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NFSU:2 Thread
- Thread starter PornStar
- Start date
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IceBlu
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jeebusmanutd4eva
Fan Favourite
I like it ALOT.
Rochester Rhino
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can't wait for this game
EA AND BROOKE BURKE RULE THE STREETS THIS FALL IN NEED FOR SPEED UNDERGROUND 2
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 17, 2004 -Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS), the world's leading interactive software company, today announced that they have signed one of the world's sexiest thrill seekers and cover girls, Brooke Burke, to star in Need For Speed™ Underground 2, the sequel to the best selling game of 2003, Need For Speed Underground.
In Need for Speed Underground 2, Burke plays the streetwise organizer of an elite underground racing circuit. Her character, Rachel, takes gamers under her wing, guiding them through the game's massive free-roaming city, helping them become the top racer in the underground.
"I'm an absolute adrenaline junkie and car freak in real life, so starring in Need for Speed Underground 2 is a huge thrill," Burke said. "Need for Speed Underground 2 really captures one of the reasons I love my cars so much - they're a canvas for self-expression."
Need for Speed Underground 2 challenges gamers to immerse themselves in the tuner culture, exploring an expansive, free-roaming city divided into five distinct neighborhoods. Gamers will encounter rival racers who will initiate events, tip players off to the hottest racing spots, and show them where to buy the most sought-after licensed aftermarket upgrades.
The new game delivers complete automotive self-expression with more than 30 of the hottest licensed turner cars and hundreds of aftermarket parts for nearly infinite visual and performance customization combinations.
Brooke Burke is recognized worldwide for her three-year stint as the adventurous host of E! Entertainment Television's popular travel series, "Wild On," as seen in 120 countries. Now that she has completed her assignment with E!, Burke continues to focus her attention on hosting and acting, and has landed roles in a number of television and film projects. Her official Web site is www.brookeburke.com.
REDWOOD CITY, Calif., June 17, 2004 -Electronic Arts (Nasdaq: ERTS), the world's leading interactive software company, today announced that they have signed one of the world's sexiest thrill seekers and cover girls, Brooke Burke, to star in Need For Speed™ Underground 2, the sequel to the best selling game of 2003, Need For Speed Underground.
In Need for Speed Underground 2, Burke plays the streetwise organizer of an elite underground racing circuit. Her character, Rachel, takes gamers under her wing, guiding them through the game's massive free-roaming city, helping them become the top racer in the underground.
"I'm an absolute adrenaline junkie and car freak in real life, so starring in Need for Speed Underground 2 is a huge thrill," Burke said. "Need for Speed Underground 2 really captures one of the reasons I love my cars so much - they're a canvas for self-expression."
Need for Speed Underground 2 challenges gamers to immerse themselves in the tuner culture, exploring an expansive, free-roaming city divided into five distinct neighborhoods. Gamers will encounter rival racers who will initiate events, tip players off to the hottest racing spots, and show them where to buy the most sought-after licensed aftermarket upgrades.
The new game delivers complete automotive self-expression with more than 30 of the hottest licensed turner cars and hundreds of aftermarket parts for nearly infinite visual and performance customization combinations.
Brooke Burke is recognized worldwide for her three-year stint as the adventurous host of E! Entertainment Television's popular travel series, "Wild On," as seen in 120 countries. Now that she has completed her assignment with E!, Burke continues to focus her attention on hosting and acting, and has landed roles in a number of television and film projects. Her official Web site is www.brookeburke.com.
IGN "Need for Speed Underground 2: First Look".
At Electronic Arts' Redwood City, Ca. headquarters today, the world's biggest publisher gave a select group of journalists the first worldwide look at the sequel to the world's best selling game in 2003. Need for Speed: Underground 2 is, as Executive Producer Chuck Osieja says, "a true sequel, not just a 1.5 upgrade," giving gamers a wide-open world that's five times the size of the previous game, with a huge new assortment of races styles, challenges, licensed cars, the ability to modify your car's engine, and finally, for Xbox, PS2 and PC owners, the chance to race online. Need for Speed: Underground 2, which EA's Black Box studio started developing in July 2003, is slated for release in North America in November for Xbox, PS2, PC and GameCube.
The pre-alpha PS2 build we saw, but did not play, follows up last year's stunning 3 million unit-selling NFSU by giving hardcore and casual gamers a lot to dig into. In the demo Osieja showed us how you can drive into any area of the game, starting from the southern-most tip of the city and flooring your ride across the environment in realtime to the distant mountain on the far end, without load times or cutscenes. Using a map system in the bottom left-hand side, players can determine which drivable sections are available as the street sections appear in gray. A huge network of freeways connects the city, enabling players to drive along streets or navigate via the "spaghetti"-like network.
Like NFSU, Black Box's sequel plays at nighttime, and the streets are indeed wet. Despite several criticisms about all the courses being dark wet streets in the previous game, Osieja defended the decision, explaining that the race culture only takes place at night, and they want to be as authentic as possible. The team also has listened very carefully to focus tests and fans of the series. In response, the courses are now designed with drunk bumps, or as Osieja called them, cat eyes (the little reflective bumps in the center lane of a freeway designed to help direct cars drive in their lane) that shine as your headlights hit them. Cat Eyes also appear on the guard rails, and both create a much better navigational sensibility.
The open street racing world will also take place over the course of the night, so players can see the sky starting out rather light at dusk, remaining dark most of the night, and growing lighter at dawn. Black Box is implementing a weather system that delivers light, medium, and hard rains, and various speeds of wind. Like real life, the city might be raining in one section, while remaining dry in another, so that as drivers cruise from one section to another, they'll experience an organic, dynamic change in the weather.
But the game's main goal is to uncover its "Underground Tuner Culture." Players commence with enough cash to buy a rather low budged ride, and as they cruise the huge cityscape, they find races in which to enter. From the video you can see there are distinct sections ranging from the downtown, the industrial, the suburbs, the entertainment/commercial sections, and the upland section, or the rather inviting snaking mountainous hills, clearly preparing you for heavy drift races. All of the modes from the previous game have returned, so players can enter into career mode, quick race, drag racing, drift races and the like, but they're structured in a different, non-linear way.
Again, players find races to enter by exploring the city, and by using a PDA message system. The PDA will tell you of an upcoming race using the on-screen system, or you can just cruise. You might find an opponent to race by simply driving the streets. The streets are filled with regular traffic cars and tuner vehicles. If you can stick with a tuner car for long enough, he'll challenge you to race, whereby the winner must get ahead of the other by more than 300 meters. EA explained this is quite a challenge, citing that some of the testers have raced in these so-called "OutRun Challenges" for more than 20 minutes per race. The OutRun Challenges, however, aren't mandatory, echoing the game's open-structure theme. Or you might find a glowing purple ring, indicating a place to start a different kid of race.
With the open city structure, EA is naturally implementing adventure-style elements. Just like with the massive opportunities found in the Grand Theft Auto series, the huge cityscape of NFSU2 offers players the chance to seek out hidden shops. Twenty purchase shops litter the currently unnamed city (they're still working on the name), enabling players to buy new parts that range from visual add-ons such as fenders, hoods, windows, rims, wheels and the like, as well as the new ability to tune their engines. For the simpler casual players, they can simply buy an entire kit, automatically changing their car, or they go in and place each part, specializing their vehicle to their liking. There are 20-plus parts to enhance, tweak, upgrade, and modify.
The performance parts will indeed enhance the driving experience of your car. By finding all of the 10-plus shops, players will then be able to unlock all of the cars within the game. EA wouldn't speak about the kinds of licensed cars it's got in this year's model, but you can probably expect to see all of the tuner-style cars from last year's edition, plus EA confirmed it would add a broader range of cars to fill out your garage.
The racing bits are interesting. The same sense of speed and the great looks from the previous game have been retained, even though the pre-alpha game showed some hiccups and streaming snags (which we expect EA to iron out over the next four months). The cars deliver an excellent sense of viscerally powerful speed, while also filling your ears with real car engine sounds. This year players can actually earn style points and attribute them in realtime to their car as they race. EA showed us how finding shortcuts, and pulling off powerslides, drifts and the like earned the racer points which could then be instantly transformed into NOS, for speed boosting.
The races themselves might take place in a distinct neighborhood, but they also might cross over into another section of a neighborhood as well. In a move that ought to really blow away dedicated racers, there are more than 150 races in the game this year. Also, if you tend to be more of a straight circuit racing fan, you don't have to enter all the races to beat the game. Or, if you happen to dislike drifting, you aren't required to enter those races to progress.
Lastly, all versions but the GameCube version will feature online play (yes, that means it's on Xbox Live). EA is withholding the details for now, but it's surely planning to deliver these toward the middle of summer (at Camp EA). But you can expect to be able to bring your customized, stylized vehicle online and race against others drivers for sure. Though EA wouldn't confirm it, I suspect drag races will play a big part in the online functionality, while EA is probably going to highlight specific races from its new city for online racing. EA also would not confirm whether cross-platform racing was possible, as it was in last year's cross PC-PS2 versions.
In short, EA's Need for Speed Underground 2 proves to be one of the most ambitious games of the 2004, taking the organic, living, breathing open-city approach that made Grand Theft Auto the biggest game of 2001 and 2002, and giving it a Need For Speed look, feel, and style. The game is genuinely impressive, and now what we really want to do is stop talking about it, and play it all night. Everything -- the sense of speed, the car modification, the huge, open environments, and the luscious Brooke Burke, who plays a part as a navigating sort of mentor -- is in place, and it all looks extremely good. You might have heard us saying this about other good games, but it's hard to say it any other way. We simply cannot wait to play Need for Speed Underground 2.
At Electronic Arts' Redwood City, Ca. headquarters today, the world's biggest publisher gave a select group of journalists the first worldwide look at the sequel to the world's best selling game in 2003. Need for Speed: Underground 2 is, as Executive Producer Chuck Osieja says, "a true sequel, not just a 1.5 upgrade," giving gamers a wide-open world that's five times the size of the previous game, with a huge new assortment of races styles, challenges, licensed cars, the ability to modify your car's engine, and finally, for Xbox, PS2 and PC owners, the chance to race online. Need for Speed: Underground 2, which EA's Black Box studio started developing in July 2003, is slated for release in North America in November for Xbox, PS2, PC and GameCube.
The pre-alpha PS2 build we saw, but did not play, follows up last year's stunning 3 million unit-selling NFSU by giving hardcore and casual gamers a lot to dig into. In the demo Osieja showed us how you can drive into any area of the game, starting from the southern-most tip of the city and flooring your ride across the environment in realtime to the distant mountain on the far end, without load times or cutscenes. Using a map system in the bottom left-hand side, players can determine which drivable sections are available as the street sections appear in gray. A huge network of freeways connects the city, enabling players to drive along streets or navigate via the "spaghetti"-like network.
Like NFSU, Black Box's sequel plays at nighttime, and the streets are indeed wet. Despite several criticisms about all the courses being dark wet streets in the previous game, Osieja defended the decision, explaining that the race culture only takes place at night, and they want to be as authentic as possible. The team also has listened very carefully to focus tests and fans of the series. In response, the courses are now designed with drunk bumps, or as Osieja called them, cat eyes (the little reflective bumps in the center lane of a freeway designed to help direct cars drive in their lane) that shine as your headlights hit them. Cat Eyes also appear on the guard rails, and both create a much better navigational sensibility.
The open street racing world will also take place over the course of the night, so players can see the sky starting out rather light at dusk, remaining dark most of the night, and growing lighter at dawn. Black Box is implementing a weather system that delivers light, medium, and hard rains, and various speeds of wind. Like real life, the city might be raining in one section, while remaining dry in another, so that as drivers cruise from one section to another, they'll experience an organic, dynamic change in the weather.
But the game's main goal is to uncover its "Underground Tuner Culture." Players commence with enough cash to buy a rather low budged ride, and as they cruise the huge cityscape, they find races in which to enter. From the video you can see there are distinct sections ranging from the downtown, the industrial, the suburbs, the entertainment/commercial sections, and the upland section, or the rather inviting snaking mountainous hills, clearly preparing you for heavy drift races. All of the modes from the previous game have returned, so players can enter into career mode, quick race, drag racing, drift races and the like, but they're structured in a different, non-linear way.
Again, players find races to enter by exploring the city, and by using a PDA message system. The PDA will tell you of an upcoming race using the on-screen system, or you can just cruise. You might find an opponent to race by simply driving the streets. The streets are filled with regular traffic cars and tuner vehicles. If you can stick with a tuner car for long enough, he'll challenge you to race, whereby the winner must get ahead of the other by more than 300 meters. EA explained this is quite a challenge, citing that some of the testers have raced in these so-called "OutRun Challenges" for more than 20 minutes per race. The OutRun Challenges, however, aren't mandatory, echoing the game's open-structure theme. Or you might find a glowing purple ring, indicating a place to start a different kid of race.
With the open city structure, EA is naturally implementing adventure-style elements. Just like with the massive opportunities found in the Grand Theft Auto series, the huge cityscape of NFSU2 offers players the chance to seek out hidden shops. Twenty purchase shops litter the currently unnamed city (they're still working on the name), enabling players to buy new parts that range from visual add-ons such as fenders, hoods, windows, rims, wheels and the like, as well as the new ability to tune their engines. For the simpler casual players, they can simply buy an entire kit, automatically changing their car, or they go in and place each part, specializing their vehicle to their liking. There are 20-plus parts to enhance, tweak, upgrade, and modify.
The performance parts will indeed enhance the driving experience of your car. By finding all of the 10-plus shops, players will then be able to unlock all of the cars within the game. EA wouldn't speak about the kinds of licensed cars it's got in this year's model, but you can probably expect to see all of the tuner-style cars from last year's edition, plus EA confirmed it would add a broader range of cars to fill out your garage.
The racing bits are interesting. The same sense of speed and the great looks from the previous game have been retained, even though the pre-alpha game showed some hiccups and streaming snags (which we expect EA to iron out over the next four months). The cars deliver an excellent sense of viscerally powerful speed, while also filling your ears with real car engine sounds. This year players can actually earn style points and attribute them in realtime to their car as they race. EA showed us how finding shortcuts, and pulling off powerslides, drifts and the like earned the racer points which could then be instantly transformed into NOS, for speed boosting.
The races themselves might take place in a distinct neighborhood, but they also might cross over into another section of a neighborhood as well. In a move that ought to really blow away dedicated racers, there are more than 150 races in the game this year. Also, if you tend to be more of a straight circuit racing fan, you don't have to enter all the races to beat the game. Or, if you happen to dislike drifting, you aren't required to enter those races to progress.
Lastly, all versions but the GameCube version will feature online play (yes, that means it's on Xbox Live). EA is withholding the details for now, but it's surely planning to deliver these toward the middle of summer (at Camp EA). But you can expect to be able to bring your customized, stylized vehicle online and race against others drivers for sure. Though EA wouldn't confirm it, I suspect drag races will play a big part in the online functionality, while EA is probably going to highlight specific races from its new city for online racing. EA also would not confirm whether cross-platform racing was possible, as it was in last year's cross PC-PS2 versions.
In short, EA's Need for Speed Underground 2 proves to be one of the most ambitious games of the 2004, taking the organic, living, breathing open-city approach that made Grand Theft Auto the biggest game of 2001 and 2002, and giving it a Need For Speed look, feel, and style. The game is genuinely impressive, and now what we really want to do is stop talking about it, and play it all night. Everything -- the sense of speed, the car modification, the huge, open environments, and the luscious Brooke Burke, who plays a part as a navigating sort of mentor -- is in place, and it all looks extremely good. You might have heard us saying this about other good games, but it's hard to say it any other way. We simply cannot wait to play Need for Speed Underground 2.
GAMESPOT "Need for Speed Underground 2: First Look".
Electronic Arts finally took the wraps off of the sequel to Need for Speed Underground today. The first look coincided with the announcement that EA has signed TV star Brooke Burke to appear in the game as Rachel, an adrenaline junkie who becomes your mentor and initiates you into the world of tuning up production cars. We were able to see an early PS2 version of the game in action, including a showcase of one of the game's five neighborhoods and a handful of new features from the game. Even though the game is still a long way off, there certainly seems to be a lot to get excited about in this sequel.
According to what we were shown, the game's development began in July of last year, before the original Need for Speed Underground even shipped. Apparently, given the overwhelmingly positive response to the first game, the decision was made to begin working on the sequel immediately to accommodate some of the team's ambitious ideas. To wit, whereas the original Need for Speed Underground featured roughly 40 kilometers of track, Need for Speed Underground 2 comes packing 200 kilometers worth of track. Each of the five neighborhoods will be interconnected via a lengthy and intricate freeway system. We were able to catch a glimpse of some of the game's new locales, which appeared to be based on familiar cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The single-player game's main goal is to, once again, become the best of the best in the underground racing circuit. However, this time out, your focus will also be on discovery--how to advance in street races and tune up your car, with the help of Rachel. Instead of the original game's linear story mode, which forced you to work your way through a set number of races before progressing, the next game will offer much more flexibility. You'll be able to progress through a level by completing a few event races of your choice. In addition to the story races you'll be able to find or initiate additional races (all told, there should be roughly 150 races in the game) by doing some exploring and finding AI-controlled cars eager for a race. If you win, you'll receive information or a tip on finding other hidden opponents.
Exploration will apparently be a major part of the game, since you'll be able to find a number of hidden shops and opponents. Finding both will give you more than just bragging rights, since computer opponents will yield info on where to find other hidden competition, and how to uncover shops that feature parts or cars you won't find anywhere else in the game. Fortunately, as you discover these hidden shops, they will become permanently visible on your mini-map display, as the normal ones are. As for parts and cars, once you discover a shop with parts and cars you haven't seen before, they're added to all the shops you visit in the game, so that you don't have to go back and forth to one single shop to get what you need.
The new game also offers an improved upgrade system for you car. In fact, tweaking your car will be a much more-accessible process to casual players who aren't terribly hip to gear ratios and suspension types, though there will still be plenty for those that know the degrees by which a single gear has to be adjusted to get a half-percent performance boost. Basically, you'll have two options when buying a performance upgrade in the game. You'll have the option of either buying a premade kit and being done with it, or you can customize the different upgrades in the kit to fine-tune your wheels. You'll even be able to use a wide variety of kits and decals to make your car look sharp. We watched a Mazda RX8 get the star treatment with a wide variety of kit options.
Since you'll be racing in such large environments, you'll be kept in the loop via a virtual phone that will send you messages that offer challenges from other players in the city or updates from the parts or car shops in the game. This level of interaction is decidedly different from the previous game and seems to add a welcome bit of variety. In many ways, what we've seen is reminiscent of the rather freeform approach taken by the snowboarding game SSX3, which made the entire mountain your mode menu. In Need for Speed Underground 2, it appears that the various cities you roam are your menus. You'll initiate races by accepting challenges that arrive over your virtual phone, or by finding specific locations that trigger certain races, or, in the case of the new outrun race mode, simply by closing in on an AI car and matching their speed. If you manage to do it correctly, the game will seamlessly segue into a race and will add an onscreen meter that tracks your distance from your opponent. If they get too far from you, the race is lost; but if you keep up, victory, in the form of cash and information, is yours.
The racing gameplay has undergone some tweaks that seem to offer a faster-paced overall experience. The biggest change we were shown was the fact the style points you earn are now added to your cars nitrous meter, offering a much more tangible benefit to driving stylishly than the first game's point modifiers. Drifting is being tweaked to better take advantage of the varied street types in the game and make for a more-dynamic racing experience. The team mentioned that all of the race types from the previous game are returning in addition to new modes, like the aforementioned outrun. While EA was not able to give many details about multiplayer, it was confirmed that the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox games would be online, while the GameCube version would support split-screen play only.
The graphics in Need for Speed Underground 2 are coming along pretty well. We'll be honest and say we weren't totally blown away by what we saw at first. The game doesn't appear to offer an exponential improvement over its predecessor at first blush; but, once you start to scrutinize it a little, you'll see there's an impressive amount of business going on. First and foremost, the game appears to be maintaining and improving on the graphical quality of its predecessor while offering the five massive areas to go through. There will also be a broader range of time periods to race in, including different times of night. Weather effects will also be added to the game, and will affect the way environments look.
The team is also using every trick in the book to guide players through the game's massive areas without being too intrusive. For example, your headlights now reflect off the cat's eye markers on the road. The reflections will help point you to where you need to go as you make your way through the game. The audio didn't seem quite as remarkable--car sounds such as engine roar and tire skids stood out the most while the music and ambient noise were still fairly low key. Then again, given the strong audio in the previous game, we have high hopes that the sequel will sound even better.
Based on what we've seen so far, Need for Speed Underground 2 is shaping up to be a promising next step for the burgeoning franchise. The development team's work reflects the impact user feedback from the original Need for Speed Underground has had on the game and ensured the next game will, at the very least, offer a strong, stylish racing experience. The addition of new modes and the host of gameplay refinements being added throughout the game contribute a considerable amount of optional depth that should please hardcore racing fans. While the graphics at this early stage don't appear to offer a quantum improvement over the first game, the fact that the visual quality of the game is looking better despite the fact that you have an entire city to play through certainly bodes well for the final game. Need for Speed Underground 2 is currently slated to ship this November for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, PC, and Xbox. Look for much more on the game in the coming months.
Electronic Arts finally took the wraps off of the sequel to Need for Speed Underground today. The first look coincided with the announcement that EA has signed TV star Brooke Burke to appear in the game as Rachel, an adrenaline junkie who becomes your mentor and initiates you into the world of tuning up production cars. We were able to see an early PS2 version of the game in action, including a showcase of one of the game's five neighborhoods and a handful of new features from the game. Even though the game is still a long way off, there certainly seems to be a lot to get excited about in this sequel.
According to what we were shown, the game's development began in July of last year, before the original Need for Speed Underground even shipped. Apparently, given the overwhelmingly positive response to the first game, the decision was made to begin working on the sequel immediately to accommodate some of the team's ambitious ideas. To wit, whereas the original Need for Speed Underground featured roughly 40 kilometers of track, Need for Speed Underground 2 comes packing 200 kilometers worth of track. Each of the five neighborhoods will be interconnected via a lengthy and intricate freeway system. We were able to catch a glimpse of some of the game's new locales, which appeared to be based on familiar cities such as San Francisco and Los Angeles.
The single-player game's main goal is to, once again, become the best of the best in the underground racing circuit. However, this time out, your focus will also be on discovery--how to advance in street races and tune up your car, with the help of Rachel. Instead of the original game's linear story mode, which forced you to work your way through a set number of races before progressing, the next game will offer much more flexibility. You'll be able to progress through a level by completing a few event races of your choice. In addition to the story races you'll be able to find or initiate additional races (all told, there should be roughly 150 races in the game) by doing some exploring and finding AI-controlled cars eager for a race. If you win, you'll receive information or a tip on finding other hidden opponents.
Exploration will apparently be a major part of the game, since you'll be able to find a number of hidden shops and opponents. Finding both will give you more than just bragging rights, since computer opponents will yield info on where to find other hidden competition, and how to uncover shops that feature parts or cars you won't find anywhere else in the game. Fortunately, as you discover these hidden shops, they will become permanently visible on your mini-map display, as the normal ones are. As for parts and cars, once you discover a shop with parts and cars you haven't seen before, they're added to all the shops you visit in the game, so that you don't have to go back and forth to one single shop to get what you need.
The new game also offers an improved upgrade system for you car. In fact, tweaking your car will be a much more-accessible process to casual players who aren't terribly hip to gear ratios and suspension types, though there will still be plenty for those that know the degrees by which a single gear has to be adjusted to get a half-percent performance boost. Basically, you'll have two options when buying a performance upgrade in the game. You'll have the option of either buying a premade kit and being done with it, or you can customize the different upgrades in the kit to fine-tune your wheels. You'll even be able to use a wide variety of kits and decals to make your car look sharp. We watched a Mazda RX8 get the star treatment with a wide variety of kit options.
Since you'll be racing in such large environments, you'll be kept in the loop via a virtual phone that will send you messages that offer challenges from other players in the city or updates from the parts or car shops in the game. This level of interaction is decidedly different from the previous game and seems to add a welcome bit of variety. In many ways, what we've seen is reminiscent of the rather freeform approach taken by the snowboarding game SSX3, which made the entire mountain your mode menu. In Need for Speed Underground 2, it appears that the various cities you roam are your menus. You'll initiate races by accepting challenges that arrive over your virtual phone, or by finding specific locations that trigger certain races, or, in the case of the new outrun race mode, simply by closing in on an AI car and matching their speed. If you manage to do it correctly, the game will seamlessly segue into a race and will add an onscreen meter that tracks your distance from your opponent. If they get too far from you, the race is lost; but if you keep up, victory, in the form of cash and information, is yours.
The racing gameplay has undergone some tweaks that seem to offer a faster-paced overall experience. The biggest change we were shown was the fact the style points you earn are now added to your cars nitrous meter, offering a much more tangible benefit to driving stylishly than the first game's point modifiers. Drifting is being tweaked to better take advantage of the varied street types in the game and make for a more-dynamic racing experience. The team mentioned that all of the race types from the previous game are returning in addition to new modes, like the aforementioned outrun. While EA was not able to give many details about multiplayer, it was confirmed that the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox games would be online, while the GameCube version would support split-screen play only.
The graphics in Need for Speed Underground 2 are coming along pretty well. We'll be honest and say we weren't totally blown away by what we saw at first. The game doesn't appear to offer an exponential improvement over its predecessor at first blush; but, once you start to scrutinize it a little, you'll see there's an impressive amount of business going on. First and foremost, the game appears to be maintaining and improving on the graphical quality of its predecessor while offering the five massive areas to go through. There will also be a broader range of time periods to race in, including different times of night. Weather effects will also be added to the game, and will affect the way environments look.
The team is also using every trick in the book to guide players through the game's massive areas without being too intrusive. For example, your headlights now reflect off the cat's eye markers on the road. The reflections will help point you to where you need to go as you make your way through the game. The audio didn't seem quite as remarkable--car sounds such as engine roar and tire skids stood out the most while the music and ambient noise were still fairly low key. Then again, given the strong audio in the previous game, we have high hopes that the sequel will sound even better.
Based on what we've seen so far, Need for Speed Underground 2 is shaping up to be a promising next step for the burgeoning franchise. The development team's work reflects the impact user feedback from the original Need for Speed Underground has had on the game and ensured the next game will, at the very least, offer a strong, stylish racing experience. The addition of new modes and the host of gameplay refinements being added throughout the game contribute a considerable amount of optional depth that should please hardcore racing fans. While the graphics at this early stage don't appear to offer a quantum improvement over the first game, the fact that the visual quality of the game is looking better despite the fact that you have an entire city to play through certainly bodes well for the final game. Need for Speed Underground 2 is currently slated to ship this November for the GameCube, PlayStation 2, PC, and Xbox. Look for much more on the game in the coming months.
Heres some videos
IGN video
http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/679/679032/vids_1.html?fromint=1
Gamespot Video, the video is on the main page just let it load.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/driving/needforspeedunderground2/preview_6100892.html
IGN video
http://media.ps2.ign.com/media/679/679032/vids_1.html?fromint=1
Gamespot Video, the video is on the main page just let it load.
http://www.gamespot.com/ps2/driving/needforspeedunderground2/preview_6100892.html
mufc_daddy
Starting XI
Looking good.
I'll get it for Christmas.
I hope i wont get bored of it as quickly as i did with the first one though.
I'll get it for Christmas.
I hope i wont get bored of it as quickly as i did with the first one though.
official trailer 2 <<< click to download
