RPGamers Network > Reviews > Game Reviews > Need For Speed Underground 2
The game consists of a career/story mode, a Quick Race and a 2 player split screen as far as playable modes are concerned. It also allows you to customize cars outside of career mode and with unlimited credit, for 2-player and quick race modes. The options include the general features, as well as a new feature allowing you to select which game tracks appear in which modes/areas of the games.
Career Mode:
The bulk of the game involves you as the main character, starting anew as a racer in a new area. You were once a pretty famous street racer until you crashed. 6 months later you want to get back in the big league and head to Bayview to try your luck. And it begins. Rachel talks to you and tells you about e-mails that you get from her and random others. These e-mails just give you info about the game, new parts available and photo shoots on (explained later). She also explains the map which basically lets you see all the shops, races, outruns and shoots in bayview easily. It has GPS so your car is shown also. You get to start off in a decent car, it's yours to drive until you get to the garage where you get your first actual car. This, as well as the other 4 that you'll acquire if you want, is completely customizable to your liking. I'm talking about all performance parts, (engine, turbo, nitrous oxide, suspension, wheels, ECU, etc...) body parts, (front and rear bumpers, spoilers, side skirts, wide body kits, carbon fibering, lights, side mirrors, hoods, etc...) specialist parts, (neons, gauges, trunk gear, spinners, coloured lights and window tints, etc...) and of course, a full paint job even on brakes and engines. Of course, it's not all available from the start...you have to unlock most.
Performance Parts:
You start off with level 1 engine, suspension, wheels, nitro, etc... available. eventually you unlock things like turbos and level 2 and 3 of all parts as well. Speaking of nitrous oxide, you can restore this anytime during races and such by getting points for drifts, near-misses and reversing
. Anyway, these pretty much lead to your car having near max speed, acceleration and handling. It's advisable to upgrade all three at once, as fast speed is useless without handling. You can purchase these parts at any Performance shop around Bayview. In the Performance shop, you can do a test run of your car to check it's raw statistics. You can check it's 0-60 and 0-100kph or whatever in mph as well as fully customize your car's parts and their stats for each type of race. This is the only shop that allows you to do that though.
Which reminds me...there are shops all around Bayview. Most you'll have to find yourself to unlock special parts and that. There are Car lots (light blue dots), Performance shops (dark blue), Body shops (green), Graphics shops (red) and Specialist parts (yellow).
Body Parts:
Your car has a star rating. It begins at 0.00 stars and rises with all the new body parts, specialist parts and paint upgrades you get. There are many ways to eventually get 10 stars, so it isn't hard. You can upgrade your body parts throughout the game. Usually, when you're told about new parts available, they'll be worth a higher star rating than the ones before, so your car will rise in star level. Some parts are double edged swords. For example, you can buy carbon fibered parts, which are worth more in star than normal parts, but you can paint on them, which would normally raise star level anyway. Normally, it's only worth getting carbon fibering to unlock photo shoots quickly.
Photo shoots are in two different categories; DVD covers and magazine covers. There are 10 DVD covers throughout the game and 30 magazine covers. They both appear as yellow stars on the map. Mag covers are unlocked by winning races and dvd covers are unlocked by raising star level. Each new level you reach unlocks a dvd covers hence the fact there are 10 covers. DVD covers are easy to do, but magazine covers require you to get from one place to another in a certain amount of time. Once there, you get to take your own pic of the car, exploiting all it's features for the camera, just a bit of fun really. Anywho...
Specialist Parts:
You can upgrade these during the game also. Normal neons get better in colour and get pulse too. You can unlock engine and trunk neons eventually too. Nitrous purges get more colourful and plentiful. Hydrolics get more insane and bouncy. Lights and tints get rarer colours etc...
Paint Jobs:
From the full body of the car to spoilers, brakes, spinners and side mirrors, you can paint pretty much any part. You also unlock awesome designs for the sides and hoods which also up your star level. Finally, you can chuck a whole heap of sponsor logos on your car which get you a bunch of star points, but eventually, you'll be able to get to 10 stars without the logos, so you'll take them off
Explore Mode:
Think of this as the world map and the races as battles in a RPG. This is where you travel around Bayview, go to shops, find races, do outruns and race to photo shoots. Every circuit, outrun and sprint is done on the explore mode roads, so you'll want to get used to the road if you want to race well.
Outruns:
Around explore mode (on the map) are little moving orange arrows. These are cars you can challenge to an instant race called an outrun. Basically your opponent starts with the lead and you have to get ahead of them and get 300m further than that. The track is not set...once you're in the lead, you can do whatever you want and go anywhere as long as you get 300m ahead. A tricky thing to do is to get about 200m ahead, spin around 180 degrees and punch it. That way you drive past your opponent and they've gotta turn around, which takes a while, so you should easily win.
Now, onto races. This is the most important part in the game, as you must win them to progress through the game. There are 6 types of races, 5 initial and 1 that you eventually get into. The first 5 are Drag, Drift, Circuit, Sprint and Street X. The 6th are URL races (underground racing league races which are just worth a lot more). You find races as different coloured circles with holes in them on the map. The map tells you which is which. By winning races, you get money, and you also get reputation points. Basically, the more you beat your opponents, the more rep points you get. You get 0 if the race is really close, 100 for a fair victory, say a few secs or 1000 points, 200 for a decent victory...10-15 seconds maybe and 5-8k points. 300 is for ownage, like from 20-whatever seconds and from 15k+ points.
Drag Races:
These consist of 4 cars, one obviously yours, dragging from 1-4km, dodging cars and testing your car to the max. You must use manual transmission and so timing of gear changes is crucial, although the game helps you there. The hard part is dodging everything. If you hit one thing, you're pretty much totaled, unlike every other type of races where you can crash to your heart's content and not do any damage. It's easier to dodge in drag though due to the lane changing feature which just involves a tap of left or right to avoid walls and oncoming traffic. Use nitrous wisely here, it cannot be restored mid-race either.
Drift Races:
My personal favourite. It involves either 4 cars on a short circuit or you on your own on a long sprint. You drift with the handbrake around corner and try to get more drift points than the other cars. The more angle on the drift, the faster the points go up and combos are available. It's an awesome feeling to just grab 40k points on the last turn and own everyone with a huge combo.
Circuit/Sprint Races:
The only thing different between the two of these is that Sprint is one lap whereas Circuit is many. Circuit tracks are pretty much the longest races you'll do in the game, especially if you get a 3 or 4-lap course of anything over 4km long. Sprints just show you the % of track completed. You always race 3 other cars here.
Street X:
Probably the hardest type of race in the game, mainly because of the really sharp turns and quick races. Mistakes aren't really acceptable cause it's hard to catch up. It's 10 times easier if you basically stare at the map the whole time and not even look where you're going though.
URL Races:
You'll find that to get to the next stage, you'll only need to complete these really, so leave them til the end
They involve you and 5 other races in tournament style racing, meaning there's 2 or 3 races that you'll have to do and most points wins. First place is 8 points, 2nd is 6, 3rd is 4 etc... the races require good all-round stats to do well in, but they're easy money really.
There's a small flaw in career mode that involves the fact of you not being able to get 100% easily. Basically, you must find all the hidden races and complete all the normal races. The normal races can be done on the world map section in options, but the hidden races you have to find for yourself around Bayview BEFORE you finish the game. The hidden races are just ones not on the map that are a little harder and worth more cash than normal races...so it's worth driving around a bit before completing each level to find all the races. That pretty much covers the whole of Career Mode. It's a very time-consuming yet very fun part of the game, and counts for 3/4 of the score i reckon.
Quick Race:
Basically, you get to race on any track with any car using any custom parts. All the tracks, cars and parts must have been unlocked in career to be used, but the fact that you can create, supe up and save cars for no charge is pretty fun. It's all pretty much the same as career races.
2-Player Split Screen:
Basically 2-player mode where you race a mate under the same guidelines as Quick Race, except you cannot race computer players as well as your mate, which is a downside...
Now to the cars. There's tons of cars to pick from and supe up in this game. From the beginning cars of Peugeots and Skylines, to the super fast and powerful later cars including RX-7s, Martins, TTs and RX-8s. Eventually, they'll all be roughly the same speed and lowish handling, so it doesn't matter which you pick, except some cars are better in manual than auto (for instance, the RX-7 has the worst acceleration in auto trans)
Alright, that covers the game itself, now to the verdicts in specific game areas.
Graphics:
The game has smooth, awesome graphics. The cars look brilliant and very well done. Crashing and jumping even have bullet time features that slow the gameplay down for a second and changes camera angles. The parts are done very accurately and the cars look exactly as they would if you looked at one in real life.
Music:
Nice soundtrack. A mix of rap, hip-hop, rock, r&b, metal and pop music combines to create a great feel when driving. The music isn't really specific to any special races so it's not really planned well, but the whole soundtrack is meant for racing.
Sounds:
The screeching and engine sounds are pitch perfect. The voices and crash sounds could use some work, but i really did like the other sounds. A good test is to chuck the car in neutral and do a dough or two, then hear one irl and see if you notice the difference. I didn't notice anything.
Replay Value:
If you're persistent, you'll want to keep trying from scratch to get tons of rep points and try to get 100%. If you're not...
Plot:
Meh, a bombed out racing star tries to rise back up to supremacy again. Yes he has a rival and yes he does achieve his goal. Predictable but at least it gives you a reason to race for once...
Originality:
It's a racing game... the score comes from the customizable features and the outrun feature, but it does have that new feel to it that previous NFS games lacked also.
Gameplay:
The cars handle brilliantly. It feels like you're driving an actual car. The relationship between speed and grip is great...although crashing is totally unrealistic outside of dragging, but I overlook that slightly.
Overall, an awesome game, revolutionizing racing games for the new generation. Rent it, try it and see for yourself...but you'll be hooked soon enough. Great work by EA games. Hope to see more like this in the future.
| Game Stats | |
|---|---|
| Genre | Racing |
| Platform | GameCube |
| Format | GD-ROM |
| # of Players | 2 |
| Released Jap | 12.22.2004 |
| Released US | 11.15.2004 |
| Released EU | 11.19.2004 |
| Aprox. Length | 10-20 hrs. |
| Reviewer Rankings | |
| Battle System | 8.0 |
| Gameplay | 9.0 |
| Music | 9.0 |
| Originality | 8.0 |
| Plot | 8.0 |
| Replay Value | 8.0 |
| Sound | 9.0 |
| Visuals | 9.0 |
| Difficulty | Medium |
| Overall | |
| 8.5 | |
Need For Speed Underground 2
By: EA CanadaReviewed By: Kie
It's been a dry run in my opinion since the last really decent racing game came onto the scene, and wouldn't you believe; the drought is broken by a need for speed game! Personally, the last NFS game i liked was High Stakes, back in the day...so naturally i wasn't too impressed initially when i saw ads for Underground 2. But i'm one to give second chances so i rented it out for a night and realized how much the series had changed, even from Underground 1, but i'm not gonna talk about the changes throughout the series...just about how great of a racing game it is.The game consists of a career/story mode, a Quick Race and a 2 player split screen as far as playable modes are concerned. It also allows you to customize cars outside of career mode and with unlimited credit, for 2-player and quick race modes. The options include the general features, as well as a new feature allowing you to select which game tracks appear in which modes/areas of the games.
Career Mode:
The bulk of the game involves you as the main character, starting anew as a racer in a new area. You were once a pretty famous street racer until you crashed. 6 months later you want to get back in the big league and head to Bayview to try your luck. And it begins. Rachel talks to you and tells you about e-mails that you get from her and random others. These e-mails just give you info about the game, new parts available and photo shoots on (explained later). She also explains the map which basically lets you see all the shops, races, outruns and shoots in bayview easily. It has GPS so your car is shown also. You get to start off in a decent car, it's yours to drive until you get to the garage where you get your first actual car. This, as well as the other 4 that you'll acquire if you want, is completely customizable to your liking. I'm talking about all performance parts, (engine, turbo, nitrous oxide, suspension, wheels, ECU, etc...) body parts, (front and rear bumpers, spoilers, side skirts, wide body kits, carbon fibering, lights, side mirrors, hoods, etc...) specialist parts, (neons, gauges, trunk gear, spinners, coloured lights and window tints, etc...) and of course, a full paint job even on brakes and engines. Of course, it's not all available from the start...you have to unlock most.
Performance Parts:
You start off with level 1 engine, suspension, wheels, nitro, etc... available. eventually you unlock things like turbos and level 2 and 3 of all parts as well. Speaking of nitrous oxide, you can restore this anytime during races and such by getting points for drifts, near-misses and reversing
. Anyway, these pretty much lead to your car having near max speed, acceleration and handling. It's advisable to upgrade all three at once, as fast speed is useless without handling. You can purchase these parts at any Performance shop around Bayview. In the Performance shop, you can do a test run of your car to check it's raw statistics. You can check it's 0-60 and 0-100kph or whatever in mph as well as fully customize your car's parts and their stats for each type of race. This is the only shop that allows you to do that though.Which reminds me...there are shops all around Bayview. Most you'll have to find yourself to unlock special parts and that. There are Car lots (light blue dots), Performance shops (dark blue), Body shops (green), Graphics shops (red) and Specialist parts (yellow).
Body Parts:
Your car has a star rating. It begins at 0.00 stars and rises with all the new body parts, specialist parts and paint upgrades you get. There are many ways to eventually get 10 stars, so it isn't hard. You can upgrade your body parts throughout the game. Usually, when you're told about new parts available, they'll be worth a higher star rating than the ones before, so your car will rise in star level. Some parts are double edged swords. For example, you can buy carbon fibered parts, which are worth more in star than normal parts, but you can paint on them, which would normally raise star level anyway. Normally, it's only worth getting carbon fibering to unlock photo shoots quickly.
Photo shoots are in two different categories; DVD covers and magazine covers. There are 10 DVD covers throughout the game and 30 magazine covers. They both appear as yellow stars on the map. Mag covers are unlocked by winning races and dvd covers are unlocked by raising star level. Each new level you reach unlocks a dvd covers hence the fact there are 10 covers. DVD covers are easy to do, but magazine covers require you to get from one place to another in a certain amount of time. Once there, you get to take your own pic of the car, exploiting all it's features for the camera, just a bit of fun really. Anywho...
Specialist Parts:
You can upgrade these during the game also. Normal neons get better in colour and get pulse too. You can unlock engine and trunk neons eventually too. Nitrous purges get more colourful and plentiful. Hydrolics get more insane and bouncy. Lights and tints get rarer colours etc...
Paint Jobs:
From the full body of the car to spoilers, brakes, spinners and side mirrors, you can paint pretty much any part. You also unlock awesome designs for the sides and hoods which also up your star level. Finally, you can chuck a whole heap of sponsor logos on your car which get you a bunch of star points, but eventually, you'll be able to get to 10 stars without the logos, so you'll take them off
Explore Mode:
Think of this as the world map and the races as battles in a RPG. This is where you travel around Bayview, go to shops, find races, do outruns and race to photo shoots. Every circuit, outrun and sprint is done on the explore mode roads, so you'll want to get used to the road if you want to race well.
Outruns:
Around explore mode (on the map) are little moving orange arrows. These are cars you can challenge to an instant race called an outrun. Basically your opponent starts with the lead and you have to get ahead of them and get 300m further than that. The track is not set...once you're in the lead, you can do whatever you want and go anywhere as long as you get 300m ahead. A tricky thing to do is to get about 200m ahead, spin around 180 degrees and punch it. That way you drive past your opponent and they've gotta turn around, which takes a while, so you should easily win.
Now, onto races. This is the most important part in the game, as you must win them to progress through the game. There are 6 types of races, 5 initial and 1 that you eventually get into. The first 5 are Drag, Drift, Circuit, Sprint and Street X. The 6th are URL races (underground racing league races which are just worth a lot more). You find races as different coloured circles with holes in them on the map. The map tells you which is which. By winning races, you get money, and you also get reputation points. Basically, the more you beat your opponents, the more rep points you get. You get 0 if the race is really close, 100 for a fair victory, say a few secs or 1000 points, 200 for a decent victory...10-15 seconds maybe and 5-8k points. 300 is for ownage, like from 20-whatever seconds and from 15k+ points.
Drag Races:
These consist of 4 cars, one obviously yours, dragging from 1-4km, dodging cars and testing your car to the max. You must use manual transmission and so timing of gear changes is crucial, although the game helps you there. The hard part is dodging everything. If you hit one thing, you're pretty much totaled, unlike every other type of races where you can crash to your heart's content and not do any damage. It's easier to dodge in drag though due to the lane changing feature which just involves a tap of left or right to avoid walls and oncoming traffic. Use nitrous wisely here, it cannot be restored mid-race either.
Drift Races:
My personal favourite. It involves either 4 cars on a short circuit or you on your own on a long sprint. You drift with the handbrake around corner and try to get more drift points than the other cars. The more angle on the drift, the faster the points go up and combos are available. It's an awesome feeling to just grab 40k points on the last turn and own everyone with a huge combo.
Circuit/Sprint Races:
The only thing different between the two of these is that Sprint is one lap whereas Circuit is many. Circuit tracks are pretty much the longest races you'll do in the game, especially if you get a 3 or 4-lap course of anything over 4km long. Sprints just show you the % of track completed. You always race 3 other cars here.
Street X:
Probably the hardest type of race in the game, mainly because of the really sharp turns and quick races. Mistakes aren't really acceptable cause it's hard to catch up. It's 10 times easier if you basically stare at the map the whole time and not even look where you're going though.
URL Races:
You'll find that to get to the next stage, you'll only need to complete these really, so leave them til the end
They involve you and 5 other races in tournament style racing, meaning there's 2 or 3 races that you'll have to do and most points wins. First place is 8 points, 2nd is 6, 3rd is 4 etc... the races require good all-round stats to do well in, but they're easy money really.There's a small flaw in career mode that involves the fact of you not being able to get 100% easily. Basically, you must find all the hidden races and complete all the normal races. The normal races can be done on the world map section in options, but the hidden races you have to find for yourself around Bayview BEFORE you finish the game. The hidden races are just ones not on the map that are a little harder and worth more cash than normal races...so it's worth driving around a bit before completing each level to find all the races. That pretty much covers the whole of Career Mode. It's a very time-consuming yet very fun part of the game, and counts for 3/4 of the score i reckon.
Quick Race:
Basically, you get to race on any track with any car using any custom parts. All the tracks, cars and parts must have been unlocked in career to be used, but the fact that you can create, supe up and save cars for no charge is pretty fun. It's all pretty much the same as career races.
2-Player Split Screen:
Basically 2-player mode where you race a mate under the same guidelines as Quick Race, except you cannot race computer players as well as your mate, which is a downside...
Now to the cars. There's tons of cars to pick from and supe up in this game. From the beginning cars of Peugeots and Skylines, to the super fast and powerful later cars including RX-7s, Martins, TTs and RX-8s. Eventually, they'll all be roughly the same speed and lowish handling, so it doesn't matter which you pick, except some cars are better in manual than auto (for instance, the RX-7 has the worst acceleration in auto trans)
Alright, that covers the game itself, now to the verdicts in specific game areas.
Graphics:
The game has smooth, awesome graphics. The cars look brilliant and very well done. Crashing and jumping even have bullet time features that slow the gameplay down for a second and changes camera angles. The parts are done very accurately and the cars look exactly as they would if you looked at one in real life.
Music:
Nice soundtrack. A mix of rap, hip-hop, rock, r&b, metal and pop music combines to create a great feel when driving. The music isn't really specific to any special races so it's not really planned well, but the whole soundtrack is meant for racing.
Sounds:
The screeching and engine sounds are pitch perfect. The voices and crash sounds could use some work, but i really did like the other sounds. A good test is to chuck the car in neutral and do a dough or two, then hear one irl and see if you notice the difference. I didn't notice anything.
Replay Value:
If you're persistent, you'll want to keep trying from scratch to get tons of rep points and try to get 100%. If you're not...
Plot:
Meh, a bombed out racing star tries to rise back up to supremacy again. Yes he has a rival and yes he does achieve his goal. Predictable but at least it gives you a reason to race for once...
Originality:
It's a racing game... the score comes from the customizable features and the outrun feature, but it does have that new feel to it that previous NFS games lacked also.
Gameplay:
The cars handle brilliantly. It feels like you're driving an actual car. The relationship between speed and grip is great...although crashing is totally unrealistic outside of dragging, but I overlook that slightly.
Overall, an awesome game, revolutionizing racing games for the new generation. Rent it, try it and see for yourself...but you'll be hooked soon enough. Great work by EA games. Hope to see more like this in the future.
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