WeView Verdict: Need for Speed: Most Wanted

It was probably pretty obvious when Need for Speed: Most Wanted – A Criterion Game was selected for last week’s WeView that most people would compare the game to Burnout Paradise. In many ways it seems like a spiritual successor to the game that many consider Criterion’s greatest achievement but, unfortunately, it doesn’t really stack up against its big brother.

As teflon said, it’s probably the closest we’re going to get to Paradise 2 for some time, but it just isn’t quite there, a view echoed by others such as XisTG and cam_manutd. As three_leg_jake said, “It sure ain’t no Burnout Paradise II… more of a Need for Speed game in a Burnout Paradise world.”

LTG Davey also felt a comparison to Criterion’s other series was necessary, although he didn’t come out and call it a successor. Instead he was left disappointed, describing Most Wanted as “a more annoying version of Burnout Paradise”. He didn’t just feel it feel short by comparison though, complaining that “The frame rate is… pretty questionable at times” and finding “the inclusion of police… frustrating in a lot of events.”

The other trend in this weeks responses was the number of you who had picked the game up on the PlayStation Vita, something that I really wasn’t expecting at all. I knew the portable version of the game was fairly solid, but I didn’t expect it to be quite as common as it turned out to be.

colmshan1990 has been playing it on Sony’s pocket powerhouse and says it’s “the first Need for Speed I’ve truly loved” and simply called it “fantastic” on the Vita. cam_manutd agreed with him, feeling that the Vita version is “more worthy of ones time when the PS3 is crowded with racers” and saying that the Vita port is “The big thing that works for this game”.

However, it’s fair to say that the game wasn’t absolutely adored, even on the Vita. TSBonyman put it simply by saying “If you liked Burnout Paradise you’ll probably like this. I didn’t,” while Starman complained of “too many pointless notifications on the screen, rubber banding that becomes infuriating, no direction or structure to the single player campaign, multiplayer that’s a jumbled mess, no option to tailor the hud [and] having to travel to a race,” which is quite a laundry list of issues.

Kennykazey agreed on the single played, saying that it “didn’t feel structured enough,” but came on the opposite side of things with the multiplayer, which they felt was “some of the most fun I’ve had with a racer”. Youles backed this up by saying that the “multiplayer was better than the single player, since the SP did feel a little lifeless.”

Now we move away from individual opinions, and onto the game’s verdict. Things are a little more mixed this week, with Avoid It picking up a single vote, but Rent It picking up three. Bargain Bin It managed to edge a little further forwards with four votes, but ultimately it was Buy It that came out on top, earning eleven picks from the community. I’d say if you’ve got a Vita and love to race then the game is particularly worth picking up.

Finally, it’s time for the poll. We’ll be taking a look at Diablo III tomorrow as it earned top spot in last week’s poll, while we see Prototype 2 vanish off the bottom once again. Replacing them are two games that are currently free for those of you who have PlayStation Plus: F1 Race Stars and God of War. As with every poll, you’ve got until 11:59pm on Sunday to get your votes in for the next WeView title.

5 Comments

  1. I can’t believe I missed this WeView :(
    I’m in agreement though that it’s worth buying – I managed to finally move out of Paradise City and have settled into Fairhaven comfortably!

  2. Unfortunately there is a game-breaking bug in the Vita implementation of autolog. If you have a large number of friends who play the game, it will eventually spit out an error message telling you that the memory card is full. It isn’t. What seems to be happening is that the game is filling up whatever area of the memory card is assigned by the Vita OS with all the details of each of your friends (this is similar to the problems Bethseda had with tracking everything in Skyrim on PS3). The only workaround at present is to delete some of your NFS-playing friends but this kind of detracts from the whole purpose of autolog. There has been no official confirmation of this problem from EA or Criterion as yet.

  3. Buy it, I’ve got it on the Vita and i’ve put in about 7hrs in the single player game and I’m loving. Not touched the MP yet.

  4. LOVE this on Vita. The games is always hogging the cart slot. Shame I missed this We View as it as a 100% buy it.

  5. We love being spoken about in plural. But now we kinda wish we’d gotten the Vita version.

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