by Jody - November 23, 2003

Developed by Electronic Arts, Need for Speed: Underground takes the fastest street cars, the mix of performance and visual parts, and the most sophisticated racing system and throws them into one! Create and race your dream car against racers online or against the computer or spend countless hours customizing your car! With Need for Speed: Underground, your street racing dreams will come true.

My dream Supra!

Underground shows there's adaptability to go along with the talent that made Hot Pursuit. It's a different style of racer -- faster, drifter, and a lot tougher, with less emphasis on shortcuts and more on driving skill -- but it shares the same qualities that made the last Need for Speed successful. The controls are solid and responsive, always, and the track designs are laid out with logic and intelligence, to challenge good drivers in tight corners and reward you with some all-out speed in the straights.

The way Underground moderates its difficulty level is particularly impressive in light of the way some other tuning-oriented racers have worked. There are several levels to the way it challenges the player. To begin with, the selection of tuning parts is gradually limited as you progress through the game's career mode. It's not possible to buy all the mods and build an unbeatable car (the way you can in Gran Turismo or Shutokou Battle), because they're not all available until the very end of your career.

In addition, that wouldn't be possible anyway, because the capability of the AI-driven opposition changes to match your own car's power. It's a fair difficulty scale, with far more subtlety than the blatantly cheap yo-yo AI in the early Need for Speed games, so races are always competitive without ever being cheap. Topping it off, every race is available in three difficulty levels, so top-notch players can challenge for the best rewards, or you can skate through a challenge you just want to pass on the easiest level.

The temptation to always select the "easy" level of difficulty isn't as strong as you might think. While Underground has a hell of a reward system, letting you unlock an awesome selection of upgrade parts and hidden cars, not all rewards are simply tied to race wins. There's also a system of "style points," where racing with flair and skill (drafting, drifting, clean laps, and so on) racks up points towards earning new visual modifications.

Underground's only problems are generally minor details or matters of taste. The biggest issue (and that description is stretching it) is probably the lack of a replay mode. It seems ridiculous to let players create such good-looking cars and then leave out cinematic replays, but there's no such option on offer. I also preferred the championship presentation from Hot Pursuit 2, since it gave a more clear picture of the challenge tree and the different rewards tied to each goal. Underground doesn't lack for challenges (the championship contains more than 100 races), but you only get to see a relative few at a time.

Remarkable

It's a shame to pass by the scenery that fast, too, because this is one of the best-looking games on the market today. The architecture in the background is top-notch, full of depth and variety, but it still wouldn't look like much without the deft mix of light sources on top of that. And then between that and the viewer's eyes, the filtering effects give the lighting a diffuse, realistic look that's eerily reminiscent of a real city at night. It's not like the simple blanket filters over something like The Bouncer, but a more selective effect that accentuates the sense of speed remarkably.

Great sound, but very limited.

As for the soundtrack, well, your mileage may vary. I understand the reasoning behind EA's choice of tracks (licensed modern rock, punk, and hip-hop), even if I don't enjoy the end result. Like almost any racing soundtrack with vocals, unless they're vocals by Takenobu Mitsuyoshi, it wears out its welcome well before the championship concludes. Personally, I would have licensed an all-electronic soundtrack, like the original SSX -- beats and engine noises would have provided more than adequate backdrop for the races.

HOURS of fun!

Last year's Hot Pursuit 2 showed that Black Box could make a solid racing game. It wasn't perfect, but the seeds were obviously there -- it had a good balance of hammer-down speed and finesse in the curves, and fun track designs with a laid-back style. Its car chases showed a knack for setting up a compelling racing challenge, not too difficult and not too easy.

Obnoxious Traffic

Despite how much I truly love this game, it has some of the biggest annoyances of any game I have ever found. First off, when you wreck your car, even in the smallest flip, it takes thirty seconds to show you how it flips in slow motion. Meaning, if you barely clip the backend of a taxi, your car is going to fly up in the air really high and spin/flip for another 30 seconds. This tends to really piss you off. Another thing is the AI. As smart as they may be, I find it very annoying how they are made just after you. Every upgrade you throw into your car, they do also. What is the point of that? Also, I can understand that people can have great driving skills, but to maneuver through traffic like they do without even touching anything (unless I am near) is simply ridiculous. I don�t see how they can be so perfect, and with me using a steering wheel and braking every second, still seem to smack the walls. Don�t get me wrong though, the game engine is one of the best that I�ve seen in the racing game genre ever, it�s just that I hate the fact that I can�t be secretive with my parts on my car. I mean... What do they do? Put a tracking device on my car and monitor everything I install so that they can do it to their car also? What happens if I decide to play through the entire game with a stocked car? Why even upgrade performance parts at all?

Now for the multiplayer rants: < br>
I love the idea that I can race online against anyone I want to, but why bother when everyone�s car is always faster than yours? Also, the little dip into the road and drive through walls trick doesn�t get it. EA needs to get to work on adopting PunkBuster in this game, because right now, multiplayer is just preposterous. Also, as if the internet didn�t have enough places to go and chat, it seems that the majority of the gamers, who own the game, just seem to want to hang out in chat servers and talk about their cars (real or non) all day. When you challenge them, they decline. THAT IS NOT A CHATROOM! DOWNLOAD MIRC YOU CHATTY B!TCHES! Also, the chat box is VERY limited when typing in text. You cannot type a full sentence without it cutting you off. Maybe they are trying to cut down on spam� maybe some programmer made a mistake� whatever it is, it needs to be fixed, because it�s obnoxious. So until EA can filter out cheaters, Need for Speed: Underground Play Online is not a real good place to hang out.

This game deserves to be owned.

This is the best arcade racer on the market today. It's the best one in years, better than Burnout 2 and the last Hot Pursuit. It's up there on the podium with Ridge Racer Type 4 and Daytona USA 2, contending for the title of very best ever. Whichever way you play it, though, you won't be disappointed. In a year without Gran Turismo, and in a world where Ridge Racer has pulled into the paddock for good, Need for Speed is the undisputed king of the street.