Need For Speed Most Wanted Single Player Preview

If you’re a fan of racing games, there’s a good chance that you’ve been keeping an eye on Criterion’s latest creation: Need For Speed Most Wanted. Criterion has released a video showing some more gameplay footage  but with a member from the development team speaking in the background and filling in the viewer on some of the tweaks and highlights they’ve been busy implementing.

It’s obvious that there is a heavy emphasis on competition amongst your friends in this game, even when you’re driving around in single player. If you smash through a billboard and go further than any of your friends, your in-game driver’s license shows up on the billboard in their games. Every time you fly through a speed camera on the streets of Fairhaven, you’ll see how fast your friends drove past it. Of course, the leaderboards at the start of every race are making a return from Hot Pursuit, but it seems like Autolog 2.0 wants the player to be competing against their friends as much as possible, even outside of the races.

Another couple of big things to take from the video are that you will be able to modify your cars during the game to improve handling or resistance to damage, and that all of the cars in the game are available from the start. If you want to change cars, simply drive up next to the car you want and you’ll be able to start driving it. This should come as a huge relief for those of you who played Burnout Paradise and hated having to wait until you were informed that the car you wanted was driving around the city, and you then had to locate the vehicle and take it out to own it. Being able to make modifications to your cars may seem like it will make the game easier at first glance, but it may also be an invitation for the folks at Criterion to make tougher AI racers so that you have to utilize the right upgrades in order to stand a chance at winning.

By many people, Need For Speed Most Wanted has been dubbed “Need For Speed: Burnout” due to the combination of the open world racing and exploration with the police chases and epic races of the Need For Speed franchise. While it is certainly easy to see why so many people have spotted the blending of the two franchises, that is by no means a bad thing. Both the Burnout and Need For Speed franchises are loved by millions and have received critical acclaim in the past. Most Wanted hits shelves on October 30th in North America, and November 1st and 2nd in Australia and Europe respectively.

Source: Need For Speed official site

Eric is an editor for Analog Addiction where you can find all the latest gaming news, previews, reviews, and everything else that rhymes with those words. ‘Like’ Analog Addiction on Facebook to receive all of the updates as they’re posted.