Need For Speed Undercover Preview

Let's not beat around the bush, Need For Speed ProStreet was a big disappointment. Yes, we were looking for a change in the NFS formula after yearly releases of the same basic offering since 2003, but rewinding back to circuit racing and eliminating the police presence wasn't quite what we had in mind for the first truly next-gen NFS game. Imagine our relief, then, to hear that this year's attempt was taking the game back to the streets and placing the rozzers on your shiny, metal tail once again.

Taking place in a fictional open world city dubbed the Tri-City Bay Area by EA Canada, Undercover features a variable array of downtrodden, industrial, and regal localities throughout this large map. We saw the picturesque Gold Coast Mountains, luxury boulevards in Palm Harbour, the dereliction of Sunset Hills, and the industrial surroundings of Port Crescent. EA Canada's inspiration for these locations and the Tri-City Bay Area is the eastern Gulf Coast of America (i.e. Miami) and there's certainly a familiar feel to it all.

Contemplating The Familiarity

This familiarity isn't limited to the city either. The cars look and sound a bit gruffer as well, with engines that roar like a lion instead of the nitrous injected prancing gazelles of previous iterations. The ridiculous paint jobs of the past, such as dragon decals on the panelling, have also been thrown out alongside the showy side of customisation like neon blue lights across the dash. This time around the customisation has a more professional feel, with simple finishes to paint jobs including chrome, matt, and two-tone iridescence. Pro Street is no longer a modded Honda Civic out of the reader's rides section of Max Power - it's a Brabus modified Mercedes-Benz or TVR Tuscan ready to rip your head right off.

So, where's this familiarity we're talking about, you might very well ask? It's in the new E-brake that allows you to perform 360s and reverse 180s; in the trail braking feature that opens up simultaneous throttle and footbrake controls; or with the back-peddling gearbox as you lock-up for a corner. This is a grittier, more realistic Need For Speed and EA Canada seems to have taken a lot from Criterion's toolbox in order to engineer this feel in Undercover. The damage system illustrates this perfectly, with car manufacturers giving EA the green light to dent and crumple their engineering marvels more extensively than ever before.

But regardless of these shades of Burnout Paradise, the format is still unmistakably NFS with the game's main story drawing out the series' trademark of underground automotive melodrama. EA Canada has added in some live action cut-scenes to drive along this plot. You take on the role of an undercover cop trying to take down the Tri-City Bay Area's unruly street racers, and Hawaiian born actress Maggie Q of Mission Impossible III fame plays the role of your handler in these FMV sequences (like those characters in contemporary spy dramas who orchestrate an operation from HQ with a Bluetooth headset attached to their ear).

Missions dished out by the handler then form the backbone of this story, such as stealing a car and then delivering it to a chop shop for the booty. We assume that completing more of these missions will gain you favour with high ranking street racers, bringing you closer to key figures in the process. Other, more traditional NFS events will also play a part in Undercover, such as Sprints, Checkpoint Races, and Wanted Events. We were slightly disappointed to hear that drifting challenges haven't made the cut, although we're told that drifting will still be integral to the gameplay.

EA demonstrated the Highway Battle mode to us during the preview, which has you going head-to-head with another driver down a highway (predictably). A key tactic in these events is ramming civilian vehicles when you get ahead of your opponent to cause pile-ups and thwart their progress. The introduction of larger vehicles, such as trucks and buses, should make this task a bit of a minefield, as is the fact that rammed vehicles will dial 911 and alert the police of your tomfoolery. But as long as you avoid these pitfalls and pull far away enough from your adversary, victory will be yours along with all the spoils that come with it.

Miami Heat

Speaking of the old bill, once a civilian has alerted the police, squad cars will instantly be on the lookout for your beaten up racer. Once a pursuit is underway, an icon will appear illustrating your heat level and a slide meter will pop-up on the HUD displaying how close the law is to your vehicle. If it sways towards the red side then you're getting closer to being fully engaged, while swaying towards the blue side of the meter means that you're losing the fuzz. Once it's maxed out on the blue side then you can either find a cool down spot until the cops get bored and stop looking, or carry on driving recklessly, in which case the police will more than likely spot you again.

After making a successful getaway you'll be treated to a breakdown of your performance, including vital statistics such as how much your pursuit has cost the state, which is always pretty satisfying. On the other hand, getting busted will result in a short cut-scene where your character leaves his vehicle and the pursuit continues on foot. The pigs will eventually catch up with him, pinning his lawbreaking ass to the floor to assume the traditional spread 'em position, his face all pixelated out Police Camera Action style. However, we assume he won't be spending the night in the slammer seeing as he's an undercover cop and all.

We already mentioned some of the customisation earlier, but just because it's been made a little bit more refined, that doesn't mean it's lost any depth. Gamers will still be able to tweak all the basic components with aftermarket parts for tyres, callipers, exhausts, and hoods etc., while you can also tune specific areas of your car's performance as well. Slider scales allow you to determine how you want your hardware to function, with trade-offs between horsepower and torque for the engine, or soft vs. stiff for suspension.

The refined theme continues into the visuals, with the game's unchanging 'Magic Hour' backdrop underpinning this. Instead of going for a day/night cycle like other street racers of its kind (e.g. Midnight Club: LA and now Burnout Paradise with the new Bikes Pack), NFS: Undercover takes place at dusk throughout. The reason for this is to keep the game in sync with Maggie Q's dusk lit FMV sequences, which are actually pretty well shot and we assume they took longer than one late evening to complete. It's certainly an interesting angle to take with the visuals and, coupled with grittier car models and sound effects, this makes for a NFS game world that's more stylistically well realised than its predecessors.