Need for Speed: Underground

Overall Rating:
Genre: Racing
Christian Rating: 4 of 5
   (slightly offensive)
Gameplay: 4 of 5
   (good)
Violence: 5 of 5
   (none)
Adult Content: 4 of 5
   (barely present)

Plot: There really isn't much of a plot in Underground. You have 111 races to beat in the series and every 3 of them or so, you will have a little cut scene, furthering the story. These serve little purpose and I never sat through one of them. But racing games are never known for their plot, its other things that make the game.

Starting: When first beginning you have a tutorial-type race where you have a nice car so you can learn the controls. Then, you are given a pretty junky car and you race pretty junky other cars. Then, as you win races and make money, you are able to upgrade you car and buy newer ones, making your car faster, and the game harder.

Controls: The simple keyboard that I used worked perfectly well for me in this game. The arrows are direction, spacebar is boost, and the A and Z key are you shifting buttons. And there are other buttons that allow you to change views and such, none of which I ever used. The controls are very simple and very easy to learn.

Game play: 4 out of 5 The racing is fast, intense, and exciting. Though it can get repetitive after 100 races, there are new maps and cars which can spark your interest again. Different difficulties and different race modes help the keep your interest up in this game.

Difficulty: At 1st, this game seems extremely easy. It isn't that hard to beat every race on the 1st time, and you can easily crank up the difficulty and still win. After about 50 races, it get increasingly hard, and there are marathons that have you taking 7 laps around a track, meaning that if you loose, you will get extremely frustrating. The difficulty always follows the same pattern: it's first easy, then it gets hard, you buy your upgrades, it gets easy again, and then hard. Repeat 10 times.

Graphics and Audio: Even with my not-so-impressive video card, with all of the settings on high, this game looks impressive. The thing that bugged me the most about the graphics is how reflective everything is. The car reflects like it's just been waxed and the street always seems to reflect everything. Other than that, the graphics are beautiful. The audio is topnotch too, with the some cars having the deep, rumbling sound, and others having the high, whiney sounds. It really makes you feel like you're sitting right at that race track. The soundtrack songs are also very nice, and seem to fit the game pretty nicely, even if they do get awful repetitive after a while.

Christian Rating: 4 out of 5

Violence: 5 out of 5 Unless you call crashing into other cars violence, this game has almost none. No blood, though something that I found odd is that you get rewarded for almost hitting other cars. So you get points taken away if you do hit a car, yet if you miss one, but it still looks cool; it's ok?

Adult content: 4 out of 5 The biggest problem one would have with this game would be that there are girls starting you off in almost every race that are wearing normally a top that has cleavage. Though it never is horribly revealing, you do see them all of the time.

Language: While they never swear in the actual game, the soundtrack has several swears, most of which are obviously beeped out. You can hear obvious beginning and ends of D, SH, and F words, in the songs.

While this game may be an illegal street racing game, it sure satisfies my hunger of street racing, and doesn't make me want to be drag racing with someone else at every stoplight. Though, for those who really want to drag race illegally, may want to stay away from this game, because it makes it look awful fun. I would definitely recommend the renting, or if you are a longtime fan of the Need for Speed series, buying this game for the PS2, Xbox, Game cube, or PC. The PS2 and PC ship with online play, otherwise all of the versions are basically similar.

Year of Release—2003

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