The NFS series has been in a gauche situation for a year or two, now. The release of Burnout Paradise posed a speck of a puzzle for the publisher. Burnout crossed over to an open world scenario, which meant that it contended directly against NFS for that space. Need for Speed ProStreet was a subtle change for the series in recent years, switching to track-based racing, abundance of tuning options and focusing totally on the events rather than exploring the city or outrunning cops. But it didn’t turn out so well, which made Black Box go back to the drawing board and revisit an open world setting for NFS Undercover – But that wasn’t the only design change. Also, Undercover appeared to be intended for the casual market in terms of both, presentation and a tremendously unperturbed learning curve. However, the game ended practically as one with no abiding qualities. It botched on almost every facade, which proved to be a major setback – Not only for the EA, but racing genre overall.

One of the prime reasons for this is the game’s absolute and sheer abuse of its open world background. The open world basically is to permit gamers to discover their surroundings, hit upon fresh challenges, maybe uncover a few secret locations and most importantly stalk down others to race. But that doesn’t happen one bit in Undercover – an that too to such an extent that you even cannot drive down yourself to an event to begin it or enter your garage. To begin an event, you have to look it up in the overhead map, which requires a few of seconds to load regardless of its downright simplicity. This will point up whatever your nearest event is, or at a few instances, the subsequently major event you’re supposed to take part in. This simply means that unless you’re evading the cops, there’s no reason to wander about the city when you’re not in any event. You can’t come across any hidden events, new racers or anything of this sort. Unless you feel like testing out your ride or just feel like exploring, there’s no reason to drive around all by yourself.

Last 5 posts by Deepak Shrivastava