Need for Speed Undercover – review

There hasn’t been a good Need For Speed game since Most Wanted was released back in 2005, and given that EA Black Box have been developing the franchise for seven years now, the law of averages suggests that they should eventually develop another decent title.  Unfortunately Undercover takes the law of averages, ties it to a pole and beats it to death.

The first thing I noticed about Undercover was the terrible graphics. Textures look washed out and flat, giving the game a much unfinished look. Even if you crank up all the settings on the PC version of the game, it still looks considerably worse than previous titles in the series. There are also a number of glitches with the graphics, particularly in relation to shadows which have a bad habit of becoming detached from the objects they represent. You could almost forgive the developers if the frame rate wasn’t so dire. To put it charitably the frame rate is “inconsistent” and leaves a lot to be desired. The odd thing is that the frame rate bears almost no relation to the on-screen action. You can be happily racing around when suddenly the frame rate will take a huge hit, which isn’t much fun on a game that’s meant to be fast paced.

As Black Box clearly put no time into the games graphics you’d be hoping that they invested wisely in some decent audio. Unfortunately the game also fails to deliver in this department. Even played through a 7.1 speaker system the sound effects are flat, generic and uninspired. They’d have been better off taking the sound effects straight out of Destruction Derby, at least the game would have some charm that way.

The game drops you into a large free roam city environment. There is some kind of back story which see’s you working as an undercover cop trying to infiltrate street racing gangs. The story develops at a snail’s pace and is told through some of the most badly scripted cut scenes I’ve ever seen in a game. Putting a story to this game really does seem like an afterthought, so I stopped caring about it quite early on.

The concept of a free roaming city looks like a good idea on paper, and indeed has worked well in certain games such as Burnout Paradise, but with Undercover it’s a massive let down. Driving around the city is really really boring. Essentially there is nothing to do, and anyway you can skip straight to the next race at the touch of a button, which makes the whole “free roam” idea completely redundant.

The actual racing is a very mixed bag. In the “Cost to State” races you’re expected to cause a certain amount of damage to the City whilst getting chased by the Police. “Outrun” also works well, and sees you having to hold the lead against an opponent for a certain period of time. Both events work well to begin with, but the challenges tend to get rather repetitive.

All other forms of racing in the game are incredibly dull. The AI isn’t very good either, making sprint and circuit races all the more easy to win. It really doesn’t help matters that there is no way to change the difficulty level.
All the cars seem to handle in a similar way, the only real difference relates to the top speed and acceleration. It’s like the developers only did one car specification and then copied and pasted it 25 times, then put different shells around the cars hoping that nobody would notice.

Black Box have also wasted valuable time thinking up the world’s worst damage system. In this day and age you’d expect cutting edge damage physics especially when this game has to compete with the likes of Burnout and Race Driver GRID. Once again though Black Box have gone back to basics and given us something resembling the damage in the original Colin McRae game. Damage doesn’t affect the way the cars handle either, again adding to the games simple nature, which really makes you wonder who the game is aimed at.

The only thing I actually liked about this game was the Environmental Hazards such as scaffolding and petrol stations which can be crashed into and used to take out the police and other racers. Sadly there is not nearly enough variety in these hazards, and the poor graphics don’t exactly leave you with something cool to look at.

Some games are so bad their almost good, but Undercover is just plain bad. It’s almost an achievement that someone has been able to make a game of such low quality. All this is further evidence that EA will literally publish anything regardless of what state it’s in.

It’s very hard to recommend this game to anyone, unless you hate video games, or racing or yourself. I’d also like to think that this would be the last Need For Speed game, but I’d just be deceiving myself.

2 out of 10

FIFA 2009 – review

For those of you that have read any of the recent mainstream reviews of FIFA 2009, you could be entirely forgiven for thinking that this game is the best thing since sliced bread. Having now played the game myself I’m not entirely sure the other reviewers were playing the same game.

FIFA 2009 was developed by EA Canada, a country not particularly well known for its footballing heritage, so even before kick-off signs were not good. Having said this, I’d quite like to start the review on a positive note by talking about the things I actually liked in the game. As we’ve come to expect with FIFA the graphics, sound and general presentation is much better than anything you’d find with Pro Evo Soccer. The animations are excellent as well; players will move in a realistic way rather than looking like Subbuteo pieces getting pushed around a pitch. In this regard it’s definitely worth getting a few players sent off just to watch the different ways in which your opponent’s players will fall to the ground.

Once again EA have excelled themselves is the sheer scale of the game. There are over 500 teams from 30 leagues in the game as well as 41 national teams. As well as this you have 32 real stadiums from around the world including Wembley, the Nou Camp, San Siro and the Estadio Azteca in Mexico. You’re certainly spoilt for choice with FIFA ’09.
Well, now that I’ve got the boring stuff out of the way I can really expose this game was what it truly is. There are so many glitches, bugs and annoyances within FIFA that it’s difficult to know where to start. EA have tried to move away from the arcade style of football which they are often associated with, and give us something resembling a simulation of the beautiful game… that was the theory anyway. FIFA ’09 is more akin to playground football than the sort of stuff you would see in the Premier League.

The most obvious problem is that it is very difficult to actually score a goal. It isn’t uncommon to see your player kick the ball over the bar from the edge of the six yard box. There’s also no obvious way of aiming the ball when you take a shot, so more often than not the ball will go straight into the hands of the goalkeeper. To further add to the frustration shots will repeatedly hit the posts and cross bar, particularly when it comes to free kicks.

You almost wonder if the developers had ever watched a football match, yet alone played in one. FIFA ’09 is far too defensively minded, which really takes away from the fun and drastically slows the pace of the game. Most of the time the ball seems stuck around the midfield as all 22 players battle it out for possession. Even if you do manage to break down the opposition defence and get one-on-one with the goalkeeper it’s still a challenge to get the ball in the back of the net.

As you play the game more and more you’ll begin to notice the wide variety of glitches within the game. At times it almost becomes a competition to see how many offsides you can get in a match or what percentage of your shots hit the woodwork.

To EA’s credit they have tried to implement a few new ideas into the game. Referees will now play the advantage, which all sounds well and good, but unfortunately it’s another case of a good idea poorly implemented.

The “Lounge Mode” works very well, and allows you to set up a mini-league amongst your friends. This really adds a sense of competition to the game and gives you a good idea who the best players really are, which can help to resolve any arguments.

As much as I’ve criticised and complained about the game so far I’m not going to completely condemn it. As frustrating as it can be at times, FIFA ’09 is actually quite a fun game to play, the fact that I’m still playing it over a month after release must say something positive. OK sure, there are some interesting design choices and the commentary it about as annoying as the plague, but at least it’s better than Pro Evo.

6 out of 10