Need for Speed: Most Wanted

Become the most… notorious.

NA release: 15th November 2005
EU release: 25th November 2005
JP release: 22nd December 2005
Developer: EA Canada, EA Black Box
Publisher: EA
NGC Magazine Score: 78%
Mods Used: None

The start of Most Wanted confused me a lot. You start off by watching your character race and take control for 20 before your car fails. Then you’re thrust into a flashback to a week earlier, as you compete in a couple of 1-on-1 races before doing the opening race again not even 10 minutes later. Oh, and I had to look into why the music wasn’t working during this and it turns out it’s just not in this bit of eve game. Strange.

Anyway, because someone sabotaged you, you have to start from scratch and work your way up the street racing league. There are 15 rivals you need to defeat before you can get back at the guy who sabotaged you. To do this, you take on a series of races before challenging each member one by one.

The racing is very smooth, and tapping the handbrake will allow you to glide around corners with ease. It feels pretty great, so it’s a shame it’s let down by the races feeling repetitive due to using the same parts of the open world a few too many times. That said, racing isn’t the only thing you need to progress, you’ll also need to increase your bounty.

During the free roam (or just selecting one from a menu), you can start a police chase. You need to cause as much damage as possible and then escape in order to bank the points you need to collect. You’ll also need to complete challenges during these for each rival. These “milestones” are fine, but the amount of points you need to progress racks up pretty fast and it becomes extremely tedious.

This isn’t helped by how poor the handling is at low speeds. There’s no weaving down small roads to make the police go the wrong way and, despite the game saying so, hiding isn’t an effective means of escape. This means that most chases are just bashing into things until you have enough points, then zooming down the main straight roads to lose the cops.

It’s a shame because there’s some good racing mechanics here.

Fine

Need for Speed still isn’t a patch on the teeth-clenching traffic dodging and heart-hammering speed of Burnout 2, and it doesn’t deserve the inevitable Christmas top five slot. But, for once, we’re left wanting more.
Mark Green, NGC Magazine #114

Remake or remaster?

A collection would be good.

Official Ways to get the game

There’s no official way to get Need for Speed: Most Wanted