Need for Speed Underground Rivals Update

LAS VEGAS--Hot on the heels of Sony's recent press event in Las Vegas, Electronic Arts had us over for a closer look at its upcoming PSP iteration of the Need for Speed franchise, Need for Speed Underground Rivals. While we've had the chance to get some brief hands-on time with the promising title, we finally had the chance to get some quality time to check out the game and talk to a producer who let us poke around the impressive street racer.

As we mentioned in our last look, Need for Speed Underground Rivals will feature several different race modes that the have been tweaked to accommodate how a portable system is used. The traditional career mode has been segmented and split between quick and battle races. Success in both types of races will help you progress through the game, earn visual upgrades, new parts, and driver upgrade points that you'll use to purchase special performance parts. Battle races will offer four different race types. Some of the races, such as street x and drag, should be familiar to fans of the series, while two others, drift attack and nitrous run, are brand-spanking new. Drift attack will set you loose in a warehouse that resembles a giant pinball board, and your task will be to get through the board before time runs out. Nitrous run is a race to the finish that starts you out with full nitrous. As you tear through the track at high speeds, your nitrous meter will deplete. But if you manage to make it past a special time gate, it will be refilled.

Circuit races will come in three different difficulty levels: novice, pro, and master. Each level has different events to compete in, such as knockout, tournaments, time trial, and rally relay. Of the events mentioned, rally relay is a new addition to the Need for Speed canon. The event has you pick your two fastest cars for use in a race against a pair of artificial intelligence-controlled cars. To win, you must get through two laps, one for each of your cars.

Besides the above mentioned single-players games, Need for Speed Underground Rivals has two multiplayer modes, head-to-head wireless, which lets you go against a friend via Wi-Fi in all the race types. The twist to the matches is that the winner of the race will be branded with a "champ" stamp, while the loser will be adorned with an "owned" stamp. The virtual stamps will be logged by the game's stat-tracking system, and they can only be changed when you beat the same opponent.

The second multiplayer mode is party play, which lets you compete with up to four friends in turn-based races that track everyone's performance and dole out "champ" and "owned" stamps based on your scores.

You'll also find two nongame modes to play around with. Pocket garage is a 3D garage where you can pose your cars display case-style, and pocket trax is a unique jukebox-style music theater. Rather than just offer you the chance to listen to the music tracks as you can in most games, Need for Speed Underground Rivals has a unique music player that revolves around the game's soundtrack. NFSUR's soundtrack will include a selection of popular tunes from the console games as well as new tracks. The media player in the game will not only let you listen to the music tracks, but also let you watch music videos for the songs, if they're available. For music that doesn't have a video, you'll be treated to a Need for Speed-themed visualization.

If that doesn't sound like a hefty chunk of content to explore, consider this: NFSUR features 10 circuit tracks, four street x, three drag, and eight drift tracks. As far as cars go, you can plan on collecting 24 cars in the game, 20 regular cars and four boss cars that you'll earn once you defeat their owners.

In talking with the game's producer, it appears the handling is being balanced by the same driver that's been tapped to help balance the handling in the console games. The goal is going to be to have NFSUR's handling be a hybrid of the mechanics seen in the original Need for Speed Underground and its sequel, which was released late last year. However, in keeping with the desire to keep the experience user-friendly to portable players, some tweaking is planned to keep the handling easy to grasp. While it's not quite right in the version we saw, we expect the game will be just fine by the time it ships.

In terms of Need for Speed Underground Rivals' presentation, the game looks and sounds great. Detailed car models are livened by a dynamic particle system that kicks up sparks as you rub against opponents or track walls. The audio complements the rich graphics with a varied soundtrack of tunes, as well a grip of sound effects.

From the looks of things, Need for Speed Underground Rivals is shaping up to be a solid first outing for the series on the PSP, and it looks to be a tasty launch title to boot. The graphics appear to be a strong testament to the tiny system's considerable muscle and the development team's own technical prowess. The assortment of game modes and features also comes packing a hefty amount of appeal thanks to a rich offering that's easily comparable to the experience found on a home console. Hopefully in the time between now and launch, the development team will have the time to tighten everything up to give the game a good coat of polish. Need for Speed Underground Rivals is currently slated to ship alongside the North American PSP, which is currently slated for March. Look for more on the game in the coming months.