"Steve's Gaming Journey" Ep.1 - Need For Speed Most Wanted (Part 1)

I’m sure many of you are familiar with the latest game in the NFS franchise, developed by Criterion, Need For Speed Most Wanted which released in 2012. It was rather successful, and was in fact a reboot of the 2005 version; a fan favourite. Many people consider the original NFS Most Wanted the best in the series, and having played most of the games in the series, it’s quite fair to see why.

Cheese. I think that sums up my reaction to the first few cut-scenes pretty well, for the kind-of-CGI cut-scenes are so horrible corny and childish that they make you want to hurl. They’re cheesier than the underside of your biggest, left toe, and that’s pretty cheesy. The menu’s are horrible too, as if the developers took a black strip and hurled white, Impact font at it and left it at that. To further worsen my woes, the soundtrack is a mess of rap and death metal – obviously this would be great for some people, but the people who are bleeding their ears out to this noise probably aren’t playing this game. First impressions? Urgghh. Presentation in the menu’s, essentially, is not good.

However, you must not judge a book by it’s cover, or it’s cheese-ball cut-scenes, and when I actually get into the game I find that it’s actually quite a lot of fun! The premise is very similar, if not identical to the latest NFS Most Wanted; you start at the bottom of a blacklist – a leaderboard if you like – and you have to rise through the ranks beating every “rival” (a boss basically) until you beat the number one – Razor – a stuck-up, disgruntled fellow who never quite escaped his miserable teens.

Now, one last thing I want to touch upon before finishing for this week; boosting. There is a certain amount of bounty you have to earn throughout the game and if you want to earn it properly you’re going to have to invest a ton of time speeding away from the cops – fun in it’s own right, but enduring. There is, however, a glitch. I know, I know – using glitches to progress through a game is like cheating, but when I’m trekking through a journey of this size, I don’t think beneficial glitches should be frowned upon, I need to use them to my advantage as much as I can! Basically, there’s a certain area in the map where you can just sit and the cops won’t be able to catch you, thus endlessly increasing your bounty while you go and put the kettle on. Call me a cheater, but like I said, I don’t want to spend months driving in circles with cops on my tail, their sirens would probably drive me insane.