Need for Speed: Undercover Experience!

[KermPlay161]

My experience of undercover,it might be good except i can`t see past silluettes of anything on my right ,which run smack in front of my car,and support are dragging their feet,with stock answers,

[xXDogSXx]

Hey all. I've got to say my experience with Undercover is pretty poor. I play the 360 version and after reading many posts on this forum, it's apparent all platforms are having issues.

My biggest gripe is the huge drop in frame rate which renders the game almost unplayable at times. If it only happened during the most hectic pursuits I would expect and, accept a degree of slowdown. But, even on a seemingly empty track, approach a random corner at speed and BAM! NFS Undercover, literally grinds to a halt for a few seconds. This is an unwelcome family trait shared with its older and imho, slightly prettier sister, Pro Street.

I can't understand why NFS Undercover, plays so poorly in comparison to the much older, Most Wanted. At least in MW, you had generally smooth frame rates and a healthy challenge to complete the story. I managed to 100% Undercover whilst getting busted the grand total of 5 times and 1 of those was because I leftmy car parked up to answer the phone. Undercover, became very repetitive very quickly for me. Just press down on the D-pad 187 times to do almost the identical thing to what you just did.

The frame rate issues don't seem as bad when playing online though. But, getting online and staying connected to an EA server is on its own an exercise in patience. Last night, I could do no more than 3 races in a row without losing connection to the server. Being told repeatedly "no game sessions are available", or "such and such has timed out please try later", began to eat away at the little enjoyment I managed to wring from my session.

Letting the same faults affect successive games seems a very lazy approach to publishing games to me, especially when they're so obvious. I hope the next NFS, isn't as disappointing as the previous 2 have been, but I guess it will cost me yet another 40 quid to find out, eh!

[adyspeed89]

man and to think i was looking foward for this game, and in stead i geot this.... i cant even describe it!!!!!
first the grafic is very fake especialy on the cars, the shadows are wery bad even with full antialiasing, you cant see the road at all, and wat the..... is rong with taht sun!!!!!!!!!!! you need sun glasses to play it!!!!!!!!!
AND I CAN GO ON And On VITH THIS BUT i DON"T WANT TO EMBARES YOU GUYS TO MUCH!!!!! BUT I THINK YOU HAVE DONE IT YOURESELFS!!!!

[NoF3aR82]

The Real reason this game is called Undercover is because this is where it should of remained undercover. If there had of a been a downloadable demo of this game before I went out and wasted £40 to get it, This game would of remained on the self at the store.

I for one pre ordered this game when EA first sent the news letter out for it as I was looking forward to another Need for Speed Title, But it’s the biggest let down of the year. It’s a second rate game with second rate graphics.

Limited options on changing the way your car looks, And the options remain the same no matter when car you select in the game. What appears to be only two styles of driving 1 being lose and all over the place and the other grippe as hell. And it’s the same for every single car in the game they all take corners the same and handle the same. You either get lose or tight. See you put a lot of time in to collection information on how these cars actually handle and drive. AND OOOOH YES DRAG AND DRIFT MEAN ANY THIS TO THE STAFF AT EA. You took some of the best parts of your game and left them sitting on the self. (Just a hint for the next title) which I for 1 will not be buying.

I’ve been a need for speed fan since as far back as I can remember and became a huge fan of the NFS branding when Need For Speed Underground was released which was by far the best game of its time, Then there was most wanted and carbon both of which our much better games then undercover, I’m actually going to take my Undercover title back to the store and part ex it in for carbon and most wanted. I Still can not believe that this is what one of the best names in gamming brought us after all this time of waiting. Who ever it was who approve the release of this game needs a good slapping from every member of the EA team.

I waited a while to write what I think about this game as I’ve never once in my 17 years of playing computer games wrote a bad review about any game. But I’m sorry EA you deserve this one. This is not a game I will be recommending to any one at all. And to be honest if it was not for the fact that I can take this game back and get an older gamer which is better I would just toss it in the bin which I might just do if the EA admin staff don’t do any thing about the ultimate NOS cheats people our using online once again same as carbon.

BUT COME ON EA YOU SHOULD NOT HAVE RELEASED THIS GAME OR LET THIS GAME BE CALLED A NFS TITLE. GET RID OF IT FAST BEFORE YOU LOSE EVERY SINGLE FAN OF THE NFS RANGE.




One last thing to all these people on here telling people to buy Midnight Club LA that game was worse then this one it felt like a cheep rip off of the old wanted title. Just like this game feels like a cheep rip off and a easy way to rip us out of some money.

[Badgerint]

Not sure what I can say about the latest incarnation of NFS. I've played NFS way back from NFS III Hot pursuit. Yes way back when customizing your cars including changing the colour scheme and not a lot else.

I suppose what most people would class as the beginning of the current NFS format came with NFS Underground in 2003. Wow this thing was a complete detachment from previous formats of NFS and to be fair it was pretty chuffing awesome, however it wasn't until NFS Underground II in 2004 you got that drive anywhere gameplay that put the NFS series really on the map, and to be fair it's kinda gone downhill slowly from there. While NFS most Wanted, and then Carbon were fun to play some of the customisation options that were available back in Underground that should have been expanded were dropped were removed, and although the Autosculpt feature was introduced I honestly think you lost more than you gained from the overall customization experience.

It's worth mentioning up to this point I've also had no issues with performance with any of these games, although I have read that many people have had issues with the FPS dropping to unplayable levels for short times and then resuming back to a more playable level.

Welcome in NFS Pro Street, I bought this knowing that EA had ditched the "Street Racing" aspect in favour of a more closed circuit track day type game, but, they had a good pedigree so I thought what could go wrong.

MUCH could go wrong. Firstly the controls in some of the races were so sensitive that the slightest adjustment would send you hurtling off the side of the track, or you could leave the road over the top of a crest and youd think WOOT big air, only to find that when you land you'd have more chance of bagging Jessica Simpson than you would have of keeping the damn thing on the road. This is where I also experienced first hand the slowdown issues I had read so much about previously. Did I find out what caused these slowdowns? Your chuffing right I did. It turns out that NFS Pro Street had a realy good way of making something in my PC become so hot that it had to throttle itself back to prevent another Chernobyl type incident. I presumed my Nvidia graphics card was the victim of this massive overheating so out it came, off came the various covers and a full cleaning exercise was carried out. In fact while I was at it I did the CPU fan and Heat Sync as well. OK good to go I thought!!! Wrong. What else could I do to cool this thing?.... PC on desk, case on one side removed, desk fan (yes the ones you use to cool yourself in the summer) placed in front of the open side set on full power, actually if I'm being fair and honest even on the medium setting it was OK. Voila NFS Pro Street with no random slowdowns. Trust me I proved this by turning the fan off becuase even I could't believe that was really the issue. But when the fan was off it would slow down, and when it was on it didn't. Go figure!!!

Since then I have purchased NFS Undercover and have once again been extremely let down with what should have been an excellent title. EA returned to the free roaming gameplay that was so popular early on in the series and although they have added some good points it just doesn't hit the spot.The controls are way to sensitive and there does not seem to be a way to alter this, the performance also seems to have major issues. I have an Nvidia GX280 GTX Card in a good spec rig and everything else I have (Far Cry II, Mass Effect to name a couple of titles) with the settings on max quality don't seem to have an issue. I also have a few friends that have this title for the PS3 and they too have told me that the performance is less than acceptable at times.

Please, please, please EA put the NFS series back to where it belongs as the leader in arcade style racing titles because as a long standing follower of this series I can honestly say that with every new version I seem to be more and more disappointed. The inclusion of the well acted out cut scenes with real life actors does not, and will never make up for the game experience which is what seems to be lacking here.

As a PC gamer I feel more let down at the moment that Midnight Club LA is not available for the PC, because having played it on a friends PS3 I can understand why he can gloat that he has possibly the best free roaming racer available.

Please EA put credibilty back into the Need For Speed franchise because at the moment it is something that is dwindling rapidly...

[Wilky25]

ELECTRONIC ARTS. LISTEN.

I have had every NFS Game since NFS3:Hot Pursuit, which was awesome btw, and Most Wanted was great aswell, but really, *** is going on with the new games.

I've played Undercover all the way through the story mode now, and my computer is easily powerful enough to deal with it. But what is the random crashing all about? I try to modify the visuals of my cars, and it starts glitching then bugs out completely and goes to a non-responsive status. The cop chases make the frame rate drop right down, it occasionally freezes when the damn road textures don't appear, which leaves me waiting in suspence for the damn game to load the textures in order for it to continue playing.

Now don't get me wrong, the game is playable, WHEN it works.. but that when is a big one.

I've tried everything, and I know there is nothing wrong with my PC, it could run this game with it's eyes closed. I'm putting it down to shoddiness from your guys at Black Box, so here, let me tell you what to do in order to put it right and save you from losing the majority of the NFS Series fan base......

SUE BLACK BOX, GET SOME CODERS WHO KNOW HOW TO CODE A DAMN GAME PROPERLY AND GET THEM TO RELEASE A PATCH FOR THIS GAME.

Grrrrr, I'm like proper angry tbh. How hard is it to make sure a game works properly before you decide to publish it???

It's not hard, it's called testing. But oh yea, that's right EA... You don't test, you only give a damn about the size of your wallets and getting the published game out on time.. sigh @ that attitude tbh, keep making games like this and you'll be bust before you know it imo.

[Audi-R8-Audi]

Well the gameplay itself is fine but you seriusly need a patch or you should of released the game a bit later and fixed some bugs before release =P

[Ally09_]

hey guys at EA

you gotta get an unpdate in for free roam with friends and stuff would be fun and we need drag race's and drifts back!!! i miss them so much

Well i love the game and my skyline GT R35 well done dudes... i can understand the graphics problem for xbox 360 players but no problems from the PS3 HD Blu-ray boys good job

[258456888]

Okay, what I must firstly say which is critical to you EA is that if you have seriously taken all that criticism aboard a long time ago since Most Wanted because it's still the best game out of this "Need for Speed" collection then you wouldn't be rotting in his hole right now.

The thing is that I must say "stop releasing a game every year" instead take your time, test it, edit it, improve the engine and so on and finally release a demo so people will tell you what they think of it so far, if they don't like it edit it, take the criticism aboard, it's there to ACTUALLY help you make the game better, people know what they are saying.

My review of the game:

Intro: My first impression of the game was: Nice as in graphics and car effects, even thought it's sometimes a bit blurry and I hate the sun effect, it just jumps from right to left on corners and makes you see the road less clearly, and oh lord don't even start me on the graphic loading system: It just pathetically sucks, I mean who would enjoy riding on a race while you get zoomed in and got to wait like 1-6 seconds for the background to load. I mean come on, what type of way does that go? That's right nowhere as the player looses interest and also gets frustrated that' why most of the people here got a refund of the game, and what profit you got, that's right: A tiny one, really tiny. That's not all, the graphics are not bad at full settings but come on, that shadow effect is way too choppy, I got anti-aliasing at 4x that's the highest I can get by not getting low FPS and also Word effect and detail is "Medium". The street detail is just plain boring, same old with a few flashy sun rays on it and shadows. The cars look al right but they look a bit dodgy. The car sound effects are okay but not up to standart to even Most Wanted, I mean I enjoy playing Most Wanted even more than this pathetic of a may I say "Recreation" which quite frankely has gone down the hill.

Gameplay: The handling of the car is pretty much frustrating, uncontrolabe most of the time evne thought you tried to go for the "realism" and realistic "physics" I give you that but the car practica;ly sways from right to left at every high speed corner, even when I set Suspension to GRIP( I can't remember well now)

The cop cars, yes now we are talking about cop cars and what is quite funny is that I never got to see how the car got damaged even a bit, my DID but not the cops. When I engaged the pursuit breaker adn there were like 6 cops after me, and they all were disabled, I even saw the bricks falling but there was no damage on the cop cars, not a sing;e scratch, they just stopped there, now what kind of cars are that? TANKS?!

Seriously thought, I must say that you MUST ATLEAST RELEASE A PATCH fixing the graphic shadows and car's being dodgy in a sense and also the cop cars being damaged, they got to get flatter, their windows must crash and their bumpers must bend.

Civillian cars: Funny how they can go through yellow block barriage and I can't, really realistic guys, really...

Let's move on though to cut scenes: Yes they are terrible in my opinion. Who woudl want to sit through a loading screen to see a 5 second cut scene of a woman or your crew talking about you and so on?Now, especially the japanese girl mostly says "You're doing a good job" "Stay low" or something like that. It's just not worth waiting for it to load to watch a 5 cut scene then wait again and get back into the street. TOTALLY NOT WORTH IT.

Conclusion: The graphic were fine but certainly could be improved, cars must be more realistic and world detail must be more accurare. The game loading system must be fixed, either speed up or loaded in the "LOADING SCREEN" The whole world or part of the world. Just an idea you know. The gameplay was choppy and frustrating, the presentation and story line was okay but kind of boring, I don't even get to know my name until some guy calls me "Zack" over a the phone. The start car was terrible, I didn't even get to choose a starter car which is kind of dissappointing and overall I think the planning of this game was hirendous, terrible and rushed. Next time if there is going to be a next time which I hope not, not of this standard is that you take your time, test it, go through it. Pick up peoples criticism and then edit it for that you will get a bigger reputation as well as profit in a common sense.

[aceven]

dude its weak all the game is total trash, graphics scks reactions scks you pushing to turn some directions and car is turning too slowly then something happening and car suddenly turning too much, and lots of bugs on graphic,

dude right after playing game in first minute i understood why ea didnt published any demo version of the game, because if they did not even a single one gona buy this total lalala. nfs series are falling down with a very high speed, and i thing its the zero point they crashed to the bottom, i dont thin if they will do some car game worse than this its simply impossible to do.

thanks god at least some other companies also started to do some nice job about car games,

im still playing most wanted and after undercover i have no doubt that we wont be able to play such a car game like most wanted, at least not from ea.

dude we are all disappointed, pay our money back and also pay back for making us wait for just this lalala.

what am i thinking about the blackbox studios? = cheap employees thats all

[Audi-R8-Audi]

Just put the Most Wanted and Undercover designing teams together and we will get a good game after a long time =D

[ssj1-goku]

Well I didn't get to try the game yet (doubt I will), but I already dislike it for the lies.The trailer was a lie.It said that its a game returning to nfs ''roots'' when actually it didn't.Not worth my money, nor my time for that matter...

[skyworld09]

I think that Undercover in combination of all nfs series.
most wanted was based on cops, carbon was for online playing, pro street was for driving skill and car damageing. but undercover has all of them together and I think it's the best that has ever released.

[Franpa3]

Hey, just spent some time playing this a bit more and I gotta say, this is actually pretty fun sorry for my very early and harsh criticisms before :/ the 181.00 Nvidia drivers make the game run completely smooth with everything (but fsaa which is at 4x) maxed out at 1280x960 ^_^"

The music, sound fx and short cut scenes at the start of races etc. give a nice feel to the game and the music and sound fx blend together really well! which is a pretty hard thing to pull off

I stand by my suggestions for the game except the lag thing which has been proven to be an issue with display drivers, not the game. Overall though, the game is pretty fun and enjoyable, the motion blur does make it a bit hard to see things since it makes things really blurred :/


How do I see how much cash I got?

[BlindNero]

I copy my post from another thread:

Originally posted by BlindNero:
I enjoyed it very much, so imo it's a great racing game. Despite simple A.I. and flaws -no big deal, some are even funny- i am a bit sad i finished it last night. Keeping crashing copcars is addictive, but the game doesn't reward me anymore because it's completed. So i'll start over. I gained much money quickly, so once i got me the (favourite from NFSMW) Lamborghini i went even more like a rocket. I found my new favourite: the Pagani!!! It is a breathtaking beauty, and fast, but not powerful enough. I found my other favourite in the Bugatti. Ugly, but great stability and powerful as a tank, crashes the SUVs more easily.

The story didn't interest me at all but i accept the game must have a cliffhanger for the challenges, so it's simple and it works. This game is immediate action.
What i dislike about other race games (Grid): way too realistic, i need to learn to drive. (very annoying, the 'realistic' uncontrollable sliding when offroad, i don't care how cars behave in real life; i care how they SHOULD behave, in my game.)
Need for speed series has always given me instant action and keeps the cars TOYS to play with.

The only disappointment for me is the way the shadows are designed: more than 20 meters away they are very low resolution pixelated. This is disturbing, as during high speed the pixelated stretched shadows on the streets resemble too much the spikes bars the cops lay down, this is quite annoying.

[EDIT: make that 'more than 2 meters' away from the car, the shadows are very poor.]

[eddie_brunette]

I agree with most of the above.
But I'm also for realism so please EA give us MORE REALISM!!!!

If there was one future I liked of Pro Street, it’s the damage. I'm not worry about dents and scratches on the model itself, but come on, a car that drives trough a bus stop, smashing into other cars at 200mph and still carry on? I also have most of the NFS titles and one thing I was really hoping for was more realism.

Some of us are real petrol heads here, and driving on the Highway at 200mph, knowing that if I bump another car mine will be totaled. And it is completely another experience (and much, much more rewarding) than finishing a challenge after making several high-speed accidents.

I’m quite a big online simmer and one thing I’ve never understood:
Why does all the modern flight sims have planes that actually crash!!!! If I make a mess of my takeoff, my plane crash and burns!!! If I taxi into a hanger wall at 60mph, my plane crash and burns,
BUT in cars sims, very few of them can actually be destroyed, makes no sense,
probably why so many young ones die on the roads, because cars can fly 200mph into police cars and carry on

EA NFS UNDERCOVER:

Biggest surprise - I absolute love driving on the highway
Biggest disappointment - way, way to easy, to much arcade like (give us a choice i.e. arcade mode or pro-simulation mode) and no SCOOBY

edd

[BlindNero]

Oh comeon. NFS is not a sim! , and i sure hope never will be. Yes if i crash through a pile of cars at topspeed i want mine to carry on, and theirs all totaled. The persuit brakers would make no sense anymore if they'd crash my own car together with the cops.
Again: this is no sim! You can see GRID as one. Or the Colin McRay rally series.
NFS is GAME.

[ripyourcarinhalf]

it needs to be more real
you crash into a wall at top speed (lol) and all you get is a minor dent, scraped paint possibly the hood'l curl up a bit
but in a BV going 300MPH
thats just CRAZY!in real life youd defenatly get (EVEN WORSE) this:
btw
i typed crashed bugatti veyron in google and it came up with halo 3!!

[BlindNero]

^ You don't even get the point of this game... it's very simple. Simpler than life, fortunately.

Wait, why do you even play games at all???

[Randommagic]

I have sat and read through this forum and I have to say something. This is not a car simulation its an arcade game. I'm playing on the 360 with HiDef telly and I don't see any frame rate drops or any of the other gripes that are being complained about. I think a lot of people who use forums think they could make a better game and design it better! The driving is actually not bad and every car drives differently. The TT is wayyyy too sharp I dumped it as quick as I could for an Evo. Of course there are always going to be niggles and things that need fixed but this is part of the industry and trust me these are minor. I work in IT and the only people who ever comment are the complainers. The first thing I learned in IT was most faults are caused by the person using the computer and the second lesson I learned was most computers are more intelligent than you are!!
Give these guys a break! The hundreds of man hours spent designing and writing the code to make a game of this quality to be just told its "lalalala" really just shows yourself up. I miss the drifting but they made the game exactly how I asked for it last time around, after Pro Street really didn't go down well. If you give advice and suggestions you may get the game exactly as you wanted but saying "Play the game then take it back for a refund" really is pathetic.
I wonder how many are on here that downloaded a free version from a torrent site instead of investing in the game? I also have played the last 7 or 8 of the NFS franchise and I will buy the next one as well! I didnt want a realistic game I have Forza II for that. I wanted an arcade game with a respectable storyline and some decent graphics. I got what I wanted and I think the EA guys did a great job of this one!!

[SP1LL3R]

Originally Posted by ripyourcarinhalf

it needs to be more real
you crash into a wall at top speed (lol) and all you get is a minor dent, scraped paint possibly the hood'l curl up a bit
but in a BV going 300MPH

thats just CRAZY!in real life youd defenatly get (EVEN WORSE) this:

btw
i typed crashed bugatti veyron in google and it came up with halo 3!!

If it was like that, your car would be wrecked and you wouldnt be able to drive it at damage like that. It's a game not real, it would be horrible with that kind of effect imo.

Anyway, I really like this game. Few problems, but I'm sure this patch will fix them.

[chanway]

I cannot believe this. This game is even worse than pro street and that was terrible. I loaded most wanted again before I bought this lalalala and I'm so glad I did...its great. Maybe the developers should look at it some time. The concept is great but EVERYTHING else is lalalala. Oh, the videos are great...EVERYTHING else is lalalala!!!!

[BlindNero]

Nobody oblies you to play games of which your only comment is "lalalala". It seems the lalalala is in your head.

[bos33sox]

Well, I have always loved the Need for Speed series, since Need for Speed High Stakes came out on the Playstation1. I have bought/rented/played every NFS game. The last couple of games (mostly the ones by black box) were totally disappointing ie Undercover, Pro Street, and Carbon. The map in Undercover was not set up well, too many highways and not enough places to get off of it. The graphics were poor but the car line up was pretty good (except for at the beginning). One more thing, the cops were CLUELESS, you can fly by them at 120mph and they won't chase you unless you hit them. I was very disappointed.

The next NFS should be more like Most Wanted (which was great) but with a little bit more customization. The city, the map, the cops, the cars, the graphics, the physics were all better in Most Wanted.

By the way, I had to use car unlock cheats to make Undercover even playable......

And the new Ferrari Challenge game (which came out around the same time) totally beat Undercover in graphics, physics, and gameplay.

[bos33sox]

Originally Posted by SP1LL3R

If it was like that, your car would be wrecked and you wouldnt be able to drive it at damage like that. It's a game not real, it would be horrible with that kind of effect imo.

Anyway, I really like this game. Few problems, but I'm sure this patch will fix them.

If you wreck it that bad in the game, you probably suk at racing games.