Need for Speed Most Wanted Black Edition

It's been a while since I've played a Need for Speed game, and I think I should have listened to the little voice inside my head that said "Don't Start". Need for Speed Most Wanted: Black Edition is basically another Need for Speed game that takes the standard floaty feeling, overly shiny cars, and stupid rap tracks from the old games and ports them to a new game with even more embarassing results.

Unlike competitiors Gran Turismo and even Ridge Racer, Need for Speed completely gives up on any kind of realism, which basically explains Black Edition to a T. Again sticking you in a big urban city, you drive around in your car to different shops and places, racing around the somewhat expansive city. Game modes like "Oh shit run from the cops" basically keep the game fresh, but essentially nothing new. Cops will chase you, "Punks" will race you, and a stereotypically "Hip" romance figure will arise in what has to be one of the lamest stories since "The Lion King 2".

In this game, EA Games again tries to throw you a curve by making the game a "Free roaming" game. Essentially, you go around the expansive city you race in, looking for races and/or getting tuneups. Basically this is all you do, which basically translates into an oversized menu screen, but the concept still stays. Go to the shop to get tuneups. Go to certain points to race a member of a crew, or just race faceless people. This is absolutely nothing different than any other racing game that exists, but it's nice to see a fresh face on it.

The game's style fits basically into the "Wigger" or "Chav" catagory, in that it's so bad it's hilarious. The game tries to fit this "Real" style by hiring real actors to play the game, but just giving them a blur effect that only MySpace could be proud of:

It's so obvious that it was blurred, EA could have hired some 300 year old woman and she would look like that. Everything, from the cars to the people, have this dumb blur effect, and it ends up looking like shit. For a game that has pretty decent graphics, it's embarassing to see such a style clash like a smily face shirt on a goth.

The acting is absolutely horrible. It's almost as if EA went outside, picked people who looked somewhat moderately punk, styled their hair, and put them in fake cars. The actors act like a bunch of dickweeds who have no clue what they're doing, the poses they make are nothing less than carnal sins, and the actual people themselves are about as punk as that goth in the smiley face t-shirt. It's horrible. These are really up there with Resident Evil as being the worst in game cutscenes ever, and EA should be flogged for even coming up with this shit.

Okay, bar the dumbass style. The graphics, as I somewhat previously mentioned, are pretty impressive. While the backgrounds, and especially the trees, are mediocre, the graphics are detailed and nice. You will quickly find how small the maps are compared to games like Grand Theft Auto, but it's big enough to race in. The cars, of course, are beautiful, except you will quickly find some issues with them (Like the frustrating reflection graphics that clip horribly for no real reason). Of course, being a Need for Speed game, you will be pretty much expected to customize your car beyond all recognizeable belief in the stupidest ways, from adding "Number Stickers" to new gauges. These things cost like $500, which is extremely irritating, because they are absolutely completely useless. The only cool thing is changing the paint, which has been around in racing games since steering wheels.



The gameplay is another loss. Unlike games that were made to play normally (Like Gran Tursimo), Black Edition loves to make your life a living hell by making the cars so floaty you can drift by just hitting the left button for a split second. This is quite irritating, because good old serious me will try to pull out and then turn to get a better turning radius and end up getting close to flipping the car. Huge turns are unrealistically made in split seconds with no work whatsoever other than hitting the button, and I NEVER ONCE used a brake. Needless to say, the Nitrous ability just helps to make it more unrealistic.

The game spans on as you take on 15 "Bad Guys" by getting reputation by doing other races and whatnot. Basically, this means the usual loop to get this guy is:
- Do basic races to gain cred
- Get notorious with the cops.
- Upgrade your ride
- Race against the Black Crew member or whatever
- Repeat.

This sounds kinda fun, but it's not unique or interesting. The races turn out to be pretty generic and repetitive, and are all very, very easy. Upgrading your ride ALWAYS makes you better than the other racers, and if anything else, you can ram right into them and incur no damage penalties. The AI "Rubber Bands", which means they are unable to completely lose to you. If they begin to get too far behind you, they magically speed up and pass you. It's really frustrating, because not only does it completely prevent any kind of outlapping, but it generally makes the last lap a living hell as, no matter how far you may get ahead, you will still end up fighting desperately because the AI is cheaper than a dollar store. Just great.



The music of Black Edition is nothing less than absolutely horrible. Apparently, EA enjoys using stereotypes, because you will hear nothing but rap and rap-related songs for the whole entire game. I found it so frustrating and just generally bad, I muted the "EA TRAX". It was just irritating, and believe it or not, the sound effects beat the music soundly. The sound effects ARE cool, with interesting "Wooosh" effects on passing things, which was pretty cool sounding even in headphones. Just as long as you get the crap music off.

Need for Speed Most Wanted: Black Edition really does not deserve to be sold in mass amounts like it already has been. The game features innovative features, but really fails to be anything but a showoff of how bad a game can be when it's made to exploit the "Urban" stereotype. If EA had spent more time on the gameplay and less on putting the "Black" in "Black Edition", this game would have been a lot better. But no, it ends up being a pile of mediocrity and bad acting, and makes The Fast and the Furious look like a classic. Unless you have a solid obsession with the Need for Speed series or really just are looking for a joke (Or, if you're willing to skip all cutscenes, overlook all abilities to add spoilers to a Fiat, and just generally mute your speakers), you might have some fun for about an hour. But not much more. Two generous stars, that's all it gets.

2 star(s) out of 5

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