Review:
Need for Speed: Nitro DS Review

EA’s Need for Speed franchise has been putting out at least one game every year since 2002, with each instalment managing to improve slightly on the previous games. So what lies in store for the sixteenth (or is it seventeenth?) game in the driving challenge series?

Initially, the game seems deceptively deep – the sight of several menu screens absolutely covered in padlocks manages to convey the sense of a game bursting at the seams with things to do, find and see. Unfortunately, appearances can be deceiving and once you’ve dived beneath the surface, you’ll find yourself at the wrong end of a very shallow pool.

The game is split into the usual categories – Bronze, Silver, Gold and the bonus Nitro stages, with only Bronze being accessible from the beginning. Inside are the various challenges you’re forced to complete, set across six cities on the planet, such as Cairo, Madrid and Singapore, but none of them feel distinctive or even look different. The challenges themselves include lap racing against three random CPU cars, knockout lap racing against the CPU, sprint racing the CPU on one long road, smashing objects, smashing objects against the clock, collecting tags against the clock and racing through checkpoints against the clock.

The main flaw here is that the “challenges” basically fall into two distinct groups: racing against other cars (enjoyable), and racing against nothing (not enjoyable). All of the objectives are actually the same, just with different items placed on the screen to try and confuse you – smashable obstacles (park benches? On a race track?), golden tags and checkpoints all do the same thing, you merely have to drive through them. It displays a real lack of thought. What about Time Trials, avoiding collisions, outrunning the police, slalom markers and driving backwards? It wouldn’t matter so much that the same course is used over and over if there was more to do on it.