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Not a bad racing game.

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 4 / 5
Date: January 07, 2004
Author: Amazon User

Need for Speed Underground is a pretty good racing game. Its not bad. I would reccomend renting it first before buying it. There are better racing games out, such as Project Gotham Racing 2, but this is not a real bad choice if you are looking for a street racing game. There are many different types of racing in this game though, like drag racing too. The "go underground" mode is the main mode and the best mode in this game. You can completely trick out your car to make it the most stylish and famous ride on the road. Plus, you can make magazine covers and gan respect and street cred. The graphics are pretty good, and there is a good framerate and sense of speed. There is a style points system, a little similar to the kudos system seen in Project Gotham Racing 1 & 2, but truthfully, its not as well done. It just seems tacked on. I don't like every song on the soundtrack either and some annoy me, but there are some decent songs, such as the ones by Rancid and Rob Zombie(two awesome bands). So, if this game is so good why only a 3 out of 5? Well, it just doesen't seem extremely fun and its not the most original game ever, and it is annoying sometimes. But, its still decent and at least worth renting. When will the never ending quest of gaining street cred ever end? Not any time soon, apparently.

JUst a kick ass game

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 3 / 3
Date: December 19, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This game is one of the best racing games i have ever played. I was a little skeptical about buying it on a counter all the other racing games i bought were major dissapointments but it proved me wrong. The game just has endless possibilities. You can cahnge from many different cars and add an enourmous amount of accessories to ur car. ex. body kit, engines, NoS. The great part about this game is the drag mode. It is just like the fast and the furious. The graphics are superb too. THe only bad part about this game is that some races are soo hard that they are dissapointing. Overall id advise all you car lovers to buy this game. Even if ur not a car lover go out and buy it anyway.

Great Game

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 5 / 8
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is a truly fun game. I received it for Christmas, and could not stop playing it. (I am only not playing it now becuase my fingers aare hurting) Mostly the game is about customizing your car. If you really dont give a rats tail about cars, this game isn't for you. But if you are like me and like cars that arent like Lamborghini's, you'll like this game. You can customize everything from the base paint to the brake calipers colors, and from your roof scope to what kind of nitrous oxide brand you want. A drawback is that you must wait to unlock visual stuff- you should be able to put stuff on your car as soon as you can afford it. right now i have some million dollars becuase i cant spend it on anything- once you've put one of everything new on yuor car theres no point in buying more glow if you can only put one set on it at a time. Also, the computer players can come out of absolutely NOWHERE, even if you have about a 20 second lead, they can close that to a 2 second lead in a single lap. There are also invisible walls that you cant see and you run into midair that completely throws you off and wastes time. the only other bad thing is that your car can NOT get totalled. the worst that happens is your side mirrors get ripped off. But the drag mode is awesome! its completely unpredictible, yo ucan get burned off the start but some wise usuage of Nitrous and a couple perfect shifts and you can have everyone biting the dust behind you. The graphics in this game are stunning- you almost think its real. If you could take a picture of just a car that you'd created, not the scenary or anything, it wouldf appear to be real. EA really did well on this game. It has an unbelievable sense of speed you cant get anywhere else- I've rented Midnight club II there is absolutely no sense of speed you can be going 120 and feel like its only 30. over all, this game has great replay value becuase you can try it over in different cars and trade cars and always customize. One more drawback- you cant stick vynals on your hood unless its stock and if its stock, your reputation meter sucks.

Fatally flawed, shamefully weak offering

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 7 / 14
Date: November 29, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I wanted so very much to like this game... and but for a couple of flaws it would be the amazing game that the fanboys have proclaimed it. But those flaws are show stoppers.

The ongoing feud with Microsoft over control of online play has kept EA from supporting XBOX Live with any of it's titles and the lack of online head to head is unforgivable. The lack of system link is baffling and no support for 480p HDTV shows a lack of respect for XBOX gamers.

The real killer though is the unoptimized port from the PS2 development design. All the eye candy and graphic panache is totaly negated when you corner and the frame rate stutters to a 5 FPS halt. The same problem killed the GameCube version of NFS2 Hot Pursuit. With a fast, twitchy control and physics engine a smooth, regular frame rate is a must and it's lack totally ruins the experience.

I had hoped it was only on a few tracks such as the starting Olympic square, but the frame rate problems pop up virtually everywhere except the ultra small Drift track.

The driving engine is neither arcade fun and easy nor a simulation ala Gran Turismo or Sega GT 2002. It falls into a kind of nether region inhabited only by the strange Auto Modellista. Neither fish nor fowl nor good red meat it fails to satisfy on either plane being too twitchy to be simple and fun like Burnout 2 or have the detail and feel of Sega GT.

The game design drips with quality and style in every other area. The people at Rock Star San Diego who made Midnight Club 2 have to be shaking their gourds in awe of this design. EA brought in a Hollywood cinematographer to help get the 'feel of Speed' into the game and they did that perfectly with a whole arsenal of field of view changes, motion blurs, and camera shaking. The effect is truly impressive and certainly groundbreaking. And it is totally wasted when the frame rate jerks and shakes it until it coughes up blood and dies. A sad, sad waste. I hope other developer take the good ideas here and put them to use.

I hope that the PS2 version at least runs smoothly enough to live up to the potential of this title. I am afraid to even rent the GameCube version. If the programmers on the XBOX conversion team couldn't manage making a 733mhz x086 machine run it smoothly one can't imagine the same muppets doing any better on the relatively slower Nintendo hardware.

For truly excellent racing try the nearly perfect Project Gotham Racing 2 instead. The folks at EA must have liked the PGR Kudo points idea since they saw fit to copy it and call it Style points. PGR2 supports Live! and runs at a silky smooth frame rate ALWAYS in HDTV resolution. If you are on a budget try the sleeper Ford Racing 2. For less than half what NFSU costs you will be very pleasantly surprised by the depth and quality.

So many great ideas and so much fabulous art and animation... but the RACING kills the fun for me. If you find more pleasure in NFSU than I did more power to you my friend. My copy is going to eBay.

Fun but very frustrating!

2 Rating: 2, Useful: 5 / 9
Date: December 04, 2003
Author: Amazon User

The biggest problem with the game is the AI, especially in later races. You have to run flawless races in order to advance. The customization is excellent but if you can not get past a race then how do you get the next upgrades? Regardless of difficulty level the computer never seems to get easier, every race gets worse and worse. Every time you think you may have it won a car comes out of nowhere and causes a crash which takes much to long to recover from. I believe that computer AI has to make it extremely difficult to win with out tons of repition simply to keep you playing, after you have unlocked all the upgrades and cars what is left? It is only a two player game and has no online play (for the Xbox). Rent this game have some fun the move on to better games with more replay value.

Good, But Could Be Better

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: December 27, 2003
Author: Amazon User

I have to admit, this is a fun game to play, but it seems to fall short of the NFS title in the racing perspective.

The good stuff about the game mostly relvolves around the level of customization you can do. The options with body kits, muffler tips, paint, etc., is endless. You can paint the brake calipers, wheels, and even the muffler tip. The amount of possibilities over how your car will look is huge. You can get sponser logos, window tint, and even neon lighting. There is also a large variety of performance parts avaiable too. However, I don't think it was made with as much depth as it is with the visual upgrades. The performance parts can't be purchased individually like the visual parts. They can only be bought in "kits" and only aviable in about 3 levels of performance (street, pro, and extreme). Yes, you have a choice with the brands, but it dosen't make all that much of a difference. I think if EA programed a bigger selection of performance parts that could be bought individually, the customization could have been even better. An annoying thing about the customization is that a lot of the parts are locked out until you progress further in the game (When you start out, you can't buy any performance modification for quite a while. All that's avaiable to you is some appearance upgrades). Even if you have enough money to buy a locked part, it remains locked until an unknown point in the game. I was very surprised to wait as long as I did for the muffler tips. You don't get it till about a good 20 or 30 races in the game. That would be typically the first modification to buy. There is a money system, but it's useless because of the locked parts. You pretty much always have extra money that you can't spend.

Now the racing expierence is where this game lacks. I will admit, it is fun racing and a lot of stuff is copied from The Fast And The Furious series, with the jumping over the drawbridge and the blurred scenery as you put NOS in your engine. It is cool, but dosen't make up for its other shortcomings. One thing is that most of the tracks are just rearranged and called different tracks. So it gets kind of boring pretty quickly. Another thing is the AI. The opponent cars always seem faster than your car and accelerate better. Changing the difficulty setting dosen't make much difference. Even if you pass them, they catch up quickly, and if they crash (which they rarely do), they catch back up to you too quickly. They're always just behind you or in front on you. It does make the race more exciting, always having one or two of the oppenents right on your tail, but it gets very tiring during a long race. And if you crash or mess up, even just once, its rather difficult to catch back up. The controler is also rather sensitive and it can get kind of annoying at times. There is a race type (required in the Underground mode), called "Drift." You have to get the most points by going on an oily track and doing powerslides and such. Yeah, it sounds like a good idea, but it just gets in the way of the actual racing.

Another thing this game is missing is police. Yes, they can be bothersome at times, but they add to the realism. There is also no horsepower or performance numbers of any kind. It's always a bar graph. Yes, its good for comparing cars, but it would be nice to see how many ponies your racer is making.

Overall, it's a pretty good game. It is fun, but I don't think it's quite worth the $40+ price. It just falls short of the NFS title with the racing expierence.

Interesting take on arcade style racer

3 Rating: 3, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: January 22, 2005
Author: Amazon User

I have thoroughly enjoyed the depth that this game has to offer. The arcade style racer has always been a rather safe venue for publishers, but the creative lighting and style of this game make it stand out. This is not a new title by any means, but is well worth the reduced price. The games is deep enough to keep you entertained for hours and doesn't seem to stale as quickly as other arcade racer titles.

NFS:U

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 3 / 4
Date: July 02, 2005
Author: Amazon User

Well, it's a good game. I've unlocked everything and am working on Underground mode. One thing I looked at though. 2001 Project Gotham Racing with Kudos scoring system. 2003 Need for Speed: Underground Style Points. So I decided to replay my copy of PGR. You can gain Style Points for almost all the same tricks as in PGR too. Very similar, quite unoriginal. Other than that, great!

The Best NFS Yet

5 Rating: 5, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: November 30, 2003
Author: Amazon User

This is the first NFS that I have NOT bought for a PC. I have owned all the rest, and this one is the most fun by far. I am not into racing simulations, but lean much more toward arcade-style racers. This game starts off slow, but as you begin winning and upgrading, your ride gets exponentially better. For example, I am about halfway though the game (55/111 races) and have a Acura RSX Type-S taht will hit 210mph! Its nice that the computer AI will fight back -- so be carefull when you try to crash someone into oncoming traffic. I don't know if the cutscenes/dialouge are *suppossed* to be so funny, but they are. The only problem is that I have to remember when I'm driving on the road, for REAL, to NOT drive like this game!!

Good Graphics

4 Rating: 4, Useful: 2 / 2
Date: February 28, 2004
Author: Amazon User

The first thing I noticed in this game was the amazing graphics. The city lights and buildings looked very realistic. Overall, the game was a good buy with only a few problems. The cars can be designed to pretty much whatever look you want, but the cosmetic designs you can pick are far more numerous than the car's actual parts. You can only modify the standard parts of the car, which is far less than Gran Turismo's options. But, overall Need For Speed did a pretty good job the first time they made a game in which you can modify a car. If you like the whole Fast and the Furious theme, then this game is a must buy.

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