If there's one racing series that I've almost actively not taken a look at at every single opportunity, it has to be Need for Speed. I don't know what it is about it that doesn't appeal to me, especially when the series has done seemingly everything from road races to police pursuits to illegal inner-city street racing.
The 1001 list has plenty of games to choose from and deems the ninth entry, Need for Speed: Most Wanted as worthy of a look. The city of Rockport seems to be a street racing hotspot, drawing all-comers and their pimped up rides to temporary street circuits, point to point races, and more.
How well can we shift through the gears in this one?
Oh, and remember:
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| Always wear a seatbelt. |
Frustrations
I thought I owned Most Wanted, in a couple of places, in fact. But no. I own 2012's Need for Speed: Most Wanted, not 2005's Need for Speed: Most Wanted. Thanks for that choice of titling... though I suppose thanks goes to past me for thinking I was all set to race when I wasn't.
No worries. We'll emulate the PlayStation 2 version. At half speed. Yeah, that's not going to work. What are my options? Multiplatform, excellent. GameCube?
Fun Times
Most Wanted follows on from previous Underground entries, taking Need for Speed into much grittier territory. The city never sleeps when neon-skirted supercars rev their engines and roar their nitrous boosts downtown. What can the police do? Well, give chase, and if the intro video is anything to go by, join in the fun with undercover supercars.
The game gets going immediately, as a street race between two drivers tears through the streets. There is no option but to put a stop to this, with police cars desperately trying to match pace.
Just as immediately, we find ourselves behind the wheel of one of the racers, screaming down the highway at 123mph, following huge glowing arrows around corners. We're street racing alright, as a bunch of speed lines flow out behind us.
But seconds later, we're all the way back to six days beforehand, as we drive into Rockport City, admiring the sights and attracting the interest of a fellow racer... and some not so fellow detectives.
This is Sergeant Cross. He's not fond of street racers. You might say that he's cross with them. You can't help but have noticed that Most Wanted is not shy of mixing live action with in-game footage. In some places, it looks alright, but in most, it looks glaringly wonky. But it's a style. A bold, blurry, style.
A few days after being welcomed into the city by Sgt Cross, a prat by the name of Ronnie McCrea starts a point to point race with us, only to inadvertently lead us to his crew, or something. He mutters that he 'tried to shake us', which is amazing, considering I was well out in front for most of the race.
Anyway, it's here we're introduced to this guy, our arch-rival, the easy to dislike
But we're not alone. Another racer, Mia Townsend, sides with us and seems to set us up as a worthy contender to some kind of street racing crown, issuing big money bets, perhaps hoping to call Razor's bluff - or knock him down a peg or two.
I just want to point out that the early 2000s were not memorable for the fashion. These costumes are a joke - and I say that even when compared to ridiculous JRPG contraptions. You'll also note how ridiculously smooth these actors are, as though absolutely smeared in vaseline. I can only imagine that is to help blend the footage with that of the game. It does help. I mean, it does detract and distracts at the same time, but yeah, it helps...
We're not given much chance for a breather, this game determined to keep us moving. We're into another point to point race, this time under the guise of getting out of here before the police arrive.
The controls for Most Wanted include, as you'd expect, an accelerate, brake and handbrake, but being a street racing game, there are also buttons for unleashing some nitrous into your fuel mix for a burst of speed for however long you press the button, and a mechanic to slow down time so that you have a better chance of avoiding a crash.
I must admit to forgetting that button existed.
Escaping the law, we're tracked down by Razor and have a ridiculous discussion over what must be HAM radio in the middle of an intersection. Couldn't he just shout through the window like he dis before the start of our race? Oh, speaking of our race, let's whisk time forward once more.
The first time we were in this situation, it was cut short as a woman we now know to be Mia informs us that our car has a problem and that we'll need to finish this thing sooner rather than later. On this second run, we find out why.
Sabotaged so that Razor would win. What a dick. What a blurry, golden saturated, dick.
The police arrive - and yes, she really does call that a uniform - and arrest us for street racing. The charge doesn't stick, however. As a result of losing the race, we lost our car. Can't street race without a car. Charges dropped. Who has our car, anyway?
What a dick. Mia picks us up and calls in a favour. Our revenge is about to begin.
A handful of licenced cars are available to purchase, as and much as I want the iconic VW Golf, I can't afford it, and have to settle for some American rubbish instead. But at least I have a car, and at last, it seems like Most Wanted is actually, definitely, allowing me to play it on my terms.
It's an open-world game, insofar as you can drive wherever there are roads, and the first port of call is to a safehouse Mia has set up where we can lay low until the heat has cooled down on us. A giant arrow attempts to give us directions and mostly succeeds.
The Rockport street racing... league... is set up as a Blacklist, a list of racers all vying for the top spot, to become the greatest street racer in the city. Razor has used our car to climb from 15th to 1st, and now we're going to attempt to do the same, presumably to win our car back, though, by that point, I'm sure I would have spent enough time in a new car to not care...
Each entrant on the Blacklist will issue a challenge to any would-be opponents, but only when enough conditions have been met, which include a number of races won, milestones achieved, and bounty from the local law enforcement.
How you tackle these is largely up to you. You could roam the open world looking for events, or you could just call up the menu and hop right into a race without all the faff of finding it in the first place. It's really a no brainer to use these menus, defeating the point of driving around. But your opinion may differ.
Further Frustrations
I'm not going to say these races were easy, because sometimes they can be a bit of a nuisance, but these first three races I needed to win were indeed easy. Welcome to Most Wanted, it'll get harder.
You spend most of the time driving around empty streets. For broad daylight, you'd think there would be more cars on the road to get in your way, but it's like the early stages of lockdown out here. Remember those early stages of lockdown, where people actually stayed home? I miss those days.
When you do see another car or truck, it's almost inevitable that it will divert its course to turn into you. There must be industrial strength magnets on my bonnet, else I'm just a bad driver. Maybe I should have remembered that time dilation button. Anyway, a crash - like this one, head-on with a semi-truck - just results in a jarring comical thonk, before you're able to slowly drive around the obstacle and carry on.
It can wreck your race, sure, but you'll often glance down at the mini-map and see the opposition triangles stuck in place themselves, after having gone from 60-0 in the space of a second with a crash of their own. Don't worry, though - either you'll crash yourself or they'll rubberband themselves back into contention soon enough.
To help you shave seconds off your lap times, some circuits allow for shortcuts, be they obvious ones or not, which are taken by the AI if they deem it worth taking. Some they seem to avoid like the plague, even if they're behind you. Bit weird. They are often harder to navigate, but not by that much.
What you will notice more than anything is just how samey Most Wanted looks, no matter what you're doing. Combing through the screenshots I took, I had to wonder if there were any notable events during any of these races because I wasn't seeing anything interesting on screen.
Was it because I was usually comfortably out in front? Was it because the streets were empty, or the colour palette a little drab? The fact that the only notable events in those last two screenshots were HUD elements is saying something.
Maybe we can spice things up with some other events, and by events, I mean annoying the police. Speeding, causing damage, and generally wasting police time will net you both milestones and bounty needed for unlocking a challenge against a Blacklist driver.
Like races, you can cruise around the map looking for hotspots to attract police attention, or you can dive into the menus and just start a police chase. I have no idea what this open-world is for if I keep avoiding it to get into events quicker.
Surviving for set lengths of time, or escaping the clutches of the cops within a time limit will net you some milestones, as will smashing into everything that isn't a wall, pretty much. The further away from the police you are, the easier your escape. The closer - like, when you hit a wall, stop dead in your tracks, and can't find the reverse button - well, you get the idea.
In a nice touch, there are pursuit breakers in the world, which are usually buildings you can drive through to destroy or otherwise cause enough of a distraction that the police have to stop and deal with that instead of you, aiding your escape.
The problem with these - other than me not having screenshots - is that while they're often placed on corners, such that you can crash into them to cut the corner and thus get further away from your pursuers, crashing into something goes against the notion of avoiding everything to keep speeding away from the police. I knew that driving through a petrol station would cause it to blow up, I knew that I'd be fine to do so, emerging unscathed on the other side, but the idea of deliberately crashing went against the idea of driving fast while not crashing to evade the police. So I didn't use them.
Eventually, I attract the attention of Sonny, Blacklist entrant number 15, first on the list to defeat so that we can work our way through the ranks because somehow street racing justice includes grinding through everyone to prove yourself worthy of getting any.
He wants two races against me. Win them both, and I take his ranking on the Blacklist.
Well, that was easy and uneventful. Is the next race any more interesting?
No, not really. That's Sonny defeated. His defeat allows us to pick from two of six rewards for our car, including engine parts, aero bits, decals and the like. I'm not sure how much car upgrades affect its performance, but the game does inform me that I can't rely on stock cars to get the job done against harder opponents.
Who's next on the list then?
Vince 'Taz' Kilic. He hates cops and they hate him. Mhmm.
So. Do we go to the shop and pimp our ride? Do we annoy the cops and up our bounty? Do we just mosey on through Rockport and see the sights? Do we close the game and get on with our day?
Yeah, we do that.
Final Word
I can't see myself playing a whole lot of Most Wanted. It's not that it's a slog to play through, it's more like it's a bit of a chore. A boring one, at that. For all the blurred lines, graffiti graphics, and metal music, it's all rather bland.
Maybe bland isn't the right word. Is it limited by technology? Is it just something I don't really care much about? Is it showing its age?
I think it must be some combination of them all. I've played through Forza Horizon 4, which does open-world and a huge variety of events very well. Doesn't do police chases, though. I think. I am remembering that right, aren't I? The point is, I've played games that do this thing better than Most Wanted. Burnout: Paradise, for example. But both Burnout and Forza have the advantage of coming out a great many years after Most Wanted and can learn what to do and how to do it.
I don't know enough about Need for Speed to know if this is the first or best iteration of an open-world racer. Is it a refinement of the Underground games? Probably. Is it notable for its inclusion of live-action footage? It's not exactly the first game to have done that, is it? What does the 1001 entry say about it?
'Most Wanted is widely dismissed as a botched EA cash-in on the Xbox 360.' Huh. It goes on to say quite a bit about the police chases, as though they're the highlight between all the Blacklist stuff. I guess if you like police chases, there could be something to that. GTA does police chases, too, though...
While I can't see myself playing a lot of it, I also can't say that it's one to avoid. There is a decent chunk of game in here, with a little something for everyone. You've got to do it all to make any progress, so hopefully, you'll at least find some entertainment from the bits that aren't your favourite.
But if you don't, are you missing out? That's hard for me to say. Probably not? Maybe? You'll have to give it a spin to find out, I suppose.
Fun Facts
The PlayStation Portable port was titled Most Wanted 5-1-0, a reference to the police code signifying street racing.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted, developed by EA Canada, EA Black Box, first released in 2005.
Versions played: PlayStation 2, 2005, via emulation.
Nintendo GameCube, 2005, via emulation.