N-Gage Review – Need For Speed Undercover

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by Clinton Jeff | on March 30th, 2009 | 7 comments

The Need For Speed Franchise finally comes to N-Gage. I’m a huge fan of the console versions of the series (which havent really been anything great lately), and I was really interested in seeing what developers Electronic Arts bought to the N-Gage Platform.

Need for Speed Undercover on N-Gage

Is the N-Gage version any better or worse than the console version ? Read on for the review.

Gameplay and Game Modes :

The Need For Speed series have always been about Fast Cars, driving through Fast tracks, earning cash along the way. It’s pretty much the same in the N-Gage Version too. NFS ‘Undercover’ is the latest in the Franchise where you play an (duuh) Undercover Cop, trying to make it in the Underground Illegal Racing Scence, and taking down people along the way.

Of course, you might not know this from the N-Gage version since there’s no ‘actual’ storyline in this one. You go through the game, and occasionally your partner ‘Maggie Q‘ feeds you bit on info on the race, like what to do to win, etc.

In NFS Undercover you cant just plough through the other cars as you try and win each race. If you try, your car will most probably flip over or stop cold, reducing your speed a lot and letting your rivals pass you by. Yup, in this game you have to manuveur around the in-game traffic which adds to the ‘excitment’ of playing the game, but loyalists of the Asphalt Series on N-Gage will find themselves being very easily frustrated because of this same reason.

Just like the console version, there’s a bullet-time like slow down ‘feature’ that you can use every so often. It works pretty much the same as the console version but to be honest, I dont think you’ll ever use this ‘feature’ while playing the game. I certainly didnt.

There’s also a new “Drift Mode” which lets you drift around corners. When you drift, a bar pops up and you have to use the left and right direction buttons to try and keep at the center of the bar. Once you complete a ‘Drift’ you get a small Nitro burst to help push you forward. Again, another ‘feature’ that I found mostly useless because if 4 out of 5 times you’ll end up Drifting right into pedestrian traffic, crashing your car in the process. I actually found that using the Drift Mode slowed me down.

You can use these two ‘features’ depending on what the icon on the right side of the screen shows. If you’re in a corner it’ll show you the Drift Icon and you can drift away if you choose. Otherwise you’ll have the bullet-time ‘speedbreaker’ icon.

A ‘feature’ I did like though, was that you can slipstream behind other cars as you try to race pass them. It’s pretty fun, works well and can really help you overtake your rivals.

Coming to Game Modes, there’s basically two game modes in the game. Quick Race and Career Mode. In Career Mode you have a lot more modes such as Sprint, Circuit, Lap KO,Cop Take-out, Bounty, Speed Camera, Highway Battle and Boss Battles. The Names speak for themselves.

The A.I in the game is pretty capable, so it wont be walk in the park trying to win each event. That being said, it’s the typical NFS rubberband style A.I though, which means you’re never too far from winning or too far from losing to a rival.

When it comes to Cars, there are 8 Cars in the game, none of which can be customised in looks in any way other than attaching a ‘bodykit’ in the garage. The Garage is where you can view and customise the parts of your various cars. You usually have 4 levels of upgrades in each department for a car, and you can use the cash you win from racing to purchase said parts, or newer cars. Contrary to the console version, you do not win these cars free when you beat a boss, you still have to purchase them here.

The game ‘levels’ take you through parts of the City that get unlocked as you complete each task in one.

I’m happy to say, loading speed isnt a problem at all. In a couple seconds you can have a race going on. You’ll barely have to look at the loading screen(which is probably good cause it’s so boring to look at anyway).

Orientation :

The game can be played in both portrait and landscape modes, according to which, the controls can be flipped to be on the other side of the phone.

Because it’s a racing game it felt more comfortable to play in landscape mode. But since some phones, like the N82 do not officially support Landscape mode in some N-gage games, I was forced to play it in portrait mode, but found it pretty okay.

Controls :

The controls of the game are almost the same in in all modes, with the most features accessible through the d-pad.

Your cars auto-accelerate by themselves and you can use the up direction key to use your nitro boost (if you’ve bought it for your car yet). The Down direction key is for brakes, left and right work for steering. Gaming button A and B are used to enabling the bullet-time “SpeedBreaker” mode and Drift Mode.

Graphics :

The Graphics in NFS Undercover appear to be better than the Asphalt Series on N-Gage, but that’s not saying much to be honest. The cars all look way too blocky and there’s not a lot of detail going on between the various models.

You can still make out your rival cars and backgrounds properly. It just looks a lot more bland than it’s rivals on the N-Gage platform. I had to turn up the brightness on my device to see what was goin on properly at times.

Framerate though, works a lot better than the Asphalt Series.

Music and Sounds :

Ick. The sounds in this game. I dont know why they even bothered putting them in at all. The music and sounds in game are horrible and kinda makes you feel like you’re playing an old Nintendo game from the 90s.

The game only lets you control overall volume, so if you wanted to turn off the music and listen to the cars and sound effects only, you’d be out of luck. Not that the cars actually sound decent, they all pretty much sounded like a portable beard trimmer I bought a couple years ago.

Multiplayer and N-Gage Arena :

Unfortch, the only N-gage Arena feature of NFS Undercover is a rankings board. This means no head to head racing online, no online multiplayer, no shadow racing. Only high score posting. There’s not even Bluetooth Multiplayer like Asphalt 4 boasts on N-Gage.

This is a real shame, considering how popular shadow racing was in some racing games in the first generation of N-gage. Missed Opportunity to be honest.

Conclusion :

Is the Game Worth buying ?

To be honest ? No. This is just another lazy port from EA Mobile with horrible sound, mediocre graphics, no multiplayer and dull gameplay. At the end of the day, it gets dark and NFS Undercover just isnt ‘fun’ to play. While it’s nice to see EA bring titles to the platform, N-Gage deserves better than this.

If you’re a loyal fan of the series, by all means go ahead and check out the game. Dont say we didnt tell you so.

Otherwise you’d be much better off and have a lot more fun playing Asphalt 4 on N-Gage instead. That game has more cars, bikes, more fun gameplay and is a lot more cheaper.

We’re going to give this one 2 out of 5 stars overall, just because of the decent framerate and plenitude of game modes.

Rating:

You can find out more about the game over on its Official Game page or if you need tips or help with the game, head on over to the Official NFS Undercover N-gage forum.

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Author Description

Clinton Jeff

Clinton is currently based in New Delhi, India and is executive editor for UnleashThePhones. He is responsible for all editorial decisions, and covers all forms of Mobile and mobile-related accessories. Cj is addicted to caffeine, social media, and technology. Always up for a good conversation, you can reach him through the contact form, his website, on Google Plus or on Facebook or Twitter: Follow @clintonjeff