OMG - Need for Speed: Undercover (2008) Discussion

[–] ncgqprophet 15 years ago

Seconded.

The designers for the next installment should be forced to play all previous games in the franchise for a couple of months. And going from there, take the best bits out of each game.

NFS:U was a pure arcade racer, and had a high fun-factor. NFS:U2 had the best handling as well as upgrade options. Tuning was especially good, with the dyno to test setups. NFS:MW had a great atmosphere, nice detail in the cars and the environment. Also it brought back the cop chases. The handling could've been a bit better though.

Carbon, ProStreet and now Undercover just don't seem to be able to capture any of that. And what's up with the graphics? Frame rate issues, pop ups everywhere, everything looks blurred and mushy even on the highest detail settings... This can hardly be called an "HD" title, it looks more like something you'd expect to see on the original XBox.

You'll notice I didn't mention any NFS title before the Underground era. That's because I feel it's a series on its own. A series that ended when Underground came along. Perhaps next year they should go back to the roots and forget about the street racing genre (there are more than enough games covering that already).

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[–] m-slovak79 15 years ago

well i think Most Wanted was the peak of the series... Carbon was WAY to hard near end and it seemed unbeatable so that pretty much ruined that game, plus lack of COPS in Carbon hurt it.

Pro Street i never bothered with since it seemed 'lower quality'.

all in all though i think Undercover was best NFS game since Most Wanted.

main problem with it... is the end boss felt like a normal level... and after i won i was like "that's it?"

as for the OP's "This is by far the worst driving game I've ever played"...

my reply... it's not even close to 'worst driving game ever'... even if your only looking at the NFS series (which i think as a whole since 'Underground' to date have been generally on the positive side although the peak was Most Wanted without question)... but i would easily find worse racing games than Undercover.... cause besides 'Forza Motorsport 2' (which is a simulation, i play it with all assist off otherwise it's not nearly as fun/challenging) on XBox360 there aint nothing to me that beats the NFS series especially in the 'arcade racer' dept.

so basically the only stuff that 'stands out' out there is...

-Forza Motorsport 2 (10/10) (Forza1 on XBox1 was great to but since Forza 2 is just superior in pretty much every way i dont mention this now) as Forza 2 is my favorite racing game hands down... the Gran Turismo series (which i used to be a huge fan of) cant hold a candle to Forza series.
-NFS series (although the series peaked with Most Wanted... never got good til they updated it to modern feel which was when they made the 'NFS:Underground' or newer)

as for the comments about 'arcade racer'... there ALL (NFS series) arcade racers so that comment is irrelevant.

at the end of the day i give NFS:Undercover a 8/10 (but if i had to choose a 7 or 9 i would say 7)

in Comparison i give NFS:Most Wanted a 9/10... to bad the car selection in Most Wanted was not like the car selection in Undercover cause that's about the only thing that Undercover has better about it and a few other odds and ends.

NFS:Carbon = 7/10 (the first end level boss is pretty much WAY to hard to beat and i gave up which ultimately ruined that game)

NFS:Underground = 7/10 (initially i would probably have gave it a 8/10 since it pretty much revived the NFS series and made it modern but compared to the newer NFS games (i.e. Most Wanted or newer) there overall not as good cause of lack of cops etc.

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My Vote History ... http://www.imdb.com/mymovies/list?l=11026826
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[–] ncgqprophet 15 years ago

Well, "worst driving game ever" is indeed a bit harsh. It's just that as an entry into the NFS series, Undercover feels pretty redundant. Might've been better if they had skipped a year, you know? Why is there such a need to release a sequel each and every year anyway?

Maybe I'm a bit of an oldtimer when it comes to gaming. I started in the early 80's
There have been a couple of franchises I hold dear, especially where racing is concerned. Gran Turismo and Forza are fantastic. I don't take sides, I enjoy both but for different reasons. NFS has always been great fun, but when Carbon came along I just lost interest. Although that may have already started with Most Wanted. I don't care much for that speedbreaker thing (lifted from Midnight Club btw), and why is it always a particular time of day? Earlier NFS games allowed you to choose between day and night, and now they can't make up their mind? We want both! I'm sure it would work wonders for the storyline as well.

Overall, this series really needs a breath of fresh air.

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[–] hp_slamd 15 years ago

OK I need to state my case obviously...

Problems:

-No difficulty at all! Its way too easy to win races and only in the latter races it gets challenging. Too bad that you can easily skip past these races and complete the game in quick fashion.

-Weird upgrading system! Why can you unlock upgrading packages for all car tiers at the same time? That makes no sense! If I got by with a tier 4 car on street package, and I had the choice between upgrading to the next level or simply just buy a tier 3 car instead and THEN upgrade it I know what the obvious choice would be. That leaves absolutely not incentive to explorer more than a few cars in the whole campaign. I only purchased three cars. An Evo X, Lambo Gallardo and the Veyron. Wow. I could have beaten the game with the Gallardo on max but I wanted to experience the Veyron. Which by the way handles like sh*t and in no way gives the impression of superiority that the car gives in reality.

-The Map. Why oh why can we not drive around the map to get to our destinations? Are we that lazy that we constantly would prefer to just click Tab and then go race? Its fine we have the choice but why not give us a GPS mode where we drive to the event. Also, if we could enter the events on the streets then we would choose more randomly in the various events. They made the map the biggest ever in an NFS game. Bravo. Why the F can't we explore it then?

-Lagging! The game performs terribly on most systems! I have a fairly competent rig and the damn thing lags like the whole thing is under a strope light. Especially in high speeds, which btw you cant really get a feel for, and I lost many tight races near the end because the damn thing couldn't keep steady. The graphics in NO WAY makes up for that fact! Only the cars look decent. The environments look like Carbon.

-Stupid cutscenes... Damn... And I thought the previous scenes looked bad. These were not only extremely poorly acted they also seemed totally unimportant. Acting isn't usually a beef with me concerning games but I couldn't stop cringing during this one. It was soo overdone and cheesy. And the charachters was so generic it hurt. I only liked Rose and ironically the one I hated the most was her boyfriend or whatever Nickels the token angry black man.

-Storyline. Made no sense. So I'm undercover. But why do I have to streetraces and endangering the public just to catch some smugglers? And why do these smugglers care so much about streetracing? Why not just stick to one or the other? And how the hell can the henchmen afford Lambos, Mercs and even Veyrons? Stupid...

-Lack of customization. Pro Street took a step further into the world of pimping the ride and it was the best thing about the game. Autosculpting with numerous options of all kinds of details and the best part of it all it had an actual effect on performance. Here we take three steps back. Underground 2 is the most similar in this field. Very few different spoilers, exausts, and body kits but as usual an abundance of rims. Why is rims so much more important? And why can we only choose between 5-6 types and where is all the cool things like side skirts, bumpers, front and back rear lights? It was such a shallow and hollow experience on the aftermarket. Only the vinyls seemed to work. So depressing there was no windtunnel this time around. The ONLY universal aclaim Pro Street got and they just forget all about it.

-Boring race types. Why no drift? Why no speed cameras? Why no last man standing? Instead we get the sprint, circuit and checkpoint. I literally only opted for sprints and checkpoints because they seemed to be the shortest. And two new additions we also recieve in the form of a Out Run. Wow. What a piece of trash that mode is. So easy. Just overtake your oponent and just drive around corners for a minut or so. And the highway battle, which is the best one, but they *beep* that up too by giving us headlights camera view. It made me sick trying to make and you had no feel as where your car was on the road. So we change it. But there is alot of trial and error here so when we restart it WE HAVE TO CHANCE THE CAMERA ANGLE EACH AND EVERY TIME! Gets old really quick...

-Police events? What??? So I can just select to be chased by the cops? Am I that lazy that I dont want to roam around causing trouble and looking for the cops? Most Wanted did that excently by implementing milestones in pursuits. If we have to rise levels here in order to progress why can't each level have som milestone requirements for advance??? Damn.......

Well, it´s not all bad however. I really like the implementation of missions. I found that the only satisfying part of the game. Also, we got the Veyron in action which was something I looked forward to the most. Too bad they messed that up as well.

This game gets 4/10 from me. On the PC.

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[–] 15 years ago

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[–] SanForZeke 15 years ago

The one thing I seriously disliked with this game is its ability to 'freeze', added with an annoying beeping sound that just won't go away until you pull the plug and nearly destroys the Wii console. Seriously, I thought I would never get it to work again. On top of that, it happend after I've drived a high-heat race with all my good friends from the police, lost twice, and was on the third run, in the lead just a few % from the goal. Damn game just had to stop me somehow, and when the game difficulty failed, it resorted to other tactics. This game goes to the storage deposits.

_____________________________________
"Hello, God. It is I.. Doctor Frasier Crane."

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[–] franki_mcdonald 15 years ago

Thing that annoyed me most was the Veyron. Fastest car in the world, and a k-9 unit in a big SUV can accelerate past you when your going 200+ mph. Its a joke

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[–] hp_slamd 15 years ago

Yeah I totally forgot to mention that. That is probably the worst part of the game! You can't outrun the cops on highlevel police chases. I wouldn't matter if they popped up in front of me all the time but being run of the road by a SUV while driving 400 km/h is absurd!

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[–] tanis_ivy 15 years ago

hahaha. i hated that too. i bought 2 cars, the lambo M and Audi R8. i drive the r8 most and even pumped all the way up and "tuned" to highest speed, SUVs were still pulling infront of me. that was totally f'ed up. and the fact that you can only sell cars you bought? come on now, games are supposed to get better with time. most wanted is my fav of all.

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[–] hp_slamd 15 years ago

yeah and why is the cars you bought worth so little when you sell them again??? Even after I spent 100 grand or more on the Evo I still only godt under 50 for it. It's beyond stupidity

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[–] tanis_ivy 15 years ago

agreed. i just got the bugatti (finished the game, saved up 350+ or whatever) didnt like how it felt, and sold it back for less than half the price.

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[–] franki_mcdonald 15 years ago

I think Prostreet was pretty good because it was more realistic. I read a review that said it was like Gran Tourismo lite. This installment is just wank. Cant believe i wasted 40 quid on it when I could have got Grid for less

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[–] SanForZeke 15 years ago

Well, I gotta admit.. the "boss" surprised me, as well.

I expected a great chase, with the police barring my every step, bribed or fooled by the "boss". Instead, hunted by four police cars, I crossed one bridge, drove into a tunnel, found the bad guy, and I got contacted by.. whatever his name was, telling me they would withdraw.

Fair enough, I still had to chase down the "boss". Which didn't take too long. That was one lousy car, and when we came to a bridge with a wall in the middle, the boss got pushed over at the left road, and decided it had to get over to the other side.. by driving through the wall, if needed to. Now obviously, that didn't work, but try to tell that to a CPU opponent, cause it kept trying and trying, while I could take all the time in the world to back away, then slamming right into it, over and over again.

What a challenge. Heh.
_____________________________________
"Hello, God. It is I.. Doctor Frasier Crane."

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[–] PaoloInzaghi 15 years ago

hp_slamd, you forgot another fact. We're back in Rockport, dude!!

NFS seems to be in its downfall. As long as it releases for undergen consoles, games will seem incomplete or lame. The DVD capacity is too small for what we want to be included in the game.

I admit the graphics were great, but in return we had painted racing cars as cops, less race types, less customizations...

The perfect NFS in my opinion would be an U(nderground)2-PS tuning (in general) and MW racing and cops (also it would be great if they used those electric guns that disable cars, IDK what they're called), and performance must be balanced with graphics, so it would consume too much space. All that might not fit even in a double layer DVD.

There's already another NFS being developed set to be released sometime next year. I really don't want to jinx, but considering my statements, this new game might as well suck.

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"Keep it Silver, dude!"
-The Silver Raider
Proud Emma Roberts fan-to-the-death!

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[–] tanis_ivy 15 years ago

NFSU2 + MW would be a wicked idea. the electric guns would definatly be more of a challenge. and an even bigger map would rock.

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[–] hp_slamd 15 years ago

I could believe that the next one would be heavily pushed back because of the ripping bad reviews Undercover recieved. I wouldn't mind that as long as we were getting a decent game.

There is parts from all the games that could fit into a perfect NFS game. Most Wanted's cop-chases and milestone challenges, Carbon's wing man system, Pro Street's tuning capabilities and Underground 2's aftermarket which also was really strong in Pro Street.

This game offers none of that. None whatsoever. I don't think it has anything to do with lack of space on a dvd. You can compress data pretty efficiently these days. look at Far Cry 2. This massive game only takes up about three and a half gigs on your harddrive. This mess is a lazy product developed with the generic in mind

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[–] tweetcoat 15 years ago

NFS:U2 - sick aftermarket options
NFS:MW - I liked the BlackList and Mia
NFS:Undercover - Story and Graphics and Carla

NFS:Carbon Too hard, wasn't feeling the digital dashboard either

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[–] hp_slamd 15 years ago

You actually liked this excuse of a game?

I think it was wrong to try to implement a complicated story in this one. We play the games, not for the story, but for the gameplay. Graphics wasn't much better than Carbon. Pro Street's were better. Carla made me wommit... The dashboard you could change...

Carbon wasn't difficult - only the drifting which I mastered the second time around I played it through

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[–] 15 years ago

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