The thing with GBA games, especially those which use 3D images is that their presentation will never be any good, the unit just isn’t designed for game like that, so any good game really needs to rely upon its Gameplay, sadly that’s another area this game fails in. The music, while far superior is overly repetitive and gets annoying very quickly, the best you can do is to turn the volume down and put something on in the background. The sound effects such as the screeching of tyres and the burst from the engines are painful to the ears and serve as a distraction from the Gameplay. Sound quality, one of the stands out features for the console versions is non-existent in the handheld title. To top it off there are graphical glitches, clipping is a common issue especially on building corners and cars aren’t displayed properly, even in the non-graphic intensive areas such as the garage which just displays a single car, parts such as the spoiler do disappear while you are viewing the upgrade. Everything comes off as being jerky and poorly rendered many of the background images, especially the buildings are merely 2D images pasted onto a 3D wire frame and repeated far too many times, due to graphical limitations little things such as shadows, lighting effects and even shading just aren’t there. The graphics do push to the GBA to its limit, the game tries to be 3D, the car models, the buildings, all of it but somewhere along the lines something’s failed, either the game or the GBA, and the graphical quality nosedives. Talking about certain aspects of this game is quite difficult, take the graphics for instance. The only exception to this is the drag courses where you do move faster, or more appropriately the scenery moves faster but it still gives the appearance that you car can be out done by Herbie the LoveBug. Secondly the game isn’t fast, there is no difference between doing 16mph and 160mph, the cars feel slow and awkward and the scenery moves at the same pace. It’s on the Circuit courses its most notable but there are invisible walls within the courses, so you are forced to either follow a pre-determined route or you use a pre-defined shortcut. It plays out almost identically to the original Underground game in that you select a race type circuit, drag or drift and you then chose a course to race on. Now if I’d paid for this game I’d take it back under the trade description act, for a start there is no freedom within the game.
To be fair to EA I’m not sure whether it’s a case of this game being bad or the GBA not being able to handle it, though the games case isn’t helped when on the back of the box, in big letters it says “Go anywhere.
Doing 140mph down an empty road save for your competition in a tricked out boy racer with only your neon and street lights to illuminate the night with Rob Zombie pumping out your speakers for me is one of the defining moments of the racing genre and sadly this is where NFS:U2 on the Gameboy Advance falls flat on its face. Everything about the game, the graphics, the cars, the music, the upgrades, it all fitted into place and created an experience not found in other racing games.
While there were better racers on the market like Burnout 1, 2 and 3, the NFS:U franchise had hit upon something that few other racers did, immersion.
#NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND 2 RELEASE DATE PC#
I’ve played the original Need for Speed Underground and Need for Speed Underground 2 on the PC extensively and I am a huge fan of the series. To say I was disappointed with this title is a massive understatement.
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