New Game Collection

Undercover revels in street culture while putting a greater emphasis on cops and car chases. In many ways, Need for Speed: Undercover is like a "greatest hits" package of ideas and concepts that we've seen the franchise play around with since Need for Speed: Underground turned the series on its head five years ago. Undercover revels in street culture, much like both of the Underground games, while putting a greater emphasis on cops and car chases like Need for Speed: Most Wanted. And like Need for Speed: Carbon, it leans heavily on a narrative that's plays out in occasional cut-scenes while building on some of the impressive graphics and driving-physics technology built for Need for Speed: ProStreet. On paper it seems like a slam-dunk, but it sadly falls just a little flat in practice.

The vehicle list is impressive, boasting a broad menu of 55 cars that includes a large number of relatively attainable desirables like the Audi TT or Mitsubishi Evo X as well as exotics like the Audi R8 and the Bugatti Veyron. The general feel and handling is exactly what we've come to expect from Need for Speed over the past few years; while based on realistic principles that allow the cars to lean and grip like the real thing, the game's tuned for gameplay rather than realism. If you're familiar with the franchise, you'll be pleased to learn that its "point and squirt" approach is fully intact. Point the car where you want it to go and squeeze the throttle, and all you really need to do to make course adjustments is ease off the throttle briefly. When you get the feel for it, you'll hardly ever do anything more than feather the brakes to get around particularly aggressive turns.

Structurally, the game has the most in common with Most Wanted. While the city of Palm Harbor offers you freedom to cruise around hunting for events, you can instantly hop from race to race without having to waste any time cruising around if you don't want to. All of the events are in keeping with The Fast and the Furious vibe that Black Box's clearly trying to cultivate, with circuit and sprint events supplemented with 1-on-1 races that have you weaving through traffic to impress the bad guys, cop-chase missions that borrow Most Wanted's "cost to the city" mechanic, and a Test Drive-like car delivery mode.

New to the franchise is a fully transparent "leveling" system that borrows heavily from role-playing games and even World of WarCraft. Successful completion of "missions" boosts stats, and stats in turn allow you to level up your driving skills. The higher your level, the more cars you can drive, and the more upgrades you can access. Even if you have enough in-game cash to buy that Nissan GT-R, if you're not sufficiently leveled up, you can't buy it yet. Unless, of course, you want to buy it with real money. See? Not only is this a Need for Speed with something that's essentially grinding, but it also has microtransactions for "cheating," too.

While these may sound like what could be Undercover's greatest crimes against fun, the real offenders are yet to come. Anyone that worked their way to the end of the "Blacklist" in Most Wanted will recall that the cop chases got a little aggressive toward the end. In Undercover, the difficulty ramps in even more obnoxious ways. Though things start off very easy, by the time you've become just a level 5 driver, both the opponent and cop A.I. is so obnoxiously aggressive that it borders on absurd. Drivers will ram you off the road, while cops will somehow find ways to squeeze past you and pull right across your front bumper while you're hurtling along at 120 mph.

And then there's the story. While arguably an improvement over previous attempts to bring "real" actors into the franchise, the script and the performances here are laughable at best. The desperately earnest street racers that chide, threaten, and try to intimidate you throughout make Lucas Black's performance in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift look almost Oscar-worthy.

As a mashup of Need for Speed: Carbon and Need for Speed: Most Wanted, Undercover is ultimately fairly successful. For many, though, in a post-Burnout: Paradise world, the question has to be raised: "What does this give me that Paradise doesn't?" The answer to that is "cops and robbers," a mechanic that has worked well in single-player since the days of Hot Pursuit, and works even better online when played in teams of 4-on-4 in Undercover.

• Microsoft Windows XP (Service Pack 2) / Microsoft Windows Vista
• Processor type : Amd athlon 64 x2 4200+
• 1.5GB RAM
• 256 MB DirectX® 9.0c compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™ 7900 / ATI Radeon® X1600
• DirectX® 9.0 compatible sound card
• >=64kbps Internet connection with low latency Cable/DSL speeds for multiplayer
• Keyboard, Mouse
• 12 GB Available Hard Disk

• Microsoft® Windows® XP (Service Pack 2) / Microsoft® Windows® Vista
• Processor type : Intel Core 2 Duo E6400 / Amd athlon 64 x2 5000+
• 512 MB DirectX® 10 compatible card / nVIDIA® GeForce™8600/ATI Radeon® X1950
• 2.0GB RAM
• >=512kbps Internet connection with low latency Cable/DSL/T1+ speeds for multiplayer
• Keyboard, Mouse, Microsoft 360 compatible controller
• 12 GB Available Hard Disk