After the successful sales of Hot Pursuit, EA allowed Criterion Games to work on the next parts of Need for Speed. The developers encroached not only on the creation of another adrenaline new game, but a remake of the well-known Most Wanted. Later, the core of Criterion Games moved to Ghost Games and began work on Rivals. Today we will talk about the above two toys. The guys at Criterion Games were allowed to keep up the pace after Hot Pursuit and create another game that allowed fans of the series to have a lot of pleasant experiences. This time they were waiting for the restart of Most Wanted - a toy that once became the apogee of Black Box's efforts.

And there are so many differences between the original and the remake that it's not clear why the second prefix Most Wanted should be depicted at all.

Criterion Games' new game "doesn't have a plot", although in the 2005 version this aspect played almost the most important role. The local story does not hold up to a Hollywood production, but it reveals well at least some motivation of the protagonist. Most Wanted 2012 just offers to drive through the streets of the city of Fairhaven, which, by the way, is somewhat similar to Rockport. There is also a "Black List" here, but is it needed, like a horse's fifth horseshoe. Since there is no story in this interpretation of Most Wanted, the developers have limited themselves to short videos that introduce our rivals. That's all...

To compete with the next member of the Black List, you need to earn a certain number of Speed ​​Points in races and competitions with the police. However, even after scoring the required number of points, you can simply bypass the enemy, continuing your way to the title of the most wanted driver. Competitions with rivals from the "Black List" are only necessary to get the same Speed ​​Points and get their cars. After reaching a certain number of points, we can challenge the enemy, but in order to get his car, we then need to catch up and crush the hostile iron monster. This continues until the very end, where we are waiting for a video in which we are told that we have become the top rider in Fairhaven. That's all ... That is, Criterion Games decided not to fool themselves and just created another Hot Pursuit, but this time in an urban setting.

The cool thing about the Most Wanted relaunch is that all the cars are unlocked at once. Although this is not entirely true. To choose a car that interests you, you first need to find it. By the way, this is a good incentive to explore the city. Cars are located in different places, so it is not always easy to find them.

But it is worth driving up to the car at a certain distance and you will hear muffled music, which indicates the location of the car nearby. To change the unit, you just need to press one button and you are the owner of some exotic sports car. Eh, not like in real life...

It is worth noting the EasyDrive system, with which you can access almost all the features of the game at the touch of a button. It has not only laying a route to races or cars, but also pumping. The latter is not very diverse, because only certain parts of the unit can be improved. About change appearance forget, because the maximum that you can do is to accidentally change the color of the car by driving under the roof of special workshops, which, moreover, completely restore the supply of nitro.

The cops don't have any super powers. Remember the original Most Wanted, where they only made barriers, put up spikes and called a helicopter. In the restart, it is worth noting only the appearance armored cars, which appear at high levels of the chase. The main thing is not to stand in one place for a long time, otherwise you will simply be detained. It is worth noting that police bells and whistles are not very effective, because you can restore punctured tires by setting, for example, the appropriate type of wheel bleeding.

Autolog has not gone anywhere - a system that allows you to compete with other players via the Internet. And not just to compete, but to combine all your achievements together, comparing them with your friends. Even special radars in the middle of the city, fixing the maximum speed, reflect the results of all users from your friends list. This was already in Hot Pursuit, but in the relaunch of Most Wanted, the number of such elements has increased markedly.

Multiplayer is somewhat different from a single user game. In it you can change the car, compete with the police and the like. There are only players and a pretty good system for selecting an opponent. In anticipation of the race, users can freak out as they wish. And in order to somehow stand out, everyone has the opportunity to crush opponents, steal other people's cars and the like. For pumping a car into network game you need to complete tasks during the races, so there will be no easy walk. And knocking out bonuses is just a part of the game that completely satisfies fans of arcade racing.

Well, the reworked Most Wanted received a bunch of positive reviews. It’s worth saying right away that it’s not in vain, but the game should have been made completely different. Even at the concept stage, the toy was called Most Wanted 2. If you delve into the files, you can find several suggestions that indicate that they wanted to add a plot to the game, which would probably continue the story of Most Wanted in 2005. This is indicated by the mention of Mia, who, as you remember, is one of the key characters in the original game. There are also hints of various weapons in the game files, like the one in Hot Pursuit - but the developers abandoned this idea too.

Think back to the Most Wanted demo that was shown at E3 in 2012. The video clearly shows that a certain reward is set for the player, as in original game. That is, the developers used the currency, which was then replaced by Speed ​​Points. Also in the demo you can see a completely different chase level system. If this is not enough for you, then after the separation, rings are visible on the map - the so-called places where the player could quickly get rid of the pursuit status. It's also a feature from 2005's Most Wanted that was later removed. Here you can add information that special points were created in the game to break away from the police - shaky structures that help break away from law enforcement officers. But! Developer scissors went to this aspect of the game.

Want even more? They also wanted to add detailed auto customization to the game. This confirms the mention of various shops on the streets of Fairhaven. Despite all this information, you begin to perceive the restart of Most Wanted in a new way, because the game was supposed to be completely different. Probably, if the guys from Criterion Games adhered to the concept, then all the fans of the Need for Speed ​​​​series would have been satisfied at the end.

After the release of the restart of Most Wanted, quite unpredictable changes awaited the developers. But this had almost no effect on the next part of NFS. EA decided to continue on its current path, which led to the announcement of Rivals.

In 2005, after the release of another racing arcade from the NFS series, the developers received a lot of positive feedback from ordinary players. The game turned out to be really successful and appealed to a large number of gamers who played previous games in the NFS series. About 7 years have passed since the release of the original Need for Speed: Most Wanted. The developers, making a remake of 2005, changed a lot of things, improved and radically redesigned some elements of the gameplay, but the general features remained the same.

Graphic arts

One of the main differences from the 2005 game is the amazing graphics. At maximum graphics settings, everything just sparkles. The sun's rays bounce off the wet road surface and slightly blinding the drivers going to the meeting. The quality of car detailing is also on top. This applies not only to players' cars, but also to normal road traffic, which was not the case in NFS: MW 2005. Cutting through the streets of the metropolis, sometimes it seems that you are watching a movie, everything is so realistic. To all this, for even greater realism, only one thing is missing - the view from the cockpit.

City

City in Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 new and open from the beginning, there are no restrictions. Nothing prevents the driver from simply netting into the car and studying it completely, without delving into any details and not thinking why some kind of translucent shield in the middle of the road does not allow him to move on, as it was in NFS: MW 2005. This is not here. At first glance, the city seems big, but after several dozen races, you begin to remember the "old streets". The developers of NFS: MW 2012 put quality, not scale, in the first place when creating a city. The city, although not as big as we would like, is made at a fairly high level with many small destructible objects, jumps and a billboard.

Cars

Number of cars in Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 not so many, about 40 pieces in total, but almost all of them are open from the very beginning. The cars in the game are scattered across the whole map in several copies, but all of them are initially hidden. As soon as the player drives up to the car, he can immediately change into it and continue to explore the city already on it. After opening the car, the corresponding icon appears on the map, after which it becomes available in the Easy Drive menu, with which you can quickly transfer from one car to another.

car tuning

All cars in NFS: MW 2012 do not initially have any upgrades. To get some improvements for the car, which are presented in the form of perks, you need to win prizes in various tests and races. For each prize place, the player receives one perk. If you take first place, then you will immediately receive all the perks that you can earn in this test. Each car has a total of 5 performance perks, each of which is divided into three more - one regular (factory) and two improved options. It is these improved perks that the player receives for prizes in competitions. Improved perks, unlike ordinary ones, can be "pumped", completed some specific task, and get the "pro" mark.

Visual tuning in NFS: MW 2012 is completely absent, except for painting the car. On the one hand, the developers can be understood, the cars in the game look great and completely resemble their real counterparts. Why succumb to tuning and so excellent car? But, on the other hand, there are no excellent things and you can always improve something, make the car individual. The lack of visual tuning is a little disappointing. Perhaps in the future, the developers will introduce it in the form of DLC, but there is little chance of this. It should also be noted that the color of the car painting can be changed, but you cannot choose it, it is chosen randomly from several prepared ones.

EasyDrive

Easy Drive is a new multifunctional quick access menu. With the help of this menu, the player can change his car to some other, previously opened one, change the installed perks, start the next competition in just a few keystrokes, if it has already been opened earlier. This menu also serves to search for new competitions that have not yet been opened, and this happens as follows: you select a competition and the built-in navigator shows you the shortest path to the starting line, after reaching the goal, the competition starts.

Gameplay

At the beginning Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 the player is offered to open his first car and is gradually told about the current situation. As soon as a player opens his first car, he gets access to 5 competitions, for the first two prizes he is awarded with pre-prepared performance perks. In total, the game features several types of competitions: sprint, circular races, chases, passing the track taking into account the average speed and two stages of fights with bosses - a regular sprint and a crash race, the main goal of which is to smash the car of the defeated boss. After destroying the boss car, of which there are only 10 in the game, instead of 15 from NFS: MW 2005, the player gains access to this car in the "Easy Drive" menu and can transfer to it at any time.

There is only one game currency in the game - Speed ​​Points, which the player receives for everything: victory in competitions, broken police cars and various achievements. Speed ​​Points are not consumed and are only needed to gain access to races with bosses. The number of Speed ​​Points for each boss is different, the more difficult the boss, the more points you need to access the competition.

Single player game

It will not be possible to complete a single game without participating in chases all the time in just one car, even despite the fact that almost all cars are open from the very beginning of the game. The thing is that only five types of competitions are available for each car, that is, a maximum of 60,000 Speed ​​Points can be earned on one car, after which it will receive a full set of performance tuning. For each of the three prizes, except for performance tuning, they give 4,000 Speed ​​Points and 500 for all subsequent times if you manage to beat the previously set record. To unlock boss competitions, you need more and more of these Speed ​​Points the closer you get to the top of the list. The second reason why you can not play a single game Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 on just one car, are the limited characteristics of cars. Even on the fastest car available at the beginning of the game, it is almost impossible to overtake some of the bosses.

Chase

Chase in Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 are of three types. You can start a normal chase just by breaking the rules traffic in front of the patrol car - you will be put on the wanted list and the chase will begin. The second type of chase starts automatically during other tests and races. The third type of chase is the time trial. This competition is only available for certain cars. For him, in addition to the usual Speed ​​Points, they also give performance perks. For all three types of chases, crashing police cars, violating traffic rules and damaging property, you are awarded Speed ​​Points, but you will only get them if you can break away from the pursuit, otherwise you will not receive anything.

In NFS: Most Wanted 2005, various destructible objects and cooling points (separation) were scattered all over the map, which helped to break away from pursuit. All this is not here. To break away from the chase, the player must rely only on their driving skills. As soon as the player manages to break away a little, he enters a cooling mode, during which the wanted level decreases. To lower the wanted level more quickly in cooling mode, you can use car services, passing through which the car is repainted and repaired, as well as refueling with nitrogen, the wanted level is reduced by 1. For an even faster breakaway, in order to lower the wanted level immediately by 2, the player you need to find and transfer to another car.

There are 6 wanted levels in the game. At the maximum level, it becomes much more difficult to break away, as super-heavy, armored cars join the pursuit, which cannot be broken or rammed in any of all cars available to the player. Each car, it should be noted, has a certain weight and stiffness level, which can be slightly increased with the help of perks. Depending on these two characteristics, each car can withstand a certain impact force, exceeding which the player is shown a several-second cut-scene in which his car crashes. After a crash or collision, the car receives only visual damage, which does not affect its behavior in any way.

conclusions

Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 very good arcade racing with amazing graphics, beautiful city and many licensed cars. The controls here are more simulation than arcade. There is no plot in the game at all, there is only a little background information that helps new players who have not played NFS: MW 2005 to understand. There are few soundtracks in the game and quickly get bored. It also lacks such modes as drift and drag, but there is a high probability that they will be added as DLC. NFS: MW 2012 is sure to please if you've got a lot of good memories after playing NFS: The Run, the previous game in the NFS series.

Immediately and on the forehead: this is not the same one, and it doesn’t even look close. Well, that is absolutely. So put aside the nostalgia! Criterion Games, who are now running all the games in the Need for Speed ​​series, took from the original only the concept with the most wanted racers to defeat. Other than that, it's more of a remake. with real machines than new part NFS.

New rules

It is not clear, however, why EA relaunched Most Wanted, which generally did not need it, but apparently this is now. On the other hand, for social races (namely, this is how the game positions itself), the Most Wanted concept is best suited. The sprawling, vibrant, and open-ended city of Fairhaven, filled with street racers of varying levels of wanted, is there no reason to compete with your friends?

Not to say that Most Wanted is boring to ride alone. There is something to do - defeat the ten most wanted and take the first place in the police top, find all the cars that are parked in far from the most obvious places, rush past all the photo radars at breakneck speed, break through all the billboards ... Criterion canceled garages (admire the new “Viper” or “Lancer” will have to be right on the street), and thanks to this, there is a great incentive to explore the city, where, by the way, there is something to see. Fairhaven attracts the eye - there is countryside, factories, and fashionable areas, and business centers. The tracks are not as diverse as in or even, but they are open - you can easily fly away from some bridge or accidentally turn the wrong way. Only on the GPS-navigator and orientate yourself.

Well, "Autolog", as always, records all your actions and achievements and promptly slips them to your friends, who will certainly immediately go to beat your records.

For each car there are five competitions of varying difficulty. For winning them, they give out improvements to tires, nitro, chassis, body and transmission. It is difficult to call this a full-fledged tuning - it is unlikely that you will think for a long time about which gearbox to put: long or short, the choice is small. AT single player You can't even paint your own car! Only at pit stops, and even then in a random color, like everything in the same Burnout Paradise.

After any more or less severe accident (cars, by the way, beat quite a bit), as before, the game takes a short pause, allowing your rivals to overtake you. It looked great in Hot Pursuit, but then there's the open city! Somewhere before the finish line, a truck can suddenly drive out from around the corner, and that's it, start again.

Getting rid of the superfluous, Criterion seems to be carried away - there is no plot at all, and with it, at least some logic of what is happening has disappeared. What kind of conditional points do you need to accumulate in order to open a competition with a new "boss"? What are the ten most wanted? Why defeat them? They don't even have names, just car models.

The plot was changed, so to speak, very conceptual commercials that make you doubt the sobriety of the director's thinking. Complete madness often happens on the screen - the city turns red, the camera takes terrible angles, police cars drive along the walls and ceiling or even fold into a huge wheel ... In general, stress is provided for everyone, and for someone, maybe even depression for a few days.

Here we simply have to remind the banal thought to the pain in the cerebellum - drugs are harmful to health!

IS NOT COOL: there are no giant donuts rolling along the road and other traps from the 2005 game, you can’t bring down a piece of wall or scaffolding on the roofs of the cops. It is very strange, but for some reason they decided to forget about this excellent find from the first Most Wanted.

Three cars that dear editors love

Lamborghini Gallardo

In this car, we easily kicked the asses of six most wanted in a row. Which, however, is not surprising - the LP 570-4 Spyder Performante convertible (namely, this version of the supercar is used in the game) develops 100 km / h in 3.9 seconds thanks to a 5.2-liter V10 engine. The car goes into a skid perfectly and, in general, is initially perfectly balanced. We put racing tires, professional aerodynamics and a long gearbox on it, making it almost invincible over long distances (in the first half of the campaign, of course). Well, besides, as Jeremy Clarkson spoke about this unit in Top Gear, “ car makes me smile". We agree with him: the speed swells his cheeks, and it’s simply impossible not to smile.

Jaguar XKR

Our editor-in-chief Sasha Pushkar licks his lips at the British Jaguars. Because of the streamlined shapes in the first place, and also because they roar like wild cats. The Jaguar XKR is aggressive as hell, not only because of the design and 19-inch wheels, but also because of the impressive weight and high rigidity. We dressed it in a shockproof body, put a reinforced chassis and a short gearbox, after which it turned into just the perfect car for fans of aggressive driving. In Russia, such a "cat", by the way, costs about six million rubles.

Porsche 918 Spyder Concept

You won't see him on the streets anytime soon (if at all), but he's been on the roads in games for a long time. He was in Hot Pursuit, and, of course, looked into Most Wanted. And it's not in vain! You can get it only by defeating one of the most wanted. Most likely, you will chase him for a long time, but then not a single racer will leave you. We pumped this car with and without a speed bias big problems went on it from the entire city police at once. The main thing is not to get caught by police jeeps, any impact at high speed easily takes this concept off the track.

In real Porsche 918 Spyder Concept accelerates to 100 km / h in three seconds, and runs on three engines - an 8-cylinder gasoline engine of 4.6 liters and a power of 580 hp, as well as two electric motors with a power of 218 hp. each. Porsche plans to launch mass production at the end of next year, but we can ride this cool car right now. Let it be in the game.

Race without punctuation

On the one hand, Criterion greatly simplified the gameplay - no lobbies in a multiplayer game, the EasyDrive system, with which you can tune or change the car right on the move, easy access to races ... But, on the other hand, they made it more difficult - Most Wanted turned out ... uncomfortable. First of all, I want to say thanks to the graphical interface: sharp shapes, ugly gradients, endless scrolling lines, from which it is difficult to read at least some information, and a HUD that takes up a lot of space on the screen and greatly distracts from the race. And it's not so easy to understand new system- a bunch of incomprehensible symbols, unintuitive EasyDrive, a lot of functions hidden in nowhere ... Moreover, the designations of control points on the screen are constantly looming!

The creators of the game are clearly not fans of minimalism. There is always a lot of data and unnecessary elements on the screen that are just unnerving. Thank God, the brain gradually adapts to this grater for the eyes.

In Most Wanted, you can no longer relax after a long day at work, as we loved to do in the recent remake of Hot Pursuit. The game just doesn't have it. She is always in a fussy movement, does not allow to relax, always keeps on the cutting edge.

It's like reading a text without punctuation marks at all in a stream of consciousness format without commas and even without periods, and it's not clear where to pause, it's not clear where the accent is, and it's generally strange to read it in one breath, it turns out to be crumpled and the meaning slips away like water through your fingers, and that's about the same feeling leaves after yourself Most Wanted but okay, at least you get used to it, but it’s not very immediately after about an hour you start using EasyDrive more or less normally and have time to do everything on the go without pausing the game.

Entertaining physics

At first glance, it may seem that the physics of cars is no different from the physics in Hot Pursuit, but in reality everything is not quite so. Yes, the cars still drift too willingly, but they also feel heavier. We compared: we drove the "pop" Lancer Evolution X (without tuning) around Fairhaven and immediately - on one of the Seacrest County night tracks. In the first case, the unfortunate 160 km / h was gaining for a long time, dodging traffic, dangled from one side of the road to the other and hardly went into a controlled skid. But in the second case, everything was smooth, simple and even unusual, after ten hours of playing Most Wanted.

There are also races with the police, but, of course, not as diverse as in Hot Pursuit. They are furnished approximately as in GTA 4. Violated the speed limit, and the police were passing by? Well, everything is now - wheels in hand, and go, go! To escape, you need to go outside the outlined area on the GPS-navigator and for some time (depending on the level of pursuit) avoid contact with the police. If you get caught, all accumulated points will burn out, which, in general, is not as scary as the confiscation of a car from the Most Wanted sample of 2005. Problems with the cops arise all the time, and towards the end of the single player campaign, be ready to run away from the entire police force of the city at once.

From Russia with love: "Marusya" conquers the world

It is even difficult to say what Nikolai Fomenko and his partners had to push through the first domestic Marussia car (in Russian, simply “Marussia”) into the NFS. But the fact remains: "Marusya", the first creation of the newly formed (2007 - not so many years have passed, right?) company Marussia Motors, is driving around Fairhaven with might and main and feels great there. We, of course, first of all found this car and tested it in Most Wanted. Well, this is clearly one of the best cars in the game - if in arcade racing you can even compare cars with each other.

And how are things really going with Marusya?

Here's how foreigners pronounce the name of the car? Marusya? Marash? They pronounce, of course, "Marasha", but for some reason, Fomenko himself, more than anything else, wants his car to be called Marusha.

The price of Marussia B2 (it was this model that got into the game) ranges from five to six million rubles. For comparison: about the same cost base model Lamborghini Gallardo. Nevertheless, 500 pre-orders have already been made, and by the spring Fomenko promises to send the car to happy buyers.

"Marusya" B2 has an aggressive design (and generally similar to the Batmobile), carbon fiber body, weighs a little over a ton and accelerates to 100 km/h in less than four seconds. Under the skirt of the hood, Marusya has a 2.8-liter turbocharged six-cylinder engine with 420 hp and a maximum torque of 600 Nm, which is rather weak for a sports car.

It is difficult to say how Fomenko's adventure will end, but few newly formed companies succeed in the field of sports car building - tea is not Ferrari or Lamborghini. Marusya also tries herself in F1, however, so far she has not achieved success there.

You can take each car of the most wanted racers for yourself, but for this it is not enough to win the race - you then have to catch up and smash the enemy car. True, for some reason, after losing, the most wanted ones begin to drive like drunken monkeys under acid, crash into each pillar and teleport ugly. Once you lose your victim from the radar even for a second, and it will immediately disappear completely.

But the problem is solved simply - just stand idle for a few seconds, and the enemy will magically appear behind you.

Except for this unfortunate (and very annoying) misunderstanding, artificial intelligence behaves very decently: it cuts, vilely attacks and tries in every possible way to annoy. The police especially: sometimes it is not clear who you are competing with - with other racers or with a bunch of police officers who unscrupulously push you out of the way.

However, a live opponent is always more interesting. True, your achievements from a single player game will not go into the network mode - you will have to complete special tasks and improve cars again. Competitions on the Web go non-stop, sometimes briefly interrupted. What do participants usually do on a "smoke break"? Exactly the same as in Burnout Paradise - arrange derby on the streets, of course! There are a lot of competitions - ski jumping, circuit races, sprints, team fights... All this, of course, is fun, but it's not what we expected from Most Wanted.

The police will attack you only in a single game, while on the Web, the racers are left to their own devices. Too bad, that would be fun!

Sometimes the game still manages to be a generator of happiness - when you get into your Porsche 918 Spyder Concept on an autumn Saturday morning, you drive into the business district (the car growls gently and whistles a little when shifting gears), the sun's rays glare on glass skyscrapers, are reflected in puddles on the pavement , and a remix of Skrillex and The Doors is included in the radio. That's when... then something inside turns over. But this happens less frequently than in Hot Pursuit, and even more so than in the first Most Wanted in 2005.

Good day and my respect, heeding my word. And today my word will be about the recently released NFS Most Wanted from Criterion Games. I will not hide the fact that after hearing the announcement of this game, and like many others, I was extremely interested in this game. But my interest quickly disappeared, and all this thanks to the information I learned and the videos I saw. And here I am, having downloaded this game (yes, yes, just downloading ... a torrent, thank you), I am writing you my word. To be honest, I haven't finished the whole game. So what, but she did not have enough patience. But nevertheless, here is my opinion and my word.

The plot or purpose of the game

The plot is stupidly simple (and already clear from the first words of the female voice-over) and 90% licked from the original part of NFS MW (what's there, it's probably just a template) - there is a city, there is you (by the way, a homeless person in an expensive car), there is a certain list of "bosses", defeating which, you become the main nagibator in the world of racing in this town. But as you know, there is a price for everything, bending over the next "boss", you become more desirable to be bent over by local brave law enforcement officers. But here is the moment why the plot is 90% lapped up - there is not that highlight of the original plot - here you are rushing to become the best of the best, in the original you can see the personal motive of yours, which urges you to make another race in order to get to the top of the list.

Gameplay or how we still play

Starting the game, I immediately drew attention to the management. I don’t really know what place the developers thought when they made such a control - turns in one direction, gas and brake in general in the opposite direction, but it’s easy to fix it in the settings and adjust it to suit me, which I did later Fixed it, doing it like in all normal races . But here the most interesting thing began - the car does not obey at all, and in order to smoothly (yes, smoothly) enter the turn, the turn key should not be touched at all, because if it is overexposed for just a second, well, maybe a couple, the car left in such a U-turn that mom do not worry. At first I thought that the PC was not pulling, I did everything to a minimum, but no, it seemed that this really was such a terrible control. Maybe someone was able to adapt to this type of interaction between the player and the machine, then definitely not me, all the walls and other obstacles were mine. And also these marks that are always creeping out on the left and right ... they are very disturbing and distracting ....

The next point I would like to note is our speed capsules and perhaps their settings. The cars themselves look good, everyone likes them so much - expensive, fast, free. Stop stop, freebies? Yes, these are the cars in this city. I don’t know what kind of people live in this city that they leave cars for us so carelessly. “He impudently approached the car, moved, stole it - it’s called found” (probably it’s so harmless to remake a well-known phrase) - I think the developers were guided by this when they came up with this way to change our cars. Of course, I'm for a freebie, but did the gentlemen from Criterion Games really think that this would interest the players? Personally, I was not interested. Moreover, rushing at a speed of 180 km / h, there is little on the side of the road, all the more worthwhile, to make out when all your attention is on the track and nowhere else. The cars themselves are insanely cardboard. Of course, I don’t argue, physics, approximation to reality, etc., but I won’t hide the fact that the factor when the car was smashed to pieces by some absurdity really bothered me. Perhaps everything about the machines, now the setting. The tuning here is only internal (moreover, continuous, we change everything on the go), do not expect any external tuning. And this despite the fact that the theme of the game is street racing ... and as everyone knows, street racing is the growl of the engine under the hood, this is the rattling of glasses from audio systems, brightly colored and hung with all sorts of details (specifically external tuning) cars. But no.

Oh yes, I almost forgot, we have something like repair points on the map. Why they are needed, I still do not understand. All they do is repaint our car and remove the dents, that's all. And by the way, does anyone not like this repainting? My opinion is nonsense unnecessary. In racing, this is superfluous, and when chasing cops, it does not help at all. And as I said, you and I are homeless in the game - there is no house, no garage, not even a box. Well what a life...

Now let's move on to skirmishes with law enforcement cities. This is where I'm going to give them a little thumbs up. I liked to compete with them. They are quite quick, even tactics were sometimes observed in their actions, but given the terrible control and cardboard cars, the chase quickly and terribly began to annoy. And the fact that when you were arrested, you just appeared on the road did not fit in my head at all. My whole reaction to the first arrest and the voice-over advice "don't get caught by the cops, get away from them" was - "that's all?". No arrests, no confiscations, sorry, but it didn’t hook me at all, so it’s not even interesting to drive with them. Also, the fact that the developers gave us "pure speed" in avoiding in-game DPS somehow brings to mind - but where is the "stealth and shadowing" (shelter points)? But what about “tactical withdrawal” (knocking down obstacles that slow down the pursuit)?

I would also like to note the absence of that chip of the original MW - this is an opportunity to slow down time for a while. More than once she saved me from the cops, or helped me in the races ... And how beautiful it looked ...

Open city, free ride. At the expense of this aspect of the game, I will say frankly, nothing new. Wherever you want, you go there - cool! But only one question - where to go? Our whole "free ride" is to move from point A to point B - that is, from race to next race. So I used the map in order to immediately turn on the next race. Oncoming crews, well, there’s nothing to say about them. They ride and ride, hindering us, occasionally helping in the races.

Graphics, or what surrounds us in the monitor

And here is perhaps my next plus for the game. I liked the design of the city, the drawing of the streets, oncoming cars and all that. I spent a lot of time driving around the city and viewing the scenery. But I honestly don't know what else to add to this.

Sound, music or whatever flows into our ears

About the sounds, perhaps, too, I will not write much. The roar of the engine, the squeal of brakes, the rumble of objects hitting the sides of the car and the crack of breaking glass - it's all there. Everything is in its place. Therefore, everything is as it should be, there is nothing special to talk about. Although I would like to note the negotiations of the cops during the chase. Quite good to be honest accompaniment of the chase. I was very amused by the phrase at the moment when you break to smithereens “manager, object 3 crashed” and immediately appear “but no, the object is moving again”, like “it seemed it seemed” =)

I would like to give musical accompaniment. I specifically sat and listened to the tracks, and this is what I thought - the music itself is not bad, and I even checked out some for download, but for racing they are already very weak ... there is no feeling when listening to them that you are rushing around the city on an awesome car at an awesome speed, and you're about to crash, but no, dodged at the last moment and fly further. In general, the music does not shake in any way in the game.

Multiplayer or “ha, loser, but I have more columns knocked down”

Here I will not write much, or rather, I don’t even have anything to write, because I don’t personally know it (as you remember, the game is from the torrent), but I would like to express my opinion. Like everyone else, I have heard about Autolog, a sort of calculator that counts all your alleged “achievements”. And tell me, what can be the achievement in the number of downed columns? Personally, I do not see anything necessary and outstanding in this. I don’t argue, it’s probably funny and all that, but for me the “multiplayer” in racing is interesting on the same screen, when my friend and I sit next to each other, take the control panel, and fly, overtaking everyone and everything. Yes, maybe we are only two players, and the rest are AI, but nevertheless, there is also live communication and emotions transmitted to each other. And anyway, who am I to discuss what I do not know? Then we will close this aspect of the game. Maybe it's the only thing that keeps the game going. So write, I will listen.

Conclusion or final words

Everyone saw the news with critics' ratings, where the game was awarded 8 points. But I'm not a critic, and in the world of developers, no one cares about my opinion, they won't even see this scribbling. But I did not write for them, and my opinion from the side of the player is that the ratings are too high. I don't want to rate it, but if I do, my rating is 5 (although I don't think it deserves a 3) - 1 for the graphics, 1 for some tracks I liked and funny policemen, and 3 for the title of the game itself, which reminded me of the name of the best part of the NFS racing series. Ah, nostalgia...

In the end, as I expected, the game is shameful to say the least ... Of course, it's a pity that a series of pretty good races has slipped to this, and it's even more insulting that they ruined the "uniform" of the original NfS Most Wanted ... Maybe they call it something else, the public I wouldn't take it so negatively...

And by the way, after all, Criterion Games were the developers of NFS Нot Pursuit 2010, and perhaps they tried more with that game, and I liked it more. But this is my opinion.

Now I turn to the readers of my words. You can either agree with me or not, because I wrote only my opinion, and I do not force you to think the same way. And if I missed something, write, add, I will gladly listen to you.

P.S. Thank you for your attention. Thank you all, everyone is free =)

Don't think that paradise is waiting for you here. The city where the Most Wanted races take place - Fairhaven - is dusty streets and an extremely unfriendly atmosphere. It has industrial districts stretching all the way to coastal docks and shipyards, and the city center is a jumble of concrete and scaffolding. The second coming of the developers from Criterion Games to the world of Need for Speed ​​may to some extent resemble the beloved arcade racing game Burnout Paradise with its completely open cities. But in the case of NFS, the developer company must adhere to the terms of the license agreements, so some (often minimal) restrictions on routes will still be present here. Yes, and the pathos of Most Wanted (2012) will be clearly more than the games of the semi-punk Burnout series.

If we try to compare the new Most Wanted with Hot Pursuit, then here we will see more differences than similarities. While in the 2010 game all the energy of a racing car was rushing forward, the web of highways, avenues and lanes of the city of Fairhaven makes it necessary to shift the emphasis a little away from speed alone. As a result, we see a much more diverse, but no longer up to the highest degree adrenaline game. In Most Wanted, we will again witness the showdown between the two best racers. But if in Hot Pursuit it was an uncompromising struggle between rivals who are irreconcilable in their philosophy (the policeman is a car thief) and the brands of their cars, then here everything will take place in a much more peaceful environment.

However, from this Most Wanted in no way becomes less for us interesting game. After all, from the very first minutes of your stay in Fairhaven and wandering through its nooks and crannies, you are literally intoxicated with this city. Criterion has worked hard to ensure that players do not have to get bored on the city streets: there are many inconspicuous gates behind which new routes are hidden; billboards beckon to slip through them; and you can get into the garage far from one point on the map.

In a word, the city is made in the best traditions of open-world games: you will immediately be delighted with it. There is so much to do and so much to learn in Fairhaven that it is almost impossible to stick strictly to any one chosen path in it. Most likely, instead, from the very beginning, you will begin to joyfully change cars every ten minutes and randomly rush around the city in them. For the most part, all cars in Most Wanted are available from the very beginning of the game and there are no restrictions for friendly races. In other words, only a few minutes after the start of Most Wanted, you will be able to see for yourself what drives faster: stock Porsches, vintage Lamborghinis or real auto exotics from Nikolai Fomenko, like the Marussia B2.

For many in this world, the main thing is to stand out, to speak about yourself as loudly as possible ... But there is someone who does not need to be loud to be heard. Bright to draw attention. He doesn't need words to express himself. (c)

Driving these cars is a pleasure. In this Criterion has not changed its traditions. Performing drifts on them turns into a real art: balancing the weight of the car, you need to catch such a moment that with the help of inertia alone, the car slides sideways along the track and at the most crucial moment does not touch the road with its back part.

The process of taming this power hidden under the hood will also bring you a lot of pleasure. After all, you are dealing with primitive beasts, growling and ready to rush into battle at any second, raising a cloud of dust behind them. And just try not to accept the challenge thrown to you on a cold dark night by a stranger in a Lamborghini Aventador: you will immediately be written down as a weakling, and there is no place for such a pack.

One of the few similarities with the 2005 game of the same name in Most Wanted (2012) is the ability to completely modify the car to your own tastes. When you see the cars for the first time, they will appear before you in their original, untouched appearance. But as soon as the first successful races begin, nitrogen acceleration, a gearbox upgrade, new tires and much more will open up for you. No matter how strange it may sound, but there is even some connection of the new game with Call of Duty: just like in the cult shooter, here each set of components is best suited for its particular race.

Choose suitable mode games can be played using the D key on the keyboard - this is how Most Wanted (2012) implements the EasyDrive smart mode. This is an analogue of a similar feature from Burnout Paradise, which allows you to access the game settings without looking up from it. While the tape of the road goes into the distance before your eyes, you can choose the right race for yourself, join the game with friends (yes, there is multiplayer) or change your car. Of course, it is most convenient to use this option when you are not participating in any competitions, but simply driving aimlessly around the city in search of adventure.

And the racetracks, designed by Criterion, are another crazy adventure full of adrenaline. These are lightning-fast races, during which sparks from under the wheels of cars fly with the same frequency and intensity as from an open-hearth furnace in a steel mill. But behind all this furious grinding of iron on asphalt with subsequent special effects, it is the struggle that underlay all the races in the Burnout series and evolved into Hot Pursuit (when you could play as both a police officer and a car thief) looks a little different here.

And there are several reasons for this. Firstly, the overtaking slow motion camera that has been a hallmark of Criterion for so long has simply disappeared from the game. In addition, without Hot Pursuit's crowning ability to switch sides between cops and car thieves (recall that in Most Wanted you are always a delinquent, never a law enforcement officer), you now have to come up with some clever tricks much less often. And the game modes that you can choose right while driving around the city look like rather poor consolation against this background.

Fairhaven is nowhere near as rich in racing as Burnout's Paradise, and nowhere near as varied as Hot Pursuit's Seacrest County. Only four types of offline races are available here, and one car can participate in no more than five races. This, of course, is not bad if you set yourself the goal of thoroughly exploring the depths of the Most Wanted garage. But it's a little frustrating when you're more into persistence.

However, the red thread that runs through the entire single-player mode of Most Wanted is one feature that is unique to this game. In the city of Fairhaven you will find ten cars that will open if you manage to beat them on the track. Each such race opens only after you have collected the required number of speed points (Speed ​​Points) - the game currency, which, with a certain amount of perseverance, can be earned in abundance.

Most Wanted (2012) is also distinguished by its pronounced social orientation. Autolog is back - perhaps the key factor that players unite around - now it covers much more than the territory of the city of Fairhaven. Success is no longer measured in seconds: in Most Wanted you will get points for knocked down police posts and rammed billboards, and every centimeter of the track will give you new opportunities and new challenges.

Despite its ugliness, Fairhaven is a great venue for racing competitions. And races in multiplayer mode acquire a special charm on its streets. Variety and originality, which are a little lacking in the single races of Most Wanted, found their way into the reckless multiplayer, where eight participants run wildly around the city, each pursuing their own goal.

You can drive as long as you want along the drift track among the city warehouses (until you are interrupted in the most unceremonious way by an opponent), team up with someone to achieve the highest results in the oncoming "Near Miss" races (in which points are awarded for being at the last moment, avoid a collision with an oncoming car), or just drive in races in a straight line from point to point. Your results will be entered into the Speed ​​List table, where every second counts in order to rise above your friends.

This is what defines the characteristics of Most Wanted. Maybe you don't identify with your character as much as you do in other Criterion games. However, the spirit of competition, the thirst for discovery and the simple pleasure of driving are present in it in large quantities. And even though this game is a little short of the ideal, we like it this way. And who, after all, sets the criteria, what is an ideal?

Release Date: October 30, 2012 Publisher: Electronic Arts Developer: Criterion Games Genres: Racing / Multiplayer Platforms: PC / PS3 / Wii U / Xbox 360 V : 224th place Editorial Score: 90 %

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