Need for Speed - Undercover

I played the game for about an hour. Heres the scoop.

To me the game feels like a budget game from the start. I noticed EA hired a 3rd party to make the game. Some unknown company to me.

I set up the game as I set up all my games - native res of 1680X1050. All graphics options on high.
The intro movie is kinda long , and choppy - not a great start. You cant skip it either.
Then I started racing.

Graphics - smooth then choppy, then smooth then choppy. No idea why. When there are a lot of cars, everything slows down.
Way too much glare ( HDR ) and the speed effects dont really look all that amazing. The world detail is pretty well done. I dont see any options to race at night , or change the time of day. I'm hoping that will change later on, but I suspect it wont.

Sound - very clear sound, but somewhat unbalanced. Not bad overall.

Gameplay - NFS undercover has done a few things right and a few things wrong. I love the new highway mode. You can really floor it ,for extended amounts of time. Ripping past cars on the highway at 140 mph is EXTREME.
The fact that the world is "open" is very cool. You can keep driving and driving and driving.Pull off the highway into small towns, or pull out and stay on the highway. Very fun, and very well done.
The bad - I tired over and over to total my car....I hit other cars head-on doing 150 mph, I just bounced off. The car might have steered a bit worse, but all the power was still there. It handled a bit worse, but not much. The fenders got ripped off. Hmmm...not impressed.
The pursuits were straight out of "hot pursuit 2" ( the best one , imo ) ,the camera even pans the same way and makes that retarded "whooshing" sound.
No originality....but kinda nostalgic. Car chases are fun, and your friend the helicopter is still there.
The racing is still NFS all the way, which isnt a bad thing.

Overall - I'm highly disappointed with this game, it feels cheap and arcadey. To be honest the car chases in GTA4 blow this game away.
It's too bad really, I see a lot of potential . This game couldve been amazing if they tweaked the graphics to run smoothly,which is essential for a high speed driving game. I found myself turning down graphics options , but to no avail !!

A "damage system" would only pump up the adrenaline levels, and make you think twice about slowing down . It would really make the game shine.
Sadly the bad stuff outwieghs the good. I'll play it for another few days then delete it.

4/10.

Oh yeah NO REPLAYS !!! I change my score to a 3/10. I love replays

You played it for an hour? And did a review?

It's getting trashed in other reviews as well. Probably because they spent 80% of their budget on Advertising/hyping up the game.

The only way I'd play the game now is if Maggie Q was naked in it.

yes, I wanted to be the first one to review it. :p

Not much is gonna change after an hour dude.

Quote:

---

Originally Posted by dimmy32

yes, I wanted to be the first one to review it. :p

Not much is gonna change after an hour dude.

---

Yeah, because games never change after an hour of gameplay. :rolleyes:

It's like reviewing a book after reading the first chapter.

well, most games do change after an hour of play, but I just dont see how this game can get any better. Graphics and sound wont change.
I could be wrong , it sometimes happens.
put it this way, I felt confident enough to review the game after an hour.
If i am wrong, I'll owe you a beer ! :p

I would think this is the kind of game that you could review after an hour of play. Not very deep. If it was like Final Fantasy or something then an hour of play certainly wouldn't be good enough for a review. This is an EA racer...big difference, you see :)

Not really. I'm 8 hours in and it's getting quite a bit better. The boat-like handling is actually getting pretty good on the more advanced cars.

Thanks for the review Dimmy. Yeah, the races mostly take place at sun rise/sun set. (someone said you should wear sunglasses when you play the game due to the glare):) The car selection looks pretty decent. (GTR, Veyron, Elise)

No probs, I'll update after I've put more time into the game...right now I'm kinda all over the place - Fallout 3, FarCry 2, Tomb Raider underworld, GTA4 ....lots of descent games out now :)