Need For Speed Most Wanted Nintendo Switch
Mina Spartin
Most Wanted focuses on street racing-oriented gameplay involving a selection of events and racing circuits found within the fictional city of Rockport. The game's main story involving players taking on the role of a street racer who must compete against 15 of the city's most elite street racers to become the "most wanted" racer of the group. In the process, they will seek revenge against one of the groups who took their car, and develop a feud with the city's police department. The game brought in many notable improvements and additions over other entries in the series, its major highlight being more in-depth police pursuits. Certain editions of the game were packaged with the ability for online multiplayer gaming.
Upon its release, the game received acclaim from critics and became a commercial success, selling 16 million copies worldwide, becoming the best selling game in the series. Its success led to a Collector's Edition, known as the Black Edition, which provided additional content. A "virtual" edition was available for PlayStation 3 via the PlayStation Store in May 2012, until it was discontinued the following year.
While the concept of players being engaged by police had been a feature of most entries in the series since the first Need for Speed title, the development of Most Wanted saw the gameplay mechanic enhanced and firmly introduced into the series through the employment of a complex system. When players become engaged in a police pursuit, usually from conducting a traffic offence (referred to as "Infractions" in the game) in sight of a police unit (such as speeding), their aim at this point is to escape from the pursuit by either evading or taking out pursuing vehicles. The game's on-screen HUD is modified during a pursuit, including highlighting pursuing police units on the mini-map, displaying the vehicle's heat level, and adding a Pursuit bar at the bottom detailing the number of police units in the pursuit, how many have been evaded, and how many have been taken out. The pursuit system calculates how the police handle the player via the heat level accumulated against the player's current car. Heat accumulates from committing offences and continually evading capture by the police, with higher levels of heat causing the police to be more aggressive, from employing additional tactics and tools (such as roadblocks, spike strips, and police helicopters), to involving stronger, faster police cars such as police SUVs and Federal units. If a player has only one car actively pursuing them, reinforcements may be called in and arrive after a period of time.
In Quick Race mode, players can enter any event they wish and use any car that they want, while opting to either make custom parameters for the event (i.e. the number of laps) or let the game create a random set of parameters. The number of events and cars to choose from depend on the player's progress in the game's Career mode.
In Challenge Series mode, players take part in a successive series of events, in which completing one unlocks the next event. While around half of these are focused on checkpoint races, the other consist of a mixture of pursuit events akin to the Milestone events in Career Mode, with each event tasking the player to complete its goal using a specific vehicle on a specific route/from a starting position, and beginning on a certain level of heat. Vehicles for each event are pre-tuned, and range from various cars available in Career mode to those not accessible such as dump trucks and police cars. Completing specific challenges rewards the player with bonus cars for use in Career and Quick Race mode.
Most Wanted takes place in the fictional city of Rockport, which consists of three major districts: Rosewood, Camden Beach and Downtown Rockport. The city consists of areas featuring grimy industrial complexes, affluent suburbs, mountainous and wooded surroundings, a university campus, and a downtown core, with a mixture of road networks ranging from coastal roads to major highways. The setting is heavily influenced by cities from across the United States' "Rust Belt" and Pacific Northwest, with some resemblances to Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, Seattle, Washington and Portland, Oregon. Much of the game's events and story take place in a fixed time period between sunrise and sunset, compared to the previous title's races that took place at night.
The player, a street racer who arrives at Rockport with a custom painted blue and silver BMW M3 GTR, meets fellow street racer Mia Townsend (played by Josie Maran) whilst driving in the southern bridge towards Camden Beach, and races her until Rockport, where he is greeted by Cross and his female partner and narrowly avoids arrest after Cross is called to an ongoing pursuit. Mia inexplicably leaves before Cross blocks the player.
The player then randomly finds and races against Ronald "Ronnie" McCrea, who is driving a yellow Toyota Supra A80, and after defeating him, attracts the attention of Ronnie's boss Clarence "Razor" Callahan, the Blacklist's lowest-ranked driver. He receives help from Mia in setting up a race, with Toru "Bull" Sato, another henchman of Razor, deciding to race the player instead of Razor. The player wins, despite police (being called by Razor to raise the stakes) interfering with the race.
The player then faces off against Rog (voiced by Andr Sogliuzzo) in a friendly circuit race. Impressed, he decides to be by the player's side, warning him to 'watch his back around these guys'. Razor meets the player at an intersection, congratulating the player for clearing his challenges before challenging him for a chance to usurp him on the Blacklist; he warns the player that all Blacklist races are "pink slip" events, meaning a loss also means the loss of the loser's car.
Challenging Razor in a race a few days later,[8] the player's BMW leaves a huge oil slick at the start line and the M3 breaks down near the end of the race due to engine failure; the player loses the race, forcing him to forfeit his car to Razor. Cross soon arrives with the RPD and arrests the player for street racing after Razor and the other street racers escape, but is forced to release him due to a lack of evidence as the player no longer has a car to drive.[9]
Once free, Mia picks up the player from the police station and reveals to him that Razor had sabotaged his car in order to seize it and use it to climb up in ranks within the Blacklist, and advises him to do the same in order to get revenge. She provides the player with a safehouse and helps him secure a new car, and the player begins working to compete against the Blacklist in a series of street races and challenges involving police pursuits. Although Mia helps the player, she also puts 'side bets on him' and tells him to look the other way in exchange for the help.
In time, the player rises up in the ranks, gaining enough reputation to soon attract Razor's attention once they become the #13 racer on the Blacklist. From thereon, he randomly calls the player throughout the game, later in the game getting enraged and accusing the player of being a cop, or hanging out with a cop due to the increasing police scrutiny in races throughout Rockport. Mia also supplies the player with a rap sheet.
In the endgame, the rivals compete again in another 5-race pink slip, with the player eventually defeating Razor. Mia snatches the M3 keys from Razor, and when Razor attempts to steal them back, she subdues him and throws him to the ground, revealing herself to be an undercover police officer for the RPD, who had been working to bring down the Blacklist from the inside for Cross, by flashing a badge and showing her service weapon at the rest of the Blacklist.
Cross soon arrives with backup to arrest the Blacklist before they can flee. Before Razor and the others can be arrested, Mia tosses the keys to the player, allowing him to run. Cross subsequently demands the entire RPD go after the player, who is now the most wanted street racer in the nation.[10] As the RPD begins a citywide manhunt for the player, Mia contacts him and informs him of an escape route out of the city by jumping a derelict bridge on the city limits, the M3 being fast enough to make the jump. The player successfully evades the cops by jumping the bridge and escaping Rockport. In a post-credits scene, Cross creates a national-level warrant for the player and his BMW M3 GTR, adding him to the National Most Wanted List. This event leads to the sequel, Need For Speed: Carbon.
The cutscenes in the game are live-action videos shot with real actors and set pieces, and CGI effects are added to car exteriors and environments for extra visual flair. The videos are presented in a significantly different style from the Underground series, and this presentation of cut scenes is used again in Carbon and Undercover.
The depiction between all of the versions graphics-wise is not the same, especially on portable versions. The Microsoft Windows version varies by hardware and can look better compared to the console versions. The recommended hardware or above has a similar frame rate to the Xbox 360 version. The game makes heavy use of the HDRR and motion blur effects to give a more realistic feel.
Need for Speed: Most Wanted 'Black Edition, a collector's edition of Most Wanted, was released in celebration of the Need for Speed series' 10th anniversary and in conjunction with the release of Most Wanted. The Black Edition features additional races, bonus cars and other additional content. The Black Edition comes with a special feature DVD that contains interviews and videos about the game. The Black Edition was released for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 2 and Xbox in the United States and Australia;[11] only the PlayStation 2 version of Black Edition was released additionally for Europe.[11][12]
The music featured in the game are mostly licensed music by EA Trax. It is a variety of music genres ranging from rap, hip-hop, electronica, and rock, sung by artists like The Prodigy, Celldweller, Styles of Beyond (who is known for performing the game's signature menu theme song, "Nine Thou" as well as performing another song called "Shapeshifter" with Celldweller), Rock, Lupe Fiasco, Disturbed, Avenged Sevenfold, BT & The Roots (who is known for performing the song "Tao of the Machine" that was originally in Blade II), Static-X, Bullet for My Valentine, and Hush. The rap songs mostly play in the game's main menu, while hip-hop, rock songs, electronica, and techno music mostly play during race sequences. The game features a score composed by Paul Linford that plays during pursuit sequences. Paul Linford, alongside Chris Vrenna, developed two original songs that play during races; "The Mann" and "Most Wanted Mashup". The licensed songs can be played during free roam, races, and are optional during pursuit chases if the player chooses to not play the licensed score performed by Paul Linford, or may not be played at all. Some of the pursuit chase music would eventually be featured in its successor, Need for Speed: Carbon.
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