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NFS Most Wanted is a fantastic racing game, no doubt about it. The game starts off on the streets. You are faced up against Razor, a jerk of a street racer who thinks he is everything and a cup of tea. Early on in the game you have to get through some general challenges to get you up to speed with how the game works. Then once you’ve accomplished this you come up against Razor in a pink slip race. I was doing just fine until suddenly my car just STOPPED.

At this point you pick out a new car to go racing in. I picked a Chevrolet Cobalt, which for the money I had, was my best choice. If you have a NFS Underground 2 save on your memory card however you start the game with a bit more cash. This would allow you to buy the VW Golf GTI if you had the cash.

From here you go racing. Your goal is to work your way up the Blacklist. The Blacklist is a list of the Top 15 Most Wanted street racers in town. In order to begin the road towards getting your car back (which is a BMW M3 GTR) you have to work your way up that Blacklist one by one.

Among the race types in the game are a circuit (traditional lap-style course), drag (a drag race), lap knockout (race 4 laps and each lap the car in last is eliminated), speed trap (race from speed trap to speed trap and be as fast as you can at each one), sprint (I ain’t explaining this one) and tollbooth (this is a checkpoint style race).

Before you can challenge each racer you have to meet certain criteria such as winning a certain amount of races, avoiding the cops for a certain amount of time and so forth. Speaking of avoiding the cops, I personally feel the police chases are the best part of this game. They can go on forever if you want them to and boy its fun to try and outrun them and slip past spike strips.

The more you run from the cops the higher your bounty gets. The higher your bounty the more your wanted by the police and the harder they will try to catch you. Each car also has a heat level which indicates how much the cops are looking for that car. You can lower the heat level of a car a number of different ways. You can stop driving that car for awhile or completely change the car’s look (paint, rims, stickers, etc.).

Speaking of the customization part of the game, you can do nearly everything to your car. From paint to vinyl’s to need parts to hood scopes this game allows you to completely change the look and feel of your car. You can even change the look of the gauges on your car.

As far as the racing is concerned it is a BLAST. Quick reaction times, quick turns, last second passes. The streets make for an interesting raceway as you have to not only concentrate on the road ahead of you but on the traffic around you. It’s not like the Burnout series but the traffic still will slow you down dramatically if you run into them.

The graphics and sounds are well above average in this game which really adds to the game play experience. The motors sound real and the graphics add a sense of realism to the game. The HUD is also very easy to read. You’ve got your rearview mirror up top, your milestone status to the right (the challenge’s I spoke of before), your tachometer and speed down at the bottom right and on the bottom left your map. When the police are chasing you there is also an evade meter that also appears at the bottom center that tells you have close you are to evading the police.

Once you beat the storyline of the game you also are left with a series of challenges that, once beaten, will unlock a few more goodies on the game. These challenges range from easy to hard as nails. I spent a few hours just trying to beat one of the challenges (and my suitemates would often call me in to beat the tollbooths for them since they couldn’t do it).

To sum it all up, I LOVED THIS GAME. The speed and the intensity of this game are more than enough to warrant a high rating on any gamers list. If you like to race go get this one, it's well worth the price of admission.