First Thirty: Need for Speed Undercover

By Joe Haygood | November 12, 2008

Who knew that the UPS man delivers on Veterans Day here in the US.  But the delivery guy’s misfortune is your gain, as I have played through the first thirty minutes of Need for Speed Undercover, and I have a fair amount of good with a few grains of bad mixed in.

The game starts you off in a hurry jumping you right into a car chase where you have to escape from the cops.  Speed is portrayed very nicely, and there is a lot of juking and jiving in between traffic on the freeway.  From here, we get to see some of the well produced video cutscenes that really give the game a high polish feel.  Races are pretty easy to jump into, with you either driving to them, or just selecting them from the map or a pop up list.  The city is enormous, with the map taking quite some time to scroll over.  I only have one section unlocked, but this is a game that could take some time from looking at that map.

I ran into my first mini-boss, and it was not too tough.  You take on these races to boost street cred and get in with the gangs.  I have yet to get into a cop chase after the very first intro level, but I think the game really sets you on an extended tutorial in the beginning.

Lastly, I did notice some frame stutters here and there.  Most of the time it was hardly noticable, but at the end of my thirty minutes, I did have a slight headache, giving me the feeling that there were more frames dropped than I thought.  Could just be me, as I am normally use to playing racing games on a smaller PC screen than my TV.  But look for a full review in the coming days.