Need for Speed Undercover Review

Cops are aggressive, but they're not very good at arresting you.

Although set in a city where civilian drivers go about their business events often take place on closed off roads, or ask you to do laps of a set circuit. We're not against this from a game design point of view, as race events more or less rely on everyone taking a certain route (with the odd short cut thrown in). Cop evasion, outrun and city damage events don't limit your play area, giving you the whole map to drive in, which again is a good design choice. Evading cops can be great fun, with the AI drivers getting incredibly aggressive as they box you in, slam you into walls and try to spin your vehicle. Having said that, my first arrest came more than six hours into the game, so they're not the hardest to evade - the many signposted destructible objects help block paths, allowing you to drive to safety.

Sadly the Outrun events seem woefully designed and far too easy to exploit. You have to stay ahead of an opponent for a set amount of time (say 60 seconds), in a completely open city. Because there's no track, being ahead simply means not letting your opponent pass you on the same stretch of road. So, all you need to do is lose your pursuer and you're laughing. At points we were able to slow to a crawl and just watch the mini-map as our opponent struggled to find us, while the clock ticked away until we'd won the event (usually so convincingly that we were said to have Dominated, which earns you more rep points and bonuses). Conversely, if your opponent takes a sneaky corner and you drive on, you might as well restart straight away, as you're not making up the gap in time.

If there's something EA got right it's the new highway battles. Taking place entirely on massive stretches of highway (motorways for us Brits) you have to get a certain distance ahead of an opponent, weaving in and out of traffic while travelling at insane speed. The game defaults to the bumper cam here, making for some exhilarating driving. It's also the ideal mode to make use of whatever nitrous you've installed and your Speed Breaker (which effectively slows down time so you can move through narrow spaces). Doing so also earns you bonuses for heroic driving (something the game encourages), which the handling model effortlessly allows you to do.

There's still no shaking the feeling that Undercover needed more time in the shop.

Outside of the single-player campaign you've got a number of multiplayer modes for up to eight players. Our favourite is the Cops N' Robbers game type, which is pretty self explanatory, requiring one team to play as the robbers, picking up and dropping off money, while the cops try to prevent them from doing so. You'll also be able to take part in the traditional circuit races and sprint events, with solid online performance throughout. A fairly simple photo mode has been included, which allows you to upload pics to EA's Need for Speed website, and the Xbox 360 version supports fairly run of the mill Achievements - sadly there are no trophies in the PS3 game.

We had extremely high hopes for Need for Speed Undercover, not to be a ground breaking game, but something that was highly polished and a great deal of fun. After EA's recent run of quality, it came as quite a shock that Undercover simply doesn't feel ready. The in-game performance is frankly terrible and one of the main event types is deeply flawed. We can't deny that there's still fun to be had here, especially in the highway battles (and with some of the dialogue), but we simply can't recommend a game that performs so poorly that it's at times unplayable.