STUDIO: EA
RELEASE DATE: November 17, 2008
CONSOLE: PS3
ALSO AVAILABLE ON: XBox 360, PS2, Wii, PSP, DS, PC
DEVELOPER: EA Black Box
GENRE: Racing, Driving
PLAYERS: 8
ESRB RATING: T (Teen)

Most successful driving games either go for extreme ridiculousness (Twisted Metal, Crazy Taxi) or attempt a modicum of believability (Grid). It's the games that fall in the middle that usually burn out and hit the wall. Take for example, Need For Speed Undercover. It's not over-the-top enough to garner gleeful, carnage-causing smiles or anything approaching realistic in the slightest. It's essentially a game version of Fast and the Furious, which might sound appealing to fans of that franchise, but, just like the movies, it's a concept that gets tired and repetitive really quickly. A game designed for speed junkies and adrenalin chasers - the kids who like to drive around Grand Theft Auto and cause trouble just so the cops will chase them - has to meet a certain threshold of high-speed action that Need For Speed Undercover just never crosses over. It's this simple - if you put the words "Need" and "Speed" in your title, you set expectations for your audience and they're going to be more angry than average when you let them down. In nearly every way, Need For Speed Undercover let me down from the course designs to the ridiculous frame-rate issues to the lackluster story. Unless you go "oooh" at every speeding car that passes you on the highway, Need For Speed Undercover is unlikely to cross your finish line either.

One of the biggest problems with Need For Speed Undercover is the structure of the story itself. A series of cut scenes starring Maggie Q and Christina Milian (it really does feel like a Fast and the Furious sequel, doesn't it?) is loosely strung together by random races in an open world city. So, you drive around, a race pops up, you hit the directional down button, and you're off. The races range from standard, 8-car events to more inventive missions like evading the cops or racing against only one other car on a crowded freeway. (The most adrenalin you'll feel is changing the view to first-person, which basically puts you on the grill of the car, and hitting 157 in a freeway race.) You earn points by joining in these underground races, which add to the attributes of your car and your driver, and you can also spend cash on parts, upgrades, and brand new cars.

But it's all SO random. What race is worth the most points? Or the most cash? What will move me forward in the game? What will put me on a track I haven't played before because, really, they're all starting to look the same? What will get me another cut scene with Maggie Q? There's no guide at all. You drive around, race, and wait to see what happens. It's as fractured a story as I've ever seen in a game that attempted one. It's just another example of how caught in the middle Need For Speed Undercover ended up. It could have just been a series of wicked-cool races or it could have had an in-depth storyline, but the developers went halfway with both, ending up with an incomplete experience as both a driving game and definitely as a single-player mission.

How's the racing itself? So-so. The handling feels a little unnatural, and your opponent's AI is frustratingly random. Why did the guy who just pulled in front of me skid out into the wall? How did I not see that oncoming traffic until it was right on top of me? Did that cop just appear in the middle of the road? There are parts of the game that are not only repetitive but also make no logical sense. And what's worst of all are the frame-rate issues that hamper the game to a crawl when the screen gets too crowded. The car and city design and the frame-rate problems make for an overall experience that might have won the race in 2004, but feels like last year's model in 2008.