When this month's theme was announced I was quick to call to mind a few ideas, but sadly none about game principles themselves. It was mostly bile towards game developers, topics such as promises (Fable 1, Fallout 3's 200+ endings) and satisfying endings (Prince of Persia and Fallout 3). But as a huge racing game fan I decided to direct my bile towards the most recent offender, Need For Speed: Undercover.



A fundamental theory behind the Need for Speed theory has been police pursuits. Although only a portion of the games use it, many fans have their fondest memory with thoughts of hot pursuits. And realistically can anything be much more destructive than a police chase?



The Need For Speed series is arcade oriented and allows for outstanding high speed thrills in certain titles. When the first few trailers appeared for Undercover I was skeptical but excited. The concept seemed simple enough, get in with a street racing gang with ulterior motives (a la The Fast and The Furious) and then half way through the game you switch to the police side and round up all your former enemies and allies. Obviously that was just a guess but it would make sense and allow developers to add playability by reusing all of the roads.



Well the game is out now and every hope I had has been crushed, stepped on, and destroyed. The framerate is bad, the graphics are mediocre, the difficulty is almost nonexistent, the exploration is pointless, and the story is laughable. The characters are undeveloped, wafer thin and the dialogue almost always includes the phrase 'dawg'. I understand that no one comes to a racing game with hopes of a gripping storyline but can't a game give us a reason to race? Didn't Apex (Xbox) show us anything? I should disclose the fact that I love strong characterization and plot is very important to me. So when I saw nearly all of Red Alert 3's cinematics I chuckled because it was clear the writers and actors knew the whole thing was a joke. But in NFS:U the writers and actors get confused. It's like at some point the writers wanted to make a feasible plot but then EA told them they needed this many cutscenes and everything got tossed into a blender and wound up flavorless. And the actors only seem like they care for a portion of the time. As an East Coast nobody it seems like the acting hierarchy goes something like Movies-Television-Commercials-Independent Films-Documentaries-Video Games. And here you can tell.





(spoilers, probably, but it doesn't matter because this game is terrible)



By the time I got to a race with Rose Somethingorother (a woman with red lipstick and a dozen tattoos so obviously she's gangster material) I faced the game's first and likely last glimpse of innovation. In the last 10 seconds of the race, where I essentially couldn't lose my lead, the phrase 'Brake Failure' popped up. I was racing with a gangster's girlfriend so we were essentially having premarital sex. The only solution was for him to cut my brake lines. Understandable. I let off the gas as I drew close to a hairpin (because in this game its almost as effective as the brakes) and unceremoniously slammed into one of the last corners. Due to the lack of difficulty I still won the race but my car seemed to flip and meet a horrible fate after the You Won! screen popped up. I was slightly concerned by this revelation.



After the race I was met with a laughable cutscene. My boss or contact or superior or whatever was talking with a colleague. They were both "surprised" I was alive. Apparently after my brakes died I somehow went over a cliff that didn't seem to exist on the map. This seemed problematic. Here was an opportunity to immerse me in the experience. Destroy my car damnit. I worked hard to get up the money to upgrade the engine, suspension, brakes, and tires. If I went off a cliff and barely survived surely my car is certainly a box of carbon fiber. I'll not only be furious at the perpetrator but I'll have a reason to race him and ram him into traffic. Surely this is the next step.



And there it is, my car, pristine as the day it left the factory. Now is the time to destroy the bullshit lack of devotion developers have with their product. NFS:U could have been improved by a serviceable plot that excluded the live cast, the extra cash going to adding race types or civilians into the three cities to increase difficulty. Would anyone be happy to see a car that they've spend hours improving disappear? No, but in a game that fails at so much it seems like one of the few bright spots that could have been achieved but was ignored because someone at EA was either too stupid to think of it or though it might damage a teenager's psyche. And for that I weep a thousand elephant tears because we as gamers deserve better.