Last year Electronic Arts took the Need for Speed series to a whole new level, bringing it to the car modification and street racing scene that some loved and some hated. It was something we had never seen before, which was the reason why it was such a success to some or a failure to others. On the other hand Need for Speed Underground 2 takes itself into its own direction trying to imitate the street racing culture. Being the sequel to the first Need for Speed Underground game, Need for Speed Underground 2 has some hefty competition to put up with.
When you see a sequel to a game you expect new features and additions, Need for Speed Underground 2 most definitely delivers that. Surprisingly the game does boast hundreds of modifications for your vehicle ranging from Nitrous Oxide to Custom Speedometers. The car modification option of the game really does keep you busy, allowing you to change nearly all aspects of your car to suit your needs.
One of the biggest changes to the series is that you no longer just browse through a list of races to choose from. You now have the ability to explore the city of ‘Bay View’ in order to find races and modification stores. At the start of your career you are introduced to a girl called Rachel, she introduces you to the city of
While roaming Bay View things start to get a little frustrating. For each type of race and modification shop there is a different colour circle on the map, in Bay View there are at least three races available for each type of race. Besides that is not counting the huge amounts of different modification stores which are placed around the Bay View map. Now you can start to understand the frustration – having tons of different coloured circles scattered across the map is not good, not to mention it getting in the way of the destination you are trying to get to. Little yellow triangles will also be positioned on the map indicating your fellow racers which are also roaming Bay View, if you manage to get side to side with their car or manage to nudge their car an option will appear to race them. When you accept the race your objective is to lose the opponent – pretty much a game of chase.
When I put Need For Speed Underground 2 onto my disc tray for my Xbox I was thinking one thing – hopefully this won't be Need For Speed Underground with a few additional modifications for your vehicle. To be totally honest that is what Need For Speed Underground 2 is. The free-roam mode doesn’t really work that well, it gets boring quickly and everything just gets so repetitive. The music side of things doesn’t get any better at all, there is a mix of so many different genres of music that it doesn’t flow well at all which comes to the fact it just sounds like a horrible noise in the background which you would probably want to avoid.
Fortunately, there are new cars available, but that still does not add the depth that is needed to make a quality game. The extra cars do add to the total number of cars but it still does seem that there isn’t enough selection available for the player to choose from. One of the most anticipated cars which is new to Need For Speed Underground 2 is the Hummer – but it really does seem totally pointless doing such a thing since the stats of the car just remain at the bottom scale.
New race modes which are introduced to Need for Speed Underground 2 include Outrun, URL Race and Street X. Outrun consists of losing your opponent in a game of chase, where as in the URL Race mode consists of you racing on a racing circuit and Street X Racing is basically racing on a drift mode track. These new race types are enjoyable; they do give you something more to do than just the usual street racing or elimination. The environmental graphics have been incredibly enhanced, giving a real ‘street’ feel as you are driving through Bay View. The homes and landscapes look top notch and the lighting effects are flawless. Everyone likes to crash his or her car, right? Need For Speed Underground 2 offers that, but in a very bad way. When you crash, the camera goes into the usual slow motion scene; sadly there are no visual damage effects at all, not to mention the really unrealistic crash physics. The weather effects and environmental landscapes do impress, but when you are forced to concentrate on so many other things it can be quite hard to notice.
Overall Need For Speed Underground 2 is an enjoyable game if you are just playing for an hour or two, but will get frustrating and boring for the hardcore gamer. Online play seems as if no effort what so ever was put into it. Only four people are allotted to one lobby and you have to find a new lobby after you have finished a race, since lobbies automatically close after an online race. If you are a hardcore Need For Speed fan, this game is for you. Some people will love this game but some people will hate, just as Need For Speed Underground was posed. DM
