Not the old "Most Wanted"

Most Wanted - the name recalls (probably not coincidentally) the "golden era" of the NFS series. Since the first Underground there, I noticed the ups and downs of NFS, the excellent "original" - Most Wanted on a still solid NFS Carbon to Pro Street and the recent Hot Pursuit. After shorter Think I then zugeelegt me the new "Most Wanted" a few weeks ago, hoping that the name was not the only thing the two "generations" combines.

Relatively quickly became clear to me that the new Most Wanted has little to do with the old. For some, this may be one reason alone, as soon as possible to put away the title. However, in order to evaluate the game really fair, it is not enough to focus on this "disappointment".

---- Graphics ----

I really do not know what some to complain about here - the graphics are very good, even for me who I am since Battlefield 3 relative graphics spoiled (at high settings).

---- ---- Sound

If you a decent sound system, ideally including a subwoofer, his own calls - WOW. The engine sounds are reproduced very faithfully incredible and depending on the vehicle. If you look in a Lamborghini or similar sets and boxes turning up, then hums's. Neat. The acoustic changes as soon as you go under a bridge or in a tunnel - all very nice to listen to everything.

---- ---- Game

Now the most important - the game fun. Because there are in my opinion some very rough quirks. The developer Criterion has taken here a few choices that I absolutely can not understand:

- The cars you have to earn not by race, they just stand around in the area. If you have time and feel like you can just drive around for a few minutes in the free world and has a security with two new cars found. This ensures that any motivation ("one race, then I can finally buy a new truck") is lost completely.

- Tuning is no longer possible. What I've found a great pity in Hot Pursuit, has sadly continued in Most Wanted: the car can no longer be tuned, this option was just completely deleted. Very sad and absolutely unforgivable for me, especially as it is not even can choose the color of the car - these changes in fact purely random after each repair.

- The damage model / crashworthiness. Clear, against a little more realism is nothing wrong - but it simply reduces the gameplay considerably if the truck at each Andotzen a total loss suffered by one during a race several seconds back casts.

- The police AI. Here there are two possibilities: either you escaped the cops immediately and there will be no prosecution, or go up very quickly as soon the wanted level, that after 2-3 minutes has no chance to escape. In addition, the "break" of roadblocks next to impossible and the police cars get really always on, even when you glued at 300 km / h on the left lane, it seems not a problem for the police to be, again with lots of pace on a vorbeizurauschen and while still neat to ram. If one was caught once - no problem! Because there is no penalty, no penalty, there is no memory status lost - nothing. Excellent!

Early NFS was once a guarantee of "multi-layered" game, there was much to discover, much to screw, try to unlock, adjust - all this has tied a night long before the screen. Today it is not much left of what is incomprehensible, in my view.

In summary:

*** Pro ***
- Good graphics
- Good sound
- The race itself mostly fun!
- Nice open world game
- Online mode offers a little variety

*** Contra ***
- Motivation virtually absent
- No Tuning
- Annoying crashworthiness
- Extremely hard police-KI
- Still no punishment in cases of arrest
- Partly disturbing visual effects (reflections, etc.)

Conclusion:
A friendly environment per se game with pretty fun race, but quickly loses its fascination with the prune of essential elements for NFS as the tuning or unlock new cars. Nice for in between, unusable for longer lasting fun. I hope that this downward trend is not going forward and we now play back the good old Underground. 2