Need for Speed Undercover review

Racing styles include standard checkpoint races, events where you just have to be in first place when the timer runs out, and ones where the last-placed driver gets eliminated at the end of each lap. Cash is earned for every success – or deducted if you manage to get arrested – and you can save up for better cars, new modifications or simply the pleasure of seeing a very large number of dollars in your on-screen bank account. During pursuits there’s a running total showing the cost to the taxpayer of your antics. It definitely makes ramming through a roadblock that little bit more satisfying when you can see how much damage you’ve caused, and it’s an incentive to use the slow-motion evasion camera, which enables you to fine-tune the final moments before impact.

There’s a lot of game in here, tied together by some live-action cutscenes that are supposed to make you feel like you’re starring in an interactive car movie/Nissan advert. Unfortunately, these nicely shot clips only serve to highlight the badness of the in-game graphics. The camera pans around groups of cool people arguing over some extremely shiny cars, but when you get into the driver’s seat it’s presented in eye-watering jerk-o-rama.

The framerate is extremely low for a driving game, causing the scenery to judder and flicker when turning a corner. There’s a shiny road effect that reflects everything and looks quite striking in still images, but if leaving it out would have made the game run smoother we wouldn’t have missed it. Anyway, real roads don’t look like mirrors, do they? The real killer is the draw-in distance, or lack of it. Despite there being hardly any traffic on the roads, when other cars appear they pop up right in front of you. If you pay attention to the road surface you can see their disembodied shadows in the near distance, before the cars and trucks spring into visible existence at the precise moment when it’s too late to avoid them. You can bash straight through most of the paper-light vehicles but hefty tankers will stop you dead.

Tailored properly to fit the Wii’s strengths, this could have been decent. Instead, it’s a bit of a shambles – much worse looking than last year’s effort and barely worth considering unless you’re totally desperate to be chased through a shiny, jerky city by cheating cops, just to get a glimpse of Maggie Q in the next cutscene. Christmas number one again? Maybe not this time.

Dec 1, 2008