The look of this offspring is average. Not an ugly duckling but probably not going to win any beauty contests. The cars and backgrounds are blurry with a limited viewing distance so headlights and taillights seem to pop up around the corners. Thankfully all cars have their headlights on during the day as that’s all you see coming at you to avoid head-on collisions, your main roadblock to winning races. Your best bet is to keep to the middle of the road to avoid traffic as the sidewalks slow you down.
As you progress through the career mode you unlock a fairly wide range of races from sprints, circuits, and cop takedowns to highway battles (get 50 yds in front of your opponent), speed traps, lap KO and bounty where you destroy as much property as possible. The choice of cars is small but they’re not that impressive to look at anyway.
The size of this child is on the small side also. There are 4 city areas with a total of 22 career races but many of the races seem similar because there is only one basic track for each area. Other than career there is only a quick race mode.
There is some fun to be had when you unlock the Industrial area of the city as the course becomes a bit more interesting although all the roads remain totally flat. There is a speed breaker implemented by hitting the 5 or center d-pad. On turns it starts you drifting and on the straight-a-ways it basically slows down the entire game for you to avoid traffic. It’s not the greatest slow-mo you will ever see but it can be useful.
This Need For Speed offspring is silent besides the gurgle of good sounding music. It would add a little excitement to have some SFX to go along with the nice sparks of clashing metal, nitro burn and head-on collisions. Silence is definitely not golden in a high speed action child. Although the game does run well without slow down or lag and you get a pretty good sense of speed once you upgrade and buy the better cars.
You’ll have to purchase the console big brother or ask their parents why this Need For Speed was named Undercover as there is no introduction or story to this game. Without anything new or exciting to offer this newborn seems to be riding the slipstream of the Need For Speed name and finishes in the middle of the pack with 3 stars.
Reviewed by goyami - Nokia N73