Cops hot on your tail. Spike strips deployed. Roadblocks erected. Traffic whizzing by. Nitro boost. All these would sound familiar to anyone that’s played a variant of the Need for Speed racing franchise before. The studio behind Need for Speed: Most Wanted for mobile devices – Firemonkeys – has built the game by keeping the core essence of its console and PC predecessors, but fine-tuned things so that it suits the mobile market.
Name: Need for Speed: Most Wanted | Developer: EA | Category: Racing | Players: 1+ | Version: 1.0.28 | Size: 350+ MB | Price: $6.99 (North America) / $6.99 (International) |
In Need for Speed: Most Wanted, your ultimate aim is to be the ‘most wanted’ racer. There are 10 other racers ahead of you in the pecking order, so you take them on one-on-one and make your progress to the top. In between taking on these heavyweights, you have to complete a number of different events which range from standard six player races to time attack modes. There is also speed run (maintain a certain average speed), hot ride (test drive top cars) and checkpoint mode.
The events are classified into different classes of vehicles, such as SUVs, sports, muscle and exotic. Speaking of the selection of cars available, I am pretty impressed. Each of them handles differently and gives a distinct experience. You’ll be able to unlock cars by winning certain events and also earning skill points.
The races are not that long (below two minutes), meaning that you could pop in and play a race or two and then resume later. It is worth noting however that the game is not open world like its console and PC counterparts. You’re just presented with events to compete in, and in that respect the progress is fairly linear. There are three reward tiers – gold, silver and bronze, and you can replay these races at any time later on in the game with better cars to improve.
Speaking of the actual gameplay experience, the game gives you a good sense of speed that is complemented by the detailed environments in the game. Of course, what sets this game apart from other arcade racers on Android is the presence of police patrol cars. They just try to ram into you. It’s always nice to see a police car pulling right by the side of you, and just before it hits your car, you use up the nitro boost to streak ahead.
However, I found the gameplay to be lacking a certain amount of depth. There should have been a greater variety of events (drifts and knockdowns come to mind). Also, you’re not able to upgrade your car. You can buy one-time use performance mods, but I would have preferred a proper upgrade system. The reason for a lack of depth though may be that the developers wanted to keep things simple for casual gamers.
Without a doubt what makes this game a real standout is its graphics. The visuals are just about the best we’ve seen from a mobile game. The best element is the real-time reflections – these are apparent on the cars themselves and also on the road through mirages. Unlike the Asphalt series which has a glossy look all around, this game keeps the graphics realistic, and there’s a good blend of city and country environments as well as day and night races. Sound effects from the car engines and the police sirens echoing around are all top notch too.
Controls wise, I was comfortable right from the beginning. By default, the car auto-accelerates. Tap anywhere on the left to brake, and swipe up on the right side to use the nitrous boost. Tilt is used to steer the car. It’s a simple scheme really, and I never bothered or felt the need to try out a different scheme. For those who are looking for touch controls though, you might be a little disappointed because instead of on-screen left/right buttons the game utilizes a steering wheel that you can flick in the direction you wish to turn.
The game contains in-app purchases as well. I know, it’s not ideal, but it doesn’t actually affect the game much. The only time I saw the need for the IAPs was when I actually completed the game and went back to get gold medals in all events. This is because the really good cars cost millions of dollars, so the option is to either grind to get that much money or make an IAP. Otherwise, to merely complete the whole game which took me roughly 5 hours, I’d say IAPs are non-requisite.
However, Need for Speed: Most Wanted seems to be severely unoptimized for Android. I’m not alone here as reading Google Play reviews of Tegra 3 device owners at least (Nexus 7, HTC One X), it is apparent that the game runs on an inherently low framerate. This is actually a sucker punch really, because the game is all about speed, and the low framerate kills the otherwise extremely enjoyable experience.
To illustrate my point, I ran the game side by side on my Acer A510 and 18 month old iPad 2. The difference in performance between the two is astounding. This is not the first game however to show stark differences in framerate between the iPad 2 and Acer A510. The same thing happened with NBA 2K13, Asphalt 7: Heat and Horn among others. Moreover, one second of the in-game time is actually more than that on my Android tablet, proving that there are some serious performance issues (on the iPad 2 one second is one second).
Conclusion
If you happen to have a device that can run the game smoothly, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an insanely fun arcade racer that comes with delectable visuals and great tilt controls. In fact, I’ll go as far as to say it is better than Gameloft’s Asphalt 7: Heat. However, if your device turns out to not be able to run the game smoothly, the experience is painful and forgettable. You may want to do some research first before getting the game since it is premiumly priced for a mobile title at $6.99.
Overall rating: 4.5/5 if it runs smoothly; 2.5/5 if it doesn’t
