I have never been a fan of the Need for Speed series, what with its gritty visuals and choppy frame rate, in particular the dull Underground games. I thought it was unfair, therefore, that they were so popular and went to the top of the charts on both occasions: they seemed in a whole different league to the likes of the Burnout, Project Gotham Racing and Gran Turismo series, which not only had superior graphics and better game play, but much more time seemed to have been put into them; and each sequel was just as good as, if not better, than its predecessor. Having recently bought an Xbox 360 and not having many games to play, I decided to give the latest game in EA’s racing series, Most Wanted, a rent seeing as racing is one of my favourite game genres.

First impressions when initially starting this game are quite encouraging, as long as you don’t take the game’s cut scenes seriously, featuring real ‘actors’ – I use the term loosely as they are terrible – against imaginary backdrops of the game’s world. Your character is an up-and-coming street racer with a top class, fully modified car able to beat just about any other street racers you come across. Unfortunately one of the first people you race against, Razor, tampers with your car, and in short, you end up being arrested and losing everything. Hence the aim of the game rears its head: you must fight your way to the top of the ‘Blacklist 15’, ultimately beating the number one rival, who, as coincidence has it, is the one who tampered with your car. In fact he is at the top because he beat you by cheating. Doesn’t it make your blood boil?

The game’s other main character, the mysterious Mia, instructs you that to get to the top and beat Razor, you must complete challenges – these consist of two types of challenges, races and ‘Milestone Events’. You also get ‘Bounty’ by completing the latter events and evading police pursuits, the main feature of this game. Complete the right number of challenges and get the right amount of Bounty and you get to challenge the next Blacklist Rival; when you beat him or her you do the same to challenge the next rival. And that is the entire career mode. While the number of challenges you have to complete gets higher as you work your way up the list, and they also get much harder, it all seems pretty samey after you have beaten your third rival. Fortunately there are a number of different challenges available: for races, there are traditional lap races, point to point races and time trial races, and also a quite clever new type of race in which you have to go through certain points of a race as fast as possible, to rack up points – in these you don’t have to finish first to win first by points. Milestone events including evading a pursuit in as short a time as possible, dodging a set number of road blocks and causing as much damage to property as possible. The graphics in this game are a vast improvement over the Underground games, but they should be anyway as the game is running on a much more powerful machine, and unfortunately there is still an apparent frame rate problem, although this does not affect the game play much.

There are many factors which do affect the game play however; namely the persistent unfairness of the game. Picture the scene: you are in a ten-minute long police pursuit, and have racked up a fair amount of Bounty, and completed all Milestone Events available, so that if you manage to evade the pursuit you will be able to challenge the next Rival. You have just managed to go into ‘Cool down’ mode, which you enter if you manage to put enough distance between yourself and police chasing you. You then have to wait for a while until the meter fills up; then you have successfully evaded the pursuit and you can go on your merry way. But then, seemingly out of nowhere, a police car appears; you then have to go into evade mode and start trying to escape again. To add salt to the wound, you then encounter a road block on a tight bend that you could not possibly have seen unless you have been checking the map every second. You hit the police car just in the wrong place, and you flip over and are left upside down in your car with now possible way of turning back round. You reset your car; logic dictates that this will place you the right way up in the centre of the road, and can make a clean escape. Unfortunately this is not the case; if you reset while in a pursuit you instantly get ‘Busted’ for some reason, even if there is a free route away. One mistake: ten minutes of your life wasted. You have to start the entire pursuit again. This makes the pursuits less exciting and more nerve-racking; the thought of having to restart scares the hell out of you.

The races themselves are also inconsistent. This game works off a simple principle: If you are too far ahead, then your opponents will suddenly put on an insane burst of speed and drive past you before you can say ‘unfair’. Conversely, if you are lagging behind, your opponents will suddenly brake for no apparent reason and let you pass. This is common throughout every race in the game, even the last race against Razor. It is a far cry from the likes of Project Gotham 3, while being almost a different game genre due to its realism, at least it is judged on pure skill and not the game feeling sorry or cynical towards you.

When (or indeed if) you finally complete this game, you will most likely experience a feeling of relief, and not one of achievement, which is a shame as it takes a lot of persistence to finish enough races and pursuits to challenge Razor. This game would have been a lot more fun to play had it been a lot fairer, and not had its longevity stretched out by being nearly impossible to finish some of the later pursuits.