If I can say anything good about Need for Speed Undercover is that it has the feel and sound of a typical Need for Speed game.  When racing you can go fast and you truly experiance a sense of speed when you are traveling in excess of 150 mph.  The sound of the engines and the peeling out of the cars is awesome I really felt like I was in a Camaro or Shelby Cobra.

 The trouble with this game starts when you are given an open world to drive around in much like the last few Need for Speed games, but where it falls flat is at no time can I drive around and find races or secret areas. Instead you have to bring up your GPS and then automatically go into any race available to you or just drive around until the closest race will pop up on your GPS system.   Then you just press down, this proves a problem several times over when I would get done with a race I would sometimes automatically press down to hop into the next race but instead the closest thing to me was a car shop.

 Never did I feel the need to go out and buy a faster car I used only three cars the entire game, and that was only because I wanted to buy those cars-not because I needed them.

There is a character leveling system that never made much sense or an actual difference in how my character handled cars. While I am talking about the character you play as-I wish they would finally put a face to this character because this really took away from the cutscenes in the game.  I understand why your face is blurred out if you get busted because it is suppose to be like you are watching this on television, but I would atleast like a voice to this nameless/faceless person.

 The city never felt alive unlike in previous versions of need for speed.  You would see places and billboards that you could connect with like a Burger King or a BestBuy ad but it never added to jumbled feel of a real city.  Even with the cops in the game never did I feel like it was a challenge-only a few simple tricks to lose the cops or a helicopter.  In previous versions there was an actual sense of fear when the SUV’s started coming after you because a well place head-on-hit from one of them could stop you.

 Apart from the cars, the graphics in the game were mundane to say the least. The shadows never moved in real-time, this also brings me to another problem I had is that this city is on some other earth that has two suns because it would be 8:30 at night and the sun was still out. Several times I would be in a tunnel or dark alley way and my hood would be shining like the sun was hitting it. 

 Finally, the story is a joke.  Not only do you never feel like your character is actually in the scene, but the majority of the scenes are of two backdrops, Maggie Q telling you what to do from a hotel room instead of her office where she should be, and in some garage talking to a bunch of extras from the newest fast and the furious movie. The only good part of the story my boy David Rees Snell who some might notice as Ronnie Gardocki from The Shield was in this game.

 So in conclusion, if you want a good arcade style racing game go out and buy Need for Speed Most Wanted or Burnout Paradise.  You can actually can go out and buy both of those games for less price than this game and get a much better experience out of them than I did with this one. I would rate this game a “C-” mostly because there are a few things that they do get right but not enough to go out and buy this game.

 Buy/Rent/Skip: Skip