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

(insert title here)

Just realised that I haven’t written anything since October. Its not that i’ve got bored, I just simply haven’t had the time since being at Uni. However now that the Xmas holidays are upon us I should have time for a few “good” posts.

However, as I write this I can feel my eyes beginning to shut. On top of that I really need a drink (non-alcoholic – unless there is a water shortage, I which case i’ll be having a beer) and the regular 2am dump.

**More rambling**

Paintballing

Just wanted to say a big thank you to everyone who came paintballing on Saturday. It was a fantastic day!

So thanks to Charlie, Tom, Christoph, Tim, Chris, Will, Dan, Mark, John and Joe.

[i hope i remembered everyone there]

My tribute to Steve Irwin

This is my little tribute to the legend that is Steve Irwin.

Steve Irwin was born in Melbourne in 1962. His family moved to Queensland in 1970. His parents Bob and Lyn Irwin started the small Queensland Reptile and Fauna Park. Steve was involved with reptiles from an early age, and on his 6th birthday was given a scrub python. His father Bob educated him on reptiles, and Steve became a volunteer for the Queensland Government’s East Coast Crocodile Management program.

Steve took over the running of his parents park in 1991 and changed its name to Australia Zoo. It was at the park where he met and married his wife Terri.

His first TV series was called the crocodile hunter, which was shown in 120 countries and made him a world wide hit. In 2002 Irwin released feature film Crocodile Hunter: Collision Course. The film wasn’t popular with critics, but it still made $28million worldwide.

Irwin was a passionate conservationist, and wanted to teach people about the animals and environement that he loved so dearly. He founded the Steve Irwin Conservation Foundation, which was later renamed Wildlife Warriors Worldwide, and became an independent charity.

In 2001 Irwin was awarded the Centenary Medal for his service to global conservation and to Australian tourism. In 2004 he was recognised as Tourism Export of the Year and was nominated for Australian of the Year.

He was a true legend and his death has come as a shock to me and many others. He will be greatly missed. Go Steve you legend.