Need for Speed Most Wanted

In Need for Speed Most Wanted, you can try to become the most notorious street racer alive. Outrun both racers and cops to increase your reputation and move up the street racing blacklist. You can choose from a variety of vehicle types and destructible urban maps featuring shortcuts, traffic, and patrolling police. Need for Speed Most Wanted also includes online play for challenging other gamers.

With this sentence, the journey through the underground world of street racing in EA Games' latest offering in the famous Need for Speed series begins. NFSMW is a major graphical update from the previous game in the series, Need for Speed Underground 2. NFSMW takes out the tedious driving around in Underground 2, throws in the cops found in Hot Pursuit, and adds in a whole lot more arcade racing.
The first thing that hits you once you enter your first race is that the graphics have a sepia, slightly faded out look. These stylized images are very different from regular racers. A lot of browns and yellows have been used in the game's design, and if you have played Vagrant Story or seen Final Fantasy 9's Alexandria, that's the type of look NFSMW has. NFSMW stands out from other racing titles because of this. Also, when travelling at high speeds or after a burst of nitrous, the screen gets motion blurred, giving you the impression of tearing through the streets at really high speeds. Another very nice touch was water droplets appearing on the screen as it rains.
NFSMW does not disappoint in the car design aspect as well. The cars are all shiny when viewed in the garage. There is very little pixellation, and the cars look very similar to their real life counterparts. The range of graphical customizability, while falling short of NFSU2, is still huge in NFSMW. NFSMW has over 70 vinyl designs, and three types of paint (Gloss, Metallic and Custom) with different levels of shine, as well as different tyres and rim paint, giving you loads of fun customizing your own cars.