Well, its Tuesday and you know what that means! This week I couldn't decide whether to review either Most Wanted or Halo Wars. So I decided to review Most Wanted now and wait next week for Halo Wars. Here's a review for one of my favorite racing games of all time, Need For Speed: Most Wanted.
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The game: Need For Speed: Most Wanted is a racing game developed by EA Black Box and published under EA and was released in November 2005 for the PS2, Xbox, Gamecube, PC, Xbox 360,PSP, and Nintendo DS. This was also one of the launch titles for the Xbox 360, making it the first Need For Speed game to be released for the 7th generation consoles.
The Story: 
You arrive to the city of Rockport in your BMW M3 GTR. You go around racing a few people when you get the attention of Razor and the cop Sgt. Cross, the game’s antagonists. Razor vows to beat you in a race and take your car. Sgt. Cross vows to end all racing period in Rockport and that includes you. After a few races, you end up racing Razor. Halfway through the race your car breaks down and Mia, who’s your best friend in the game, calls you to warn you but its too late. You end up losing and Razor takes your car. Sgt. Cross finds out about the race and puts you in jail. You get out and now you have to work your way to the top of the Blacklist to take on Razor and get your car back.
The Blacklist is a list of the best 15 racers in Rockport. Throughout the whole game you have to work your way up the list and take on each racer at a time to get to Razor. In order to challenge a Blacklist racer, you have to complete a series of races and complete these things called “Milestones” also. Milestones are challenges involving the police like breaking through a certain amount of roadblocks in a pursuit or evading the police in a certain amount of time. When you complete a Milestone, you get Bounty. Bounty is something you get during police pursuits. The higher the Bounty you have, the easier it is to go up the Blacklist. Get busted during a pursuit, and you will lose all your Bounty and records you got during that pursuit. Milestones and Races will progressively get more difficult as you go up the Blacklist.
Once you complete the Race, Milestone, and Bounty requirements to challenge a Blacklist racer, you can race them. The races are a 1v1 between you and them and the types of races depends on their preferred styles of races. They can be 2 Circuit races or 2 Sprint races… sometimes it’ll be a Drag race or Circuit race. Some of these guys are really easy but some of them are actually challenging and will require you to be on your a-game. When you beat a Blacklist member, you take their spot on the list and you can choose 2 unique performance, visual, or body parts unlocks for your car. If you don’t want those, you can also choose the mystery items. Those can be either bonus cash, get-out-of-jail free cards, or the pink-slip to the Blacklist member’s car you just beat. If you and end up with their car, you are extremely lucky. I always went for Vic’s Toyota Supra and Ming’s Lamborghini Gallardo because those car’s performance stats are ridiculous as they are already maxed-out.
I enjoyed this story because you really want to beat Razor. He’s a dick and throughout the game he’ll send you voice messages, talking all kinds of trash to you and the people that help you. Sgt. Cross as well does the same. He tries to get into your head and make you feel like you stand no chance. Other people like Mia will always send you voice messages, giving you info about the Blacklist members you’re challenging, info about the cops, info about Razor, and checking up on you to see how you’re doing.
Gameplay: Gameplay in this game plays just like the previous Need For Speed games but has its own unique style to it, making it feel different than the rest without drifting away from the core gameplay.
- The game has 32 cars to race with. It offers the tuner cars from Need For Speed: Underground 2 and brings back the super cars from Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, giving the players all sorts of car styles to choose from instead of just one style. You can even stick with the car you pick at the very beginning to the very end if you wanted to. Every single car can be customized to however you want.
- Car customization is back and when you compare it to Underground 2, the options they give you are extremely limited. They removed a lot of options from the previous game. For car body mods you can’t customize your exhaust, side-mirrors, and headlights/taillights. For car visuals they removed the option to have more than 1 vinyl on your car as well as painting individual sections of your car like the brake calipers, hood, engine, exhaust, and side mirrors. For car specialty mods they removed most of it like adding neon lights, car stereo, spinners, and door mods. Some of these weren’t necessary to have but they were cool to add on. I dunno, it was just something that bugged me about this game, how it has less customization options than the previous game.
- The police are back from the Hot Pursuit-era Need For Speed games except this time they are smarter, deadlier, aggressive, and engage you in large numbers. You can hear the police talk and how they plan to stop you. I really enjoyed this as it added a ton of realism to the game. There are 6 levels of police, or Heat levels as the game calls it. The longer the pursuit, the more Heat you’ll get on your car that you are driving.
These are the Heat levels: Your Heat level is displayed as a Flame above your mini-map
Heat Level 1 is the default level and it is the easiest as it is just city patrols that will try to pull you over. There will only be a little amount of cop cars going after you and if you are in a fast car, you can easily get away from them.
Heat Level 2 is when they start to begin acting aggressive. This is the Heat level that the police will start to use roadblocks to stop you. The cars are still easy to avoid however.
Heat Level 3 is when things spice up even more. The police will start to use Pontiac GTOs for police cars in order to keep up with you. Since it’s a new car, the car is much faster, heavier, and stronger overall than Heat 1 and Heat 2’s. Roadblocks are more frequent also. The cops will also begin to use Police Rhinos(SUVs) on you. They will hit you head-on if you aren’t paying attention.
Heat Level 4 is even worse. The police will being to start using spike-strips just as much as roadblocks. The police helicopter will also make an appearance and will begin to chase you for a limited time. The Police Rhinos are stronger and they will start to be the vehicles used in roadblocks. Heat Level 4 will be difficult for a new-player.
Heat Level 5 is the most dangerous Heat level to have. The cops start using Corvettes to try to catch you at super-high speeds and are the toughest cop cars in the game and they will appear in large numbers, sometimes up to 40-50 cars. Spike-strips and roadblocks are even more frequent now. The helicopter will attempt to attack your car in open areas. Sgt. Cross will even make an appearance sometimes and gives out special orders to the police in order to stop you.
Heat Level 6 is the scariest level of police to have and you only acquire it once during the whole game and that’s in the ending. Police Rhinos engage you like normal cop cars, the police helicopter almost never goes away, and I swear you will see a roadblock or spike-strip every 10 seconds or so. Even if you only get this Heat level once, it was still almost impossible to get away from these guys.
- The way to get away from the police are Pursuit Breakers. Pursuit Breakers are scenery scattered around the world you can wreck into and the object you crash into will destroy any nearby police car for you. These are extremely helpful for you if you have a large amount of Bounty you want to keep. Once the cops lose sight of you, you enter a “Cooldown” mode. Once the Cooldown meter is full, you have successfully evaded the pursuit. You can also find a Hiding Spot to get the Cooldown meter to go faster.
- The race types in this game are what you expect in a NFS game. There’s Circuit, Sprint, Drag, and Lap Knockout. Two other game modes they added were Speedtrap and Tollbooth. Speedtrap is like Sprint but there are “speedtraps” around the track that record your speed when you drive past them. The speed adds up and the racer with the most speed recorded is the winner. Tollbooth is sorta like a Checkpoint-system race but instead of Checkpoints, you try to reach each tollbooth as fast as you can.
Extra Content: There’s this game mode called Challenge Series and its around 70 or so random police pursuit challenges and tollbooth races. They get progressively more difficult as you do more. I never finished the Challenge Series. I got to 60 I think and that’s where I drew the line because the challenge that I had to do was extremely difficult. If you beat Challenge Series, you unlock some bonus cars for you to use.
For the single-player there’s a thing called a Rap Sheet. You can look at all of your police chase records there as well as the other Blacklist member’s records. There’s even a Rankings leaderboard for All-Time and Single Pursuit records. I got number 1 in both lists for every category.
Here’s my best pursuit records:
Graphics: 
The graphics in this game were phenomenal for its time. It looks miles-ahead better than the previous game Underground 2 and looked better than other games in its time. The car textures were so beautifully made and everything else in the game looks great. I think it’s the best looking game on the old Xbox and PS2 by far. Even though its heavily outdated by today’s standards, they did a great job at making the game look really realistic back in 2005.
Soundtrack: The soundtrack is amazing. Need For Speed games from 2001-2005 were known for having exceptional soundtracks to listen to while gaming. The soundtrack goes well with the theme of the game. Go ahead and give them a listen if you'd like. This game introduced me to bands like Disturbed and Avenged Sevenfold when I was younger.
Now this is racing music:
They even made a OST separately for police chases and it fits the mood just perfect:
Final Verdict: To most fans of the Need For Speed series, this was the last good NFS game. After this game, the series went downhill super-fast. After Most Wanted was when the NFS franchise started to become obsolete and not enjoyable anymore. I agree with them because in my opinion, this was the last good NFS game. I don’t know what happened to this series… I’m still shocked that the series is still going somehow.
I give Need For Speed: Most Wanted an 8.5/10. It’s a fun game with a great single-player, the police make the game more challenging, and overall its just a great driving experience. This game as well as Hot Pursuit 2 and Underground 2 are my favorite racing games of all time.
Jono's Reviews: Need For Speed: Most Wanted