I like the idea of having the choice whether to do a mission now (ala Burnout) or drive about until I find one (more like Grand Theft Auto), but in practice having the map screen means that you can complete the game with only a handful of police chases. You can enter a race / battle / whatever either directly from the map screen, or in 'Free Roam' mode where you get the whole city to play with. Wins unlock goodies ranging from parts upgrades to new crew members and cars. The general idea is for you and your crew to win territories off of the other gangs in the city by winning at least two races on that territory. The sound effects are satisfyingly meaty, although they do tend to drown out the (reasonably good) soundtrack. By far the coolest thing in my opinion is the classic 'bullet-time' effect, which can be triggered while driving to provide increased maneuverability. There are some nice effects and the constant night-time environment provides a consistent mood, but it's certainly nothing we haven't seen before. Graphically I found the game - while pretty enough - to be somewhat uninspiring. But once you get the hang of the sensitivity it's actually pretty intuitive - nearer to the realism of Gran Turismo than the all out speed of Burnout, but without getting punished too severely if you neglect to brake on a slow corner The first five minutes had been embarrassingly bad, crashing from one side of the road to the other, driving off the only cliff on the course six times in a row, you know the routine.

It seems that my fears of this game being rushed to market are not entirely unfounded.Īs I progress through the training levels, familiarizing myself with the controls, I realize I actually quite enjoy driving this thing.

It turns out that the Nunchuk isn't needed at all in the default configuration, except for a couple of obscure menu options. This wouldn't be a problem if it wasn't for the fact that the default controller configuration for driving is with the Wiimote sideways - with the Nunchuck plugged in this is not comfortable. Unusually (in my experience) the game begins immediately, before any menus or anything.

Nfs carbon release date