Need for Speed: Underground

Enter the world of urban street racing and high performance tuner cars with the latest title in the hit Need for Speed series: Need for Speed Underground. Take on today’s most popular tuner cars from Mitsubishi Motors, Subaru®, Toyota™ and many more, building the ultimate street machine by earning cash to pay for custom body kits and a host of licensed car performance mods. But just creating a custom street racing machine will not get you to the top; it takes a certain amount of attitude and razor sharp driving skills to compete in the tough world of urban racing.

NFSU opens up with you creating a persona to race with. Under this persona will be your saves, records, and customized cars. Each persona is different, and you can’t move accomplishments between them.

You use the keyboard and mouse to navigate the screens. You can tell that this was a console port from the controls, but it’s not bad. Most menus and selections are a keystroke away. Want to quit the game, just press ‘Q’. Go back a menu? Press ‘Backspace’. The mouse navigation is a bit rough around the edges, because it is sometimes hard to get the cursor directly over what you need to press.

After choosing your persona, you are opened up to six main menu choices. I’ll go through each, in order, in the following paragraphs.

• "Go Underground”

  This is where the meat of the game resides. You start off sponsored to get you into the scene. Once you get past your first race, everything is up to you. You need to earn a reputation. To do that, you need style points and cash. Style points allow you to get reputation multipliers and get you looking good. What good is a fast car if it doesn’t look good? You also earn cash, based on the difficulty of race you choose. Cash will allow you to buy those necessary car hardware upgrades. More on customizing rides later.

     

  There are five main race types. Circuit is a typical lapped race through the city. Spring has you getting from point A to point B in the fastest time possible. Drag is interesting. You line up on a stretch of road, and instead of racing with normal controls, things change. You control speed, but only need to “bump” the controller left or right to change lanes. You have to use the shift controllers to time the perfect shift to get you ahead. Drift is a wonderfully fun way to earn style points. The object is to get sideways and slide as far as possible on a slick track. The last race type is lap knockout. You race a circuit race, but the loser on each lap drops out. The last lap, it’s a one on one race.

         

  The races are opened up to you in sequential order. That means that you start at race 1 of 100+ races, and go from there. Each race will allow you to earn cash, style points, and perhaps unlock parts or standings for you. Every few races, you’ll compete in a tournament. This is a group of races pulled together that is won based on points earned through placement. Better you place, more points you earn. The one with the most points at the end of the tournament wins. Tournaments have the best payouts, and usually unlock features, cars, magazine layouts, or parts to use. The magazine layouts are a nice addition, giving a sense of accomplishment.

  

  To give the game some character, opponents will challenge you verbally over your “cel phone”. This usually happens before a big race that unlocks something for you. When you beat one of these characters, you usually go up in the standings. The standings are based on the circuit, sprint, drag, and drift race types. You start unranked, and move up. By the end of the game, you will rule all four.

     

• “Quick Race”

  For those times where you just want to race and have fun. You don’t earn cash, but can earn style points. Each of the five race types is available here. However, unlike underground mode, you can choose the track, opponents, and traffic levels. You can also access special “cheat code unlocked” cars in this race area, from the Rob Zombie 350Z to the Petey Pablo Celica.

  

• “Statistics”

  Simply keeps track of your races, cash, win/loss ratio, etc.