Need For Speed: Underground (PS2 Review)

Things always seemed to be grouped by threes. Yes, I know that there are always the top five and ten lists, with a slight sprinkling of a twenty here and there. Nevertheless, the majority of life seems to be grouped into trios. Celebrity deaths happen in threes. There were a total of five Stooges, but only three were on stage at one time. Detroit shall be ever known for their Big Three in the automobile industry. Even Kevin Harvick won his third NASCAR race in his first season when he became the replacement driver for the Intimidator, who just so happened to be known for his black number three Chevy.

 

Although the PlayStation has literally had hundreds of racing games, it too has it’s Big Three that stand head and shoulders above the competition; Gran Turismo, Ridge Racer, and The Need For Speed franchise. Each of these series have been landmarks for video game racing on the PlayStation family. Gran Turismo, even though it almost was not released here in the United States, has become the exclusive “be all and end all” to simulation racing throughout the gaming world. Ridge Racer is the Granddaddy to all PlayStation racers, as it was there at the very beginning blowing away PSOne owners on its launch day back in 1995 and has continued this trend of grand arcade racing excellence through the six different PlayStation versions spread across three generations (R:Racing Evolution is not part of the RR universe) of gaming systems. The most prolific of the three would be none other than the Need For Speed franchise with well over fifteen unique entries (seven alone for the PSOne) that gave gamers an opportunity to experience the best of both worlds with their authentically licensed vehicles while still incorporating an arcade handling style to these exotic racers.

Need For Speed: Underground is the ninth iteration to be seen upon the PlayStation gaming family and our friends above the border have decided to take the series in a completely new direction. Gone are the exotic vehicles of yesterday. They now have been replaced with more common rides that racers can see on the streets everyday and are even more likely to have actually sitting in their driveway. Does this change affect the status of the series and reduce it to being just another racer or does it take the franchise into virgin territory to be explored and exploited? The only way to find out is to read on and take this baby out on the road for an extensive test drive. So, let’s kick the tires and light the fires and see what EA Canada has created.

One of the most popular new cult fascinations in Japan, and also here in the states, is the world of underground street racing. Tuners, as they have become to be known as, have taken normal everyday rides that you see on the streets and have converted them to unstoppable four and six-cylinder street monsters built to rival the heavy horsepower beasts of the 60s and 70s. With the fitting of aftermarket parts and a heavy dose of bling-bling, these four-wheeled rockets can reach speeds in excess of a hundred miles an hour while barely breaking a sweat. Since the advent of Rockstar’s Midnight Club, this select group has begun to receive more and more exposure in the gaming industry and has erupted onto the scene as the preferred method of racing for developers across the spectrum.

Customization is the main attractor for games of this style, and Underground seems to have taken this aspect to a completely new level. Each and every part that can be bolted on is officially licensed from the manufacturer. Whether it’s brake parts or engine upgrades, everybody who is anybody seemingly has gotten their name into the game. It is here where Underground excels. The hundreds of parts, not to mention the custom decals and paint schemes, insures that ever player will be able to add their personal touch to their rides and stand out from the crowd. Each of these add-on parts increases your rep meter with the adoring fans and makes it easier to acquire newer and wilder paint jobs and even unique decal schemes.

The amount of customization that a player is capable of is simply staggering. Between the multiple paint schemes, various decals and interchangeable parts, you can expect to have hours of fun putting your ride together then ripping it all back apart again. Even though I’m not usually one to dwell on the outward appearances of my vehicle, I found myself completely remaking my ride each and every time I unlocked a new decal or accessory. With all of the options available, one would be hard pressed to find an identical ride when taking the game onto the Internet. Everything from the color of neon underneath your car to the degree of tint for your windows has been covered with multiple choices. Although the best pieces have to be unlocked by progressing through the career mode, once you have moved through about a quarter of the game, the personality of your ride will easily be recognized.

Underground offers a decent selection of vehicles; however gamers expecting to have a huge selection at their fingertips will sorely be disappointed. Players will have the opportunity to try out any of the 20+ vehicles in the game from the ever impressive Skyline to the more popular Eclipse and even the ever reliable Civic. Most of these will have to be unlocked also, but you do have a decent group to start with from the very beginning. All of your rides must be purchased and, unfortunately, players can only have one vehicle at a time when working through the career mode. However all of your rides can be used in the quick race mode, but it just isn’t the same as having a garage full of sweet rides to show off to your friends when they stop over for some quality racing. Also, any of your upgrades and established paint schemes will automatically be switched when you change vehicles, which also was a distractor for me personally. I would have preferred to give each car a separate personality and this is only possible by reworking any new vehicle acquired, which eats into your actual racing time extensively.

Speaking of racing time, players will have to set aside a bunch of time if you are looking to complete the entire career section. With over 110 different races, and three available difficulty levels, you will be pushing aside quite a few games to just work your way to the end of the career. One bad thing was that each race allowed you to change up the difficulty so there was no set challenge to force you to improve. In fact, the major difference between the different settings seemed to be the amount of traffic one would encounter during a street race. Higher settings gives players more cash to use for buying new parts, but you will never seem strapped for accessible funds even if you stick to the easiest settings. Another bad thing was that once a race was completed, there was no way to go back and try your skills at a higher difficulty setting. So basically, you are driving down a one way street with no way to turn around. 

There is a decent selection of racing styles for players to enjoy. Along with the standard circuit (set number of laps), lap knockout (just like the circuit, but the last place car gets removed at the completion of each lap until only one car remains), and sprint (a point-to-point race), racers will also get to enjoy different versions of drag and drift (in the simplest terms, you get points for how well you slide your car around the track) racing. These last two definitely add some flavor to the standard racing scheme and do help to break up the staleness. A downside to the races is that you will only go up against three additional vehicles, which means you will spend quite a bit of time finishing your races in fourth place until you learn the ins and outs of the track. Now I consider myself to be a pretty decent racer, but with only having a 33% win factor (I have a 78% win factor for GT3) I really was forced to redo many of the races over and over again, usually because of bumping a wall at the wrong time and having the entire pack scream past me with little to no chance to catch up before the finish line. Each race will have ways for players to up their style meter, whether it’s drafting off of one of the cars in front of you, powersliding around corners, hang time on jumps or even leading laps, but the best way to get styling points is to take multiple runs through the drift races and top out your meter time and time again before moving on to the next series of races.

Nevertheless, all of the different tracks are variations based in a single city and just doesn’t keep one’s attention for very long. After progressing through about a quarter of the game, I noticed my attention beginning to wander away and was searching for some fresh alternatives. There are also hidden shortcuts on each track, which also give you points for your rep meter, but these didn’t seem to help much in gaining time on the leader. In fact, taking then usually resulted in losing time because of the tight maneuvering required or the jumps sending my vehicle off in an unexpected direction. Even by using them with no error didn’t seem to give me a quality increase in my distance over the pack or allowed me to close the gap on the leader. 

One of the most important aspects of any racer is in how the cars handle out on the road. The Need For Speed franchise has always been one to offer players a solid feel behind the controller, even though it is more based in the arcade category rather than being a sim-styled racer. I will say if you were expecting there to be a great variation in how the different models handle, you are in for a big disappointment. Whether you are driving a FWD, AWD or RWD vehicle, they all seem to suffer from the same handicap of tightness that one would expect from a FWD vehicle. Moreover, the cars do not handle in the same excellent tradition that the series has been known for throughout its existence. Cars do launch off the starting line and radiate that special sensation of speed, especially when you trip off the NOS system, but they all refuse to slow down upon command. In fact, you might as well get used to using the walls of the track to bounce you back into the thick of the gasoline-powered battles, as your vehicle just seems to refuse to traverse anything but the laziest of corners. Most of the time I found it better to barrel my way through a course than try to finesse my car through the tight turns. I’m really not sure upon which factor I should blame the lack of control, but the combination of a tight racetrack and non-responsive vehicles spells out a frustrating mixture of racing.

Another thing that seems to have been lost in the transition from Hot Pursuit 2 is the signature real-time damage modeling. Even through the most vicious of collisions, your ride will remain squeaky clean and in the same condition it was when it rolled off of the showroom floor. Collisions are visually impressive, as your point of view shifts to a completely different camera angle to give the player the best perspective on what your vehicle is going through, however this can be incredibly distracting when in the thick of a battle and you end up pointing in the wrong direction when all the tumbling is completed. Players do have control over the throttle and steering during these camera shifts and it is very easy to forget that you do have the ability to steer through the crashes to keep your car in the thick of the hunt. Also, it seems that computer-controlled cars do not react as severely as your ride when confronting oncoming traffic, which does stack the difficulty chips in their favor during the many races you will have to progress through.

EA Canada has done a great job with the visual presentation. All of the car models accurately represent their real-life counterparts. There are no slowdown, clipping or draw-in issues that I have noticed. There is a tiny collision detection problem, but this can be overcome by compensating and the issue is so minor that you easily bring the reins under control with minimal thought. The wet roads look exceptionally realistic and the environments are partially interactive. By that I mean there are some small objects that will scatter when they encounter your vehicle but larger items, like street lights, won’t budge in the least when they are hit, even at excessive speeds. Any of the camera angles will work for a player and it is solely at your discretion upon which one you prefer to use. Moreover, even though each of the races happen at night, you will always have a clear view of the track and are not hampered by the darkness in the least, which has been an issue for me personally in the past, even with great titles like Gran Turismo and its SS 5 and 11 courses. EA has also added some great visual assistance with moving arrows for all of the corners, so setting yourself up to take the turns is easy and simplistic. With all these great options, it’s really a shame that the control factor couldn’t have been better so you could actually enjoy the excellent scenery.

Unfortunately, they didn’t do the same with the audio tracks. Sure, the THX certification, along with the Dolby Surround Pro Logic II makes for an impressive foundation, but there really isn’t that much of a difference between the engine sounds of the different vehicles. Also the music tracks all revolved around the modern era, with little to nothing for us older gamers to sink our teeth into. The tracks are all selectable, which does allow a player to only have certain pieces running in different areas of the game, but I found that I enjoyed the game more with all of them turned completely off. This is all just reflective in personal taste, as I’m sure that the music was specifically targeted towards the younger tuner audience. None of the tracks were terrible. Mostly they were simply not my personal cup of tea.

EA does offer PlayStation 2 gamers online play, even though it does only support the broadband users in the bunch. Each of the racing modes are available, along with the ability to take your personal ride onto the Net to show off your customization skills. Match-ups will put you into the thick of the battle with three other racers, but there are no additional tracks or vehicles for gamers to acquire through downloadable content. I didn’t experience any new hardships with this mode and it seemed as if I was playing with a bunch of other gamers who were sitting right beside me instead of scattered across the United States.

Electronic Arts has also included the DNAS (Dynamic Network Authentication System) which seems to keep cheaters to a minimum. Also, in an interview, EA did acknowledge that their anti-hacker system was good, but not perfect, as hackers seem to find new ways all the time to beat the system. However, their protection was versatile enough to compensate against new, unique invasions and they would keep a close eye on new innovations for getting around the established system. So far, I would have to declare their system a success.

Need For Speed: Underground was nothing but a continuous exposure to disappointment for my personal tastes. Once you take away the novelty of customization for your vehicles and get past the eyecandy, you are left with a title wanting for more. For most series, I would not have been so excessively disappointed, but when you attach the history of such a momentous franchise to a new game, one expects the version to be head and shoulders above the rest of the competition. Perhaps if EA Canada had spent as much time working on the control of the vehicles as they did for the customization aspect we might have a completely different story to tell. Furthermore, you would expect the largest third-party software producer to be leading the pack in gaming innovation instead of falling in line with the current trends of less established companies. That is what made the Need For Speed series one of the must-have games previously, even though new titles were coming out twice as often as the competition. For those that might be interested in the tuner aspect, this will be a must-have for your gaming library, but for racing purists I would have to suggest looking at either picking up a copy of Hot Pursuit 2 or looking in a totally different direction until EA can return to what the series was originally all about.

Difficulty: 8

Control: 4

Audio: 6

Visuals: 8

Replayability: 8

Overall: 7.5