Need For Speed Most Wanted Review: Pastime Paradise

Need For Speed: Most Wanted is, in every sense of the word, a playground. Think back to those carefree days of your childhood when you wanted nothing more than to feel the crunch of woodchips beneath your sneakers. Instead of leaping off the swing set and clambering across the monkey bars, NFS has you soaring off ramps and drifting across highways. It's not the playground attendants you have to worry about in NFS, but rather an ever-growing horde of law enforcement agents. And like the playgrounds we populated as kids, there's no real sense of danger to be found. Your cars suffer some minor damage, but nothing any more severe than a few scraped knees thanks to the presence of licensed cars. Burnout's use of fictional analogues allowed Criterion to engage in all manner of destruction porn, but the studio had to reign it back now that they're playing with names like Maserati and Porsche.

Your digital recreation site this time around is Fairhaven City, a coastal amalgam of Boston and the Bay Area. The city is vast and filled with enough urban and rural spaces to speed on by. It's fitting that after a brief video showcasing your arrival in Fairhaven, the game simply lets go of your hand and allows you to explore the entirety of the city at your leisure. Most Wanted exudes the same sense of freedom as Burnout: Paradise, which inevitably becomes the game's main point of contention. Those who love the ability to meander around a world and pick up stray challenges whenever they feel like it won't be able to remove themselves from NFS. But anyone who needs a bit of structure to their games may find the sense of freedom to be a bit overwhelming.

While the boundaries of Fairhaven may be expansive, Criterion seems to have focused on vastness over density, as the city too often feels strangely devoid of activities to participate in. Don't get me wrong, there is no lack of content in NFS. Between dozens of cars to hop into, hundreds of races to indulge in, and countless billboards to smash through, you can lose quite a bit of time in Most Wanted. But when you boil it down, there's a distinct lack of variety in the activities present across Fairhaven. The fantastical Rube Goldberg challenges of Burnout are nowhere to be found, with a focus instead being placed on minor variations of standard the standard race formula.

For a game built upon the notion of allowing the player to create their own quest structure in a fluid and intuitive manner, Most Wanted stalls a bit too long whenever you want to make a change. Entering a given race leads to a loading screen that outstays its welcome. After the load, you're treated to an intro cinematic that sets up the mini-narrative behind each race. But want to retry that mission because you made one poor decision (which will happen quite often)? Well, prepare for that loading screen and intro movie combo once again. And while the dynamic structure of missions might make sense in the context of the world, it really takes away from what could have been an arcade-like flow to the whole package. Burnout 3 and Revenge provided an experience more akin my own personal play style than Paradise did. Had there been an option to either play Most Wanted as an open-world experience like Paradise, or in a more structured checklist style akin to Revenge, Criterion could have made sure that no player was left unsatisfied. Again, your opinion on this form of presentation really just depends whether you're more a fan of structure or freedom.

Thankfully, every time my frustrations with NFS start to rise, it delivers a moment that makes me fall in love with it all over again. Many of these come in the form of your races against Fairhaven's titular car deities. Once you've accumulated enough points, you're allowed to challenge one of the city's Most Wanted for a chance to move up in the rankings. It's during these vehicular boss battles that Criterion's vision for Most Wanted comes across most clearly. Going head-to-head against a single AI opponent with the wits and skills to match even the most abled drivers is an absolute treat that challenges without ever becoming frustrating. Couple this with an ever-growing army of law enforcers who'll stop at nothing to protect the sanctity of Fairhaven's streets, and what you're left with is a series of missions that become an interactive version of some of the all-time best cinematic car chases. Blasting through barriers, boosting across bridges, and slamming your opponents into oncoming traffic provide moments that are some of the year's most satisfying.

While these Most Wanted challenges may be the highlight of the single-player campaign, Need For Speed is absolutely meant to be played online with a handful of buddies. Once your version of Fairhaven is populated by other drivers, you're free to simply roam city and cause a ruckus, or engage in a more structured manner of sport. Players have the option to build a playlist of events that range from standard street races to more insane jump competitions. The multiplayer provides a great outlet for cooperative driving as well as some healthy competitive griefing. It's all too satisfying to watch a buddy prepare for a run at a ramp, only to slam into him moments before he's ready to take to the air. With the right group of people, Fairhaven has the potential to become a place where gamers go to hang out while deciding where they want their night of gaming to eventually take them.

Anyone with intentions of treating Most Wanted as a single-player outing might find the city to be an awfully lonely playground. But if you have buddies that will be online and tearing up the streets of Fairhaven on a fairly regular basis, you'll be able to create ample amounts of your own fun. Honestly though, it's telling that I'm more than willing to put up with some of the game's design flaws all due to the fact that the actual act of driving in NFS is so damn satisfying. While there are certainly some changes that I'd like to see, there's no denying that Most Wanted is a big, gorgeous playground that has the ability to absolutely eviscerate your free time, especially when paired with a handful of friends.