Another year, another NFS. Don’t these guys ever get tired? I hope they don’t cause they churn out awesome games year after year!! And NFS: MW is definitely one of the best NFS games - I would rate it above both Underground games and probably even the best of the series. Hot Pursuit combined with Tuning capabilities and brilliant visuals make this a superb game. And guess what, this is only the demo.

Gameplay & Presentation:

Let me cut right to the chase (pun intended). The cars in the demo include stock and tuned versions of the Ford Mustang and the Porsche Cayman S for the Quick Race mode. For the Challenge Series, you don’t get a choice - they give you a car for each challenge. There are three challenges - one each with a Dodge Viper, Volkswagen Golf, and Lexus IS300 (all tuned). The cars feel heavy and do skid a bit but I guess that will change once you get used to the feel of the game. The cops are a little annoying but once you get used to them and the tricks that you can pull off, cop chases are oober fun. It quite apparent that EA introduced some elements from its Burnout series which add more fun to the game. There is also a video explaining what the Blacklist mode is all about. The city has nice open roads and driving is fun. And oh yeah, Josie Maran looks hot.

Graphics & Sound:

The graphics improve considerably over previous NFS game and the game offers plenty of tweaking options. I was able to run the game at 1024×768 with almost all eye-candy turned on at a modest 25-35fps. I even managed to run it with FSAA at the highest setting but it caused the game to lag a little after a few races so i switched it off. If your GPU is good enough, you can enable HDR which instantly makes the game look a lot better. But the bottomline is that the game looks gorgeous and the engine is pretty scalable. But to enjoy all the eye-candy, you will need at least a 128MB card that lets you enable FSAA and HDR.

Coming to the sound, EA has always provided good sound effects on NFS games and this one is no different. If you have a THX system, the game will sound great and you will almost feel every bump and crash (ok I’m exaggerating but the sound is pretty good). You get the standard hip-hop/electronica sound track but I really wish they let you pick your own songs to replace the ones provided - just like in GTA III. Or at least their selection of music could improve. Some songs tend to be good while some are plain horrible. Maybe an all-electronic/instrumental soundtrack would be good - like in the old NFS days.

Replay Value & Multiplayer:

The game has strong replay values and once the full game comes out, multiplayer should be addictive. A couple of the races in the demo are not easy and you will want to keep playing until you beat them. From the online reviews that I have read, the game has more than 15 hours of gameplay which means if you replay it, the hours start to pile up. And that is a good thing. The Quick Race and Challenge modes will keep you busy after you have finished the career mode. I think the Challenge mode in particular is a good addition. Again, it is a throwback to the days of NFS6 (Hot Pursuit 2) which had a challenge mode in addition to the pursuit mode. Overall, this game will definitely keep you occupied for many many hours.

Conclusion:

I know this is only the demo but that doesn’t stop me from saying that this is a potentially amazing game. The only problem I had was with shadow detail - at anything above zero, there were jaggies but I don’t care much about them. It is a hefty download at 544MB but if you want to check the game before it hits stores in a few days, download and test the game for yourself.

Score: 4.5/5

PS: Demos rated on a scale of 5 with 5 being the highest and full games rated on a scale of 10 with 10 being the highest

Screenshots:

More screenshots posted here.