NFS:MW

Need for Speed: Most Wanted
Developer EA Canada

For many years, the Need for Speed franchise has fallen out of favor with most racing enthusiasts. Although the franchise launched with great success and continues to sell well, the core racing gameplay hasn't evolved significantly over time. When movies like Fast and Furious and anime like Initial D made their way into the gaming enthusiast world, EA started their "Underground" series of games with great sales, but with less enthusiastic responses from critics.

With Need for Speed: Most Wanted, EA has taken a huge leap forward. It's the best single-player racing game on the Xbox 360 and easily one of the best non-sim racers ever made. To understand why the game has improved, you only need to look at the man at the helm: Michael Mann. Prior to his work as producer on NFS:MW, he was the producer for Metroid Prime for the GameCube. The producer definitely plays a big role in the development of a game because he's ultimately responsible for the budget and schedule. If a developer wants to develop feature x or y, it's ultimately up to Michael Mann to decide whether it's worth the time and money to work on that game feature.

Proven performance

The best selling supercar ever built

Like PGR3, NFS:MW offers a great selection of cars. Instead of going toward the high-end exotics, NFS Most Wanted brings in a lot of affordable sports cars such as the RX-8, WRX STi, Mustang, and EVO VIII. Of course, being an EA game, you get real Porsches including the Cayman S and the Carrera GT as opposed to RUF tuned machines only. These cars are exceptionally detailed and because Need For Speed: Most Wanted was developed with the PC platform in mind, the Xbox 360 also benefits from the higher-resolution design. The resolution in NFS:MW is visibly better than that from Project Gotham Racing 3.

Unique to the other two racers, NFS:MW has a storyline that drives the game forward and gives you incentive to keep going. Although I think I can already predict the direction of the storyline about a third of the way in, it's still an effective way for encouraging the gamer to play. Essentially, the game starts off with you losing the pink slip to your BMW M3 GTR in a race. Your goal is to try to win the car back, but in order to do that, you have to start from the bottom of the "blacklist" and work your way up until you have enough street cred to challenge the top racers. This process involves racing in various challenges. The racers use typical rubber-band style AI meaning that you end up catching up when you probably shouldn't and the computer can also catch up to you when you really should be able to hold the lead longer. The best way to think about the AI is that it's like the TV show Family Feud. There may be 3 stages, but the game is always decided in the very last stage. In Need for Speed: Most Wanted for most of the races, the winner is determined in the later part of the race.

What makes the game fun is that because you're racing in the city, you'll have to worry about traffic and the cops. Some areas of the city have more cops than others, and if you drive recklessly and start crashing into other cars or destroy property like fire hydrants or tollbooths, the bystanders will call the cops. Eluding the cops is one of the best elements of the game. This is because the game ends when you escape or when you're boxed in -- not when the cops catch up to you. Since the city is free roaming, this can make for some exciting races where you really feel the pressure.

Whereas PGR3 made it too easy to get the cars you wanted and provided no new challenges after a few hours into the game, and Ridge Racer 6's cars handle virtually identically with all of the tracks being available for single-races, NFS:MW has a system where there is a progressive increase in difficulty that keeps the challenge up. Through the story-driven gameplay and the police chases, NFS:MW provides good incentive to keep playing.