Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) is overrated

Yup. You heard me.

Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) is the most overrated game in the series.

However, overrated doesn’t mean bad. Far from it.

The car list, the amazing police chases, the great customization, the fantastic, edgy Hot Topic wearing and pierced earing, teenager focused, soundtrack. The overall tone of the game is something that NFS and EA hasn’t touched on since it came out, and that’s sad. However, that doesn’t make this the best game in the series. Far from it.

1.) The “Story”
Let me get something straight. First off, just because a racing game has a storyline, doesn’t mean it’s good. I feel as if a story is used to mask an otherwise boring, repetitive campaign. There are several examples of games that do this technique of throwing in a shallow, boring story, with shallow, overdramatic characters that treat racing like a religion and not a sport, and shallow plot twists that make me say “Oh. Ok…” and move on to the next boring repetitive mission. R: Racing Evolution, Need for Speed Carbon, Undercover, The Run, Rivals, 2015, TOCA Race Driver and several others, I feel, follow this trend and this kills the game for me.

2.) Repetition, and an underwhelming career mode.
“But Dustin (yes that’s my name), racing games in nature are supposed to be repetitive. Just because this game’s a little repetitive, doesn’t mean it’s bad.”
Yes and no. There are several racing games that try to make new gameplay choices to help spice things up. Driver: San Francisco had the amazing and sadly forgotten “SHIFT” mechanic which lets you jump from car to car without having you get out of yours. It was a mechanic that was handled in an amazing way, that I wish more studios could take and put to good use. That, and the combination of open-world collectables, the amazing racing, the PERFECT (yes, PERFECT.) handling model, an interesting story with actually decent characters and an actually decent story where you play as a cop in a coma (with the ability to control other people’s bodies in his dream, hence the “SHIFT” mechanic’s integration into the story), the solid car list, and the amazing cop chases where you can be both cop and racer, is proof that not all racing games have to be as repetitive as Most Wanted. That and D:SF is a phenomenal, nearly perfect game.

Another great example of a racing game that wasn’t repetitive was Need for Speed: Pro Street. The most underrated game in the series. In that game, you had 4 different types of racing. Standard lapped racing, drifting, drag racing and point to point, breakneck, Speed races. You would constantly go between these 4 different types, and this was one of the ways they shattered the repetition you normally get in these games. That, and finally owning a drag car that can pull a 6 second quarter mile is one of the most satisfying feelings I’ve ever felt in a video game. Not just in a racing game. Sure, I’ll admit the handling model is the equivalent of NFS:MW (2005) but with even more understeer, and the game did get a bit easier near the end, but that doesn’t mean this game was at all bad, nor too repetitive, and that’s the point.

3.) The “rubber-banding”
Imagine this. You’re in first place for nearly the entire race. You start in first place, and you reach the final stretch at 200 MPH+ in your riced-out SLR McLaren, and then suddenly, even though you’re draining all your boost into this final stretch, suddenly, out comes that damn Punto that overtakes you at speeds that could shatter windows, and you lose. You must start all over with this stupid, damn, annoying, 5-minute race. Sucks the fun right out of you, right? Imagine having this happen throughout the entire campaign, especially with that Blacklist member with the EVO VIIII. I hate that guy. This happens in not only this game, but so many others in an attempt to keep the race “interesting”. All it does is fuel my frustration, and I can’t be the only one who thinks this, right? Right?

4.) The visuals.
Now, keep in mind that I’m playing the PS2 version. Why does Underground 2 look better in certain circumstances? Hell, sometimes the first Underground looked better. I get that the Xbox 360 version is the best when it comes to visuals, and now the PC version is dirt cheap, but despite this, there were some better-looking games at the time. Gran Turismo 4 could output 1080p high definition (For a PS2 game, that’s amazing), Halo 3 looked amazing, Motor storm even had actual damage modeling, and that came out nearly a year after this came out and PGR3 had just the perfect mix of colors and damage modeling, just to name a few. The point is that the PS2 version looked like garbage, and sometimes ran like garbage. The frame rate would drop so low at points, to the point that I would get migraines (thanks EA…), and the Xbox 360 never left a strong impression.

5.) The lack of modes.
Remember the amount of modes you could do in NFS Underground 2? There was lapped and sprint races, ACTUALLY GOOD DRAG RACING, drifting, Street X and the URL too. There were so many modes to tune your cars to and it helped make this racing game so much more fun and less repetitive as a result. In Most Wanted, there really were only 4 different modes to choose from. The standard lapped and sprint racing, the pursuits, the pretty fun tollbooth races and the drag racing. First off, I hate the drag racing in this game. Dodging traffic was downright impossible at times, the rubber-banding mentioned earlier seemed even worse here at times, and you didn’t even get your own locations to drag race, like in Underground 2. The drag racing just felt rushed. The racing, personally, got way to repetitive at times, and the rubber-banding didn’t help either, and the two actually good modes in this game were the pursuits, which are amazing (don’t get me wrong, they were AMAZING), and the tollbooths. Sometimes, the two could combine for some seriously amazing racing. Other than that though, we needed the drifting back, and the Street X and maybe the URL too for good measure.

When you're in first, but a taxi magically appears out of thin air and turns your Viper into a sardine can with you in it.

Now comes the biggest reason why this game is overrated. Why? Because if it weren’t for this, I wouldn’t even have made this post.

6.) The rabid fans

     Everyone treats this like the second coming of Christ, when really, it isn’t. It’s not a bad game. Not at all. But is it the best game in the NFS series, spanning 20 years, or would you go as far as to say it’s the best racing game of all time? 
Personally, no. There are so many flaws with this game that it didn’t even go on my Top 5 Need for Speed games post that I made so long ago. 
Sure, it’s mostly opinionated, but at the same time, there are so many flaws. The visuals, the repetitiveness, the cringe inducing cutscenes, the one gameplay gimmick where you can lose your car if you got busted is useless when you can just turn off your console, which is what I did. Despite the fact that there was even a way you could get past this, which was by making it so that when you were close to getting busted, the game would make it so that if you turn off the game, you lose your car. Hell, Midnight Club L.A did that and it worked so much better than this (By the way, MCLA is another amazing game). There were so many things that personally ticked me off with this title that I couldn’t even finish the damn thing when I had it.  It just bored me to death.

When you beat a blacklist member and realize that you now have to do the same races over and over 8 times in a row.

However, that doesn’t mean you can’t like it if I don’t.

If this was the game that got you into the series, then that’s understandable. If it was the game that made you get into the JDM culture and somehow inspired you to get involved into the massive car culture, then please explain why. If this game inspired you to become a game designer, or a game developer in any way, please explain. If you hate my guts right now, and want to kill me, then explain how in as much detail as you want. I may have sounded harsh, but I swear I won’t bite.
I promise.

I just personally felt that this game left a hole where my dream game was supposed to go. Hell, I played more of the 2012 reboot than the 2005 original.

sigh

     At least we have Payback, which is like the team at Ghost Games took my complaints from MW and managed to make a whole game around it, but that’s for another time.

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Comments

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Interesting read. Agree with the sentiment, some points can be raised.

  1. Story in racing games is more to set the ambiance than anything most of the time, unless a proper storyline is crafted (cf. DSF). In these cases, you shouldnt need to be carried by said story.

MW’s story is basically a quest to recover da’ car and by the antics of Rockport’s streetracers you gotta beat them all to kick Razor’s ass.

  1. Repetition in MW lies in the fact that you have to beat 15 dudes and to do so this is the exact same pattern :
  2. win some races
  3. do some random crap
  4. carry the police around for fake fame points aka bounty
  5. engage said dude in a race series and deus vult his ass

Had we had some linker events with special races with the Blacklist and cops and specific requirements per BL dude, repetition might have been toned down.

(Also DSF shift existed so we didnt have to steal cars so it could lower the PEGI / ESRB rating while increasing user convenience)

  1. Rubber banding exists in plenty of games (including DSF in certain missions and most NFSes) so while a legit issue I don’t see the point in raising it on this subject.

  2. Well most people who played it on PS2 were young so at the time they were kinda neat, and now anyway everything on PS2 looks bad lol.

And the PC version quite holds on especially with mods (gotta say that the heavy motion blur and yellow hued visual treatment can sting eyes at times lol).

  1. Purely subjective for me but I dont give a flying phok to drift events, this should be something done for funsies, not something I am forced to do.

Otherwise, I guess that the shift from a heavy urban zone to something more rural (well mainly Camden Point and perhaps Rosewood) has removed the presence of big parkings in industrial zones for Street X - also the handling in MW05 is more suited to high speed driving than technical low speed cornering. And drift… eeeh style was probably dropped in the context of being the most wanted street racer. (Also URL is basically circuit on closed tracks so it’s not a mode for me)

Never liked drag since its lane racing in these games so won’t comment. I belive toll booth was a nice substitution to drift in the sense that in the context of the game, street racers ought to be fast. And on the point of pursuits, well once you experienced intense pvp in HP10 anything AI-cop thing looks bland :D

  1. Deus vult infidels
    Also I feel bamboozled since I played NFS because of playable police (in HS and HP2)
11/05/2017 - 00:19 |
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I hear you m8. Glad to hear someone comment on this.

11/05/2017 - 04:04 |
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Phil Drift

IMO Underground 2 is the most overrated, however I agree with you in almost every reason.

11/05/2017 - 08:50 |
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Underground 2: the game which rewarded you for ricing your car but still somehow has a huge fanbase

11/05/2017 - 11:24 |
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Anonymous

No its dead

11/05/2017 - 13:12 |
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Anonymous

Carbon is best lol xD

11/05/2017 - 13:12 |
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Dustin Hunsberger

Be sure you follow me for more!

11/05/2017 - 13:44 |
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Mateusz 2

Tbh I find Pro Street to be as equally or more repetitive than NFS MW 2005, but thats just my opinion

11/05/2017 - 19:59 |
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Yeah. I just personally loved the idea of having to have one car per mode. It helped keep things interesting.

11/05/2017 - 20:00 |
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My Name is Joel

Very good post, and some valid points. I do however have a few notes

  1. I always enjoy a racing game with an in depth and immersive story (Driver San Francisco & The Crew). While Most Wanted had a simple story, I would argue that it was action packed between the car chases and trying to get your revenge on Razor.
  2. Like you said, racing games are always going to be a little repetitive and there is nothing wrong with a game trying to shake up a usually bland formula (Driver San Francisco, damn that was good game). However, the appeal to many enthusiasts is the ability to get behind the wheel of cars that we will never be able to drive in a million lifetimes and a game like MW allows you to customize those cars into almost whatever you want.
  3. Rubber banding has always been a staple of NFS games. Your argument is that Most Wanted is the most over-rated game in the series, so it is unfair to call out this one game when most games in this series have this function.
  4. Graphics have never been a huge deal for me. While I will agree that Most Wanted does leave something to be desired, I feel as though it has never hindered my gameplay. Personally, I enjoy the retro look sometimes. (I have played on Xbox 360 and played on PS2 many years ago, so my memory is a little fuzzy on the graphic quality on PS2)
  5. I have no argument here, I don’t know why you hate the drag races so much, but there is no excuse for the lack of game modes when Underground 2 had a wide variety of race types.
  6. This is where I have some additional thoughts on this. I would argue that most of the reason that MW is over-rated is simply because of pedestal fans put the Need for Speed series on in general. Most Wanted is so over-rated because a majority of fans agree that this is either the best game in the series or at least top 3. Because of how big the series is, fans need to find that one game to rally around and agree that this is the panicle of all games or darn close. Most Wanted being over-rated is a symptom of the larger NFS fan-BOI disease.

Overall really enjoyed your post and it is defiantly a fish perspective on the game, just one question, how could you possibly play the 2012 reboot more than the original, that game was absolutely awful.

11/06/2017 - 16:09 |
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Personally, I liked 2012 a bit more because there was a bit more of a “Collectathon” feel to the game. You had to look around for new cars you wanted, and that helped give the game lots of depth. I loved the handling model because it felt like a more difficult version of Burnout Paradise’s and I loved that. Its not flawless, but there were certain things that i truily loved about 2012. That, and the car chases got really fun too. Especially when you slowed down for a jump, and the cops behind you hit that ramp. Seeing them go flying into oblivion left me in tears from laughing.
But yea, I still respect your opinion on 2012 and 05.

11/06/2017 - 16:21 |
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Anonymous

You now Said EVERY SINGLE DAMN FLAW

Yet i see a trigerred dude in the comments, literally saying that you need to remove every sin, i totally agree, it it OVER OVERRATED

07/05/2019 - 14:24 |
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Anonymous

In reply to by Anonymous (not verified)

Agree with you*

07/05/2019 - 14:24 |
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