You aren’t given a piece of metal with wheels on at the beginning like many previous driving games. You won’t, or should not, have issues beating them or the Most Wanted though. After escaping the hot fuzz, you will enter Cooldown – the bigger the heat level at that point, the longer it will take before you have successfully evaded them. The longer you keep the chase up, or the more damage you do to civil property, the more Heat you will attain.
There are a total of 6 Heat levels, each with stronger and faster cops entering the pursuit to take you down. The Heat levels are probably the only thing which matches the original Need for Speed game that this entry is taking for name-sake Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005). Some events will have you being relentlessly chased down by the cops, and even after finishing that event the police will try to smash you off the road until you are either Busted or you manage to escape. They aren’t playable, like in Hot Pursuit, but they do make an interesting and action-packed addition to the high speed game.
Do you want to be truly the Most Wanted? Beat the AI drivers and keep ahead of your friends as well.Ĭops make an exhilarating return. Even the Most Wanted List has your friends listed on it, just to show you how good or bad you’re doing. You’ll be taking down an Alfa Romeo at one point then matching up to a Lamborghini later on.
You rise to the ranks, picking off each Most Wanted driver – smashing their car to earn it – and gaining enough Speed Points, the in-game ‘experience’ level, to challenge the next in increasingly difficult rides. The main goal is to beat all 10 Most Wanted drivers, all of whom have their own special car which you won’t find around the city. The solo ‘campaign’, which isn’t really story driven like previous Need for Speed games, itself is fun. Having the constant stats being thrown in your face adds extra life to a game which may be otherwise redundant a few months down the line when fresher games are released. Of course, you can play unconnected and with Autolog disengaged but where is the fun in that? The connected solo campaign isn’t a feature, it’s a necessity. Autolog can also be accessed on the pause menu to get further stats, but it’s intuitive how the system works without any traditional leaderboards and menu systems. Whenever you’re free-driving around the city, small real-time ‘leaderboards’ – or SpeedBoards – will pop up on speed cameras and billboards to show you how fast and the distance respectively your friends have done on those collectibles. Times in races, passing speed cameras, smashing billboards and how many collectibles and cars you have are all compared, in real-time, with your friends to keep the action rolling. In Most Wanted, Criterion Game’s Autolog connects every player action with your friends and vice-versa. Of those games which do stat-compare don’t do it as thorough as this game. Normally single player campaigns are a unconnected, solo arrangement. It’s not just a standard single player you’ll find on other games. You’ll be wondering why single player is being touched by a multiplayer-focused website. Its changes will frustrate many fans, but will inevitably attract new gamers and perhaps could put Need for Speed back on the racing track. Gone are the days of high customisation and modding out your hatchbacks with neon lights, giant speakers and powerful engines that could match a modern-day Porsche.Ī new generation and current modern times means a complete overhaul in Need for Speed’s most loved features back in the Underground games. What they have delivered this time around is a mash of their previous Burnout games, most notably Burnout Paradise, and a new generation of Need for Speed gameplay. BackstoryĪfter the success of Criterion Game’s reinvention of the arcade racing genre of Need for Speed with Hot Pursuit, EA decided to strap the Burnout developers directly into the driving seat as “main developer” of the series. But it soon goes from Paradise to Hell because it’s a mish-mash of Burnout and Speed gameplay which doesn’t work in this city. You’ve got a brand new locale to play with and a diverse collection of real life cars to do the playing in. Welcome back to Paradise City, now named Fairhaven City.