Need for Speed: Most Wanted still has quite a few things in common with the two Underground games, however. For instance, the entire visual tuning part is still present, albeit slimmed. You can still outfit your cars with all kinds of official rims, spoilers or body kits, but unlike Underground 1 & 2, you don't get any advantages for it. Performance tuning, on the other hand, will prove necessary to stay competitive with your rivals. And with a plethora of engine, tyre and nitrous upgrades, MW provides just the thing to do that.

In Most Wanted, everything revolves around you making your way up the police blacklist. Your goal is to beat Razor, the guy that sabotaged and stole your ride and used it to claim the number one spot on the list. Your friend Mia gives you some cash so you can buy your first (slow) car (Fiat Punto, VW Golf level). Beating rivals unlocks more cars, parts and performance upgrades. for you to purchase. It won't be long before you'll be able to add nice cars like the Mazda RX-7 or Ford Mustang GT to your collection. However, to unlock the really nice rides (Lamborgini Gallardo, Ford GT to name just a few) you'll need to play quite a bit. A nice selection of about 35 officially licensed cars has been thrown in the game.

The career mode is presented through very cool cinematics. The movies are a mix between full-motion video and CGI, which may seem like a weird combination at first. However the result is very satisfying. And with Mia being played by the lovely Josie Maran, there's nothing to complain abut the presentation. The voicework is a tad too "bad-ass" at times, but it fits the theme nicely. Once more, the soundtrack was done by EA Trax. Unlike in many other EA games, I wasn't impressed by the tracklist this time. It just sounded a bit too repetitive. I also thought the different cars didn't sound as loud and agressive as they could have been.

The visuals are obviously the strongpoint of the Xbox 360 version. Though Project Gotham Racing 3 features more detailed models, Most Wanted still looks stunning, even on a normal (non-HD) TV. The lighting is especially well done. The sunlight reflects on your car's hood and windows and lensflares can really blind you at times. The abundance of light also depends upon the time of day. Unfortunately, you can't race at night, which -truth be told- was a charming trait of the two previous games. The sense of speed also impressive. When you're approaching the 200 km/h mark (or 125 mph for those of you who don't like the metric system), you see some kind of "speed haze" that slightly distorts your vision.

Even at those speeds, the cars still respond fluently. The realism was upped a notch compared to the previous two NFS games, but the game's still very arcade-like. One of the innovations in this title is the ability to slow time. This is especially handy when you want to evade a wall or a collision with oncoming cars. As for the rest, there's nothing really new to the series.

The adrenalin-pumping high-speed car chases make their triumphant return. After all, what's the point of 'illegal' streetracing if there's no-one to catch you? The cops provide a nice challenge and can make a difficult race even more nail-biting. Unfortunately, challenge is nowhere to be found in the first half of the game. You literally soar through the game in your first couple of hours. Afterwards, things become more difficult, but still nothing out of the ordinary. The fact that you're still racing against only three opponents doesn't help either.

Next to the Career mode, there's a Challenge mode and of course multiplayer via Xbox Live, which is good if you want a real challenge. EA furthermore provides leaderboards so you can see where you rank among other players. The number of different gameplay options is nevertheless a bit on the low side, especially when compared to PGR3.