-based mission.

That doesn't mean you need to spend a lot of empty time navigating the city streets. Instead, you can fast travel to any currently available event. Press down on the D-pad to load the closest available race, or bring up your GPS map and hand-select your next event to travel there in seconds.

User-Created Pursuit
You might not have to spend time cruising Tri-Cities if you don't want to, but it does give you the opportunity to start up a thrilling impromptu police pursuit. Cause mayhem on the streets by speeding, wrecking, and demolishing city property, and police dispatch will take notice of you, sending cruisers and even choppers to put a stop to your antics.

Once you're sighted, the pursuit is on. You must successfully evade capture with an eye-popping combination of heroic driving maneuvers, shortcuts, snaking through barricades, sliding around spike traps, and even triggering environmental traps to take out your pursuers. For example, knocking out the supports holding up a load of massive concrete pipes will send them scattering across the road, disabling any nearby cruisers.

A double-tap reverse may be in order.

Race Types
While the police pursuits are both exhilarating and a welcome return to classic Need for Speed action, Undercover really earns its stripes with its variety of race types. And we're not talking just the classic Sprint (point A to B) and Circuit (lap-based) races.

Highway Battles are high-speed affairs made all the more visceral by displaying the action from a first-person-camera on the hood of your car for some serious rim-rattling action. These battles require you to overtake your competitor and either put 1,000 feet of distance between you and them, or simply maintain your lead when the timer expires.

Cost to State races put your destructive skills to the test as you are given a set dollar amount of destruction to achieve by crashing through anything and everything, disabling police cruisers, setting off environmental traps, and wrecking other cars.

Then there's the Xbox LIVE® multiplayer modes like Cops N' Robbers which puts players in control of the pursuing cops as well as the fleeing robbers who are racing to deliver a package before they're caught.

Live Action Story
Undercover also brings back live-action cinematics to the franchise with real actors in real settings to give the crime drama proceedings a realistic feel. Plus, who wouldn't rather look at the real Maggie Q and Christina Milian in action instead of their virtual models?

Need for Speed Undercover for Xbox 360 brings arcade racing back to the fore in such streamlined fashion that you'll never find yourself more than a few seconds away from the action you crave. Get your lead foot ready. You'll need it.

Article by Ryan Treit