[PS Vita] Need for Speed Most Wanted ROM Download

Need for Speed Most Wanted ROM Screenshots

Need for Speed Most Wanted ROM Description

No it’s not deja vu and it’s not an HD remake. This fall’s Need for Speed Most Wanted is a new game with a familiar title, bearing more resemblance to Criterion’s last major Burnout game than its namesake. Is this new Most Wanted a true ticket to paradise or is the Need for Speed worn down to its rims?

Open World Gameplay

Most Wanted is all about open-world discovery. After a very brief tutorial to introduce you to the basics, you’re free to explore the city of Fairhaven and do as you wish. You can search for billboards to smash, gates to crash, or just get into trouble with the law. The best part is that nearly every car is out in the wild just waiting for you to stumble upon. Your ultimate goal is to take on the top 10 Most Wanted cars in Fairhaven and to do so you’ll have to prove your worth. Your scores for racing, jumping and everything else you do accumulate in a common tool tally. Up a high enough total and you’ll earn the right to challenge a Shelby Cobra or Lamborghini Aventador.

In Most Wanted’s sequel of a boss battle racing, you race one-on-one while surrounded by unamused police officers. The object is to win the race and RAM your opponent off the road to claim his ride. Since you can earn points for all sorts of activities you can play how you want and still challenge the number one driver even if you haven’t seen half of the other races.

Car Customization

As part of the spirit of freedom and exploration, Criterion has taken a new approach to accessing cars with mixed results. Instead of driving to a garage you can simply use the control pad to change cars at any time. In multiplayer this works great as you can instantly pop into the car you want. However, in single-player changing cars warps you back to the spot where you found it adding up a lot of extra mileage.

Meanwhile, rather than a world littered with races, events are oddly restricted to the specific car you’re driving. Each car is limited to five set events, after which you’ll need to try another car and a number of events are repeated among various cars. And all there are over 60 unique single-player events including races, police ambushes, and runs to maintain high average speeds. The car selection itself numbers just about half of what we’ve come to expect from the series with a tight list of 41 vehicles that still tries to touch on most tastes ranging from a Ford Focus to a 1980s Lamborghini Countach.

Placing first or second in each race rewards you with mods granting you nitro, a stronger or lighter chassis, and gear setups that favor top speed or acceleration. Then by completing certain milestones you can unlock the pro version of that mod which mitigates some of its weaknesses. Having to unlock the same set of mods again and again with each car can get a bit tiring, especially since the race limitations leave you with no events to put all your mods together. Oddly enough even though you invest so much in your cars and mods in single-player you have to unlock them all over again once you go online.

Multiplayer

Cars unlocked based on your overall score so you still get some credit back for your solo progress but mods, paint jobs, and such have to wait until you complete various milestones within multiplayer. While getting your stuff back together is a bit of a grind, jumping into online play is quick and efficient as the game shuffles playlists of varied events and groups of up to 8 drivers. You’ll compete in a series of 5 events that include solo and team races, speed tests, sunset stretches of road, and all manner of challenging group stunts.

Between events you race to the next start point and once the playlist is complete you’ll get a summary of what you’ve unlocked in that session and a few minutes break to change things up before the next playlist starts. You can also create custom playlists picking from dozens of individual events but you’ll need to make note of those catchy titles since the menu doesn’t display routes or descriptions of what each event entails.

Gameplay and Controls

Most Wanted stays true to the series name with a blistering sense of speed emphasizing big jumps, blasting nitrous, smashing opponents, and drifting through turns. Differences in car handling often come down to a sense of weight as you zip around corners in a BAC Mono or slowly build up speed to barrel through vehicles in a Ford Raptor.

Speed runs can often be more daunting than races as maintaining a high average speed without slamming into traffic around every turn can be quite the task. Police pursuits are a one-sided affair – you won’t be switching on the sirens yourself and there are no EMP blasts to throw you off guard, just metal to metal pit maneuvers, road blocks, and spike strips. Sometimes you can blast in and out of a pursuit without breaking a sweat while other encounters will have you cursing your inability to shake the magic AI.

World Design

The world is an excellently crafted playground whether you’re hopping across rooftops, blazing down freeways, or experimenting with sculptures that beg to be driven on. The best of these spots like the park and the airfield are not only packed with great jumps but feature some of the most memorable races as well.

Criterion’s groundbreaking Autolog concept is expanded in Most Wanted’s open world with leaderboards floating everywhere showing your friends’ fastest velocities past speed cameras, tracking collectible completion, and even providing a handy chart to see just how much you’re dominating your friends. The most impressive of these however are the billboards. What could have been one-time hit and run affairs now keep you coming back by tracking how far you jump through them and prominently displaying your friends avatar if he beats your distance. You want to smash your friends face right off, of course you do!

Online play is very much a party atmosphere and you’re actively encouraged to wreck other players as often as possible. Starting a race is particularly odd as players aren’t held to a set line and don’t even have to face the right direction, giving an advantage to anyone who jumps the gun a bit early. While races are great otherwise, the challenges are what really let you take on the world in fun ways. There’s a mix of teamwork and competition as you try to get everyone up to a tricky rooftop, drift circles around a tower, or drive at each other to get as many near misses as possible.

Graphics and Audio

Most Wanted features a packed detailed world full of debris and traffic to plow through even when playing online, sometimes at the expense of the framerate. The lighting is gorgeous at times backed by nice lens effects on the camera and there are some fun details like tires bursting if you do donuts for too long. Cars get dirty and take some damage but it’s clear that the licensers are limiting the extreme abuse Criterion is known for. The song list pulls in a little bit of everything from The Who to The Chemical Brothers to Dizzee Rascal and there’s joy in listening to the silent hum of the Tesla Roadster.