Between nitrous boosts and drafting, gaining the lead isn't very difficult, and the game doesn't seem to employ any heavy rubber-band AI routines to retake the lead from you, so you can usually stay in front without any trouble at all. As a result, most of the races simply boil down to getting in front of the opposition and then doing what you can to not make a mistake. Though there are three different difficulty settings for the career mode, none of them put up a particularly good fight. Tricking out your car's look will let you put it on the cover of a magazine or DVD. These races are essentially circuit races with racetrack scenery instead of cityscape scenery.
They mostly involve some knucklehead breaking the lock on a race track and then swinging open a gate so your street-racing posse can race on a "real" track, though you'll also bust into airports and such, too. The big new race type is the "underground racing league." These races are the sort of mysterious events where you'll see most of the game's cutscenes. Make it, and you'll get to put your car on the cover of one of the game's magazines or DVDs for extra cash. You'll also encounter a few races against the clock, in which you'll have to get from one point in the city to another before a photographer leaves the area. Outrun races take place in various parts of the city-you roll up behind another racer, tap a button, and then try to pass and outrun him or her. New in this year's game are the street X races, which are essentially regular races that take place on drift tracks. Like in last year's game, there are a handful of different race types: Circuit races are long lap-based events, sprints take you from point A to point B on a set course, drag racing lets you live your life a quarter mile at a time, and drift races rank you based on how squirrelly you can get on the track. The cars are fast, and things like turning, powersliding, and proper corning technique are easy to pick-up. But once you've done so, the racing is fun and the cars handle well.
You'll start out in some pretty slow cars, so the racing isn't very exciting until you earn enough for a full set of upgraded performance parts. There's a menu in the garage that lets you jump to a handful of different events, but most races don't show up here, and none of the shops do, either, making it completely useless. The game also rarely takes advantage of the open city for racing purposes, staging a majority of its events on preset tracks, rather than attempting to go for a Midnight Club-like "get there however you can" feel. In fact, let's even make it so that different sections of the city are locked away until you progress to a certain point in the career mode." In practice, driving around the city is a real drag that keeps you out of the action longer than you'd like. Someone probably sat down and said, "Well, everyone likes Grand Theft Auto, and it has an open city, so our game has to have an open city as well. On paper, this whole open-city thing sounds like an interesting idea.
The game gives you an onscreen map, but shops don't show up until you've found them, and some races don't actually appear on the map, either. You'll also have to drive to different parts shops to customize your ride-in fact, you'll have to find most of the game's shops by cruising around the city, looking for the right type of colored lights.
You're given free rein to drive around wherever you want, and you'll have to drive to races to drive in them. The biggest change made by this year's game is that the action now takes place in one large city. Dopey story short, you're sent off to a new town after getting ambushed by a rival racing crew, and you'll have to start from scratch with one car and a handful of races to get you going.
The effect is similar to what the Max Payne series does with its noninteractive sequences, though that game pulls it off much better than Need for Speed Underground 2 does. Need for Speed Underground 2 tries to inject a story into your career mode using static-image cutscenes that pop up before some races. Now Playing: Need for Speed Underground 2 Video Review
By clicking 'enter', you agree to GameSpot's