It’s definitely the most Nitro of all the Need for Speed games.
The Need for Speed series has been kickin’ about multiple game platforms for over a decade and a half and in that amount of time has matured, evolved, and become a form from which other racing games find their mold. When someone mentions Need for Speed, the first thing that should come to mind is Top Gun. The next thing should be police cars that won’t get off your back, drifting along break-neck turns, and customizing the hell out of virtual cars modeled after the real life variety. Like most games that exist on multiple platforms, Nitro follows suit to extend its racetracks into the neighborhood of Wii gamers by toning it down a little bit.
The immense feature set present in every Need for Speed game since the release of Underground is simply lacking in Nitro. Car modding is certainly present in both the mechanical and aesthetic sense, and the customization options are further expanded by garnering race rewards. But the presentation leaves little desire to do so. A great deal of Need for Speed Nitro is hindered by the presentation. For instance, you’ve earned the opportunity to enhance your vehicle and take it to a new track. You can stop playing to go through the four tedious load screens to take five to seven minutes to add minor stylistic enhancements, or continue through two tedious load screens to the next race which you won’t need any enhancements to win and will last no more than three minutes.
Need for Speed Nitro showcases the dumbing down of the series with forgiving physics, superfluous upgrades, mundane tracks, another derivative “racing game” campaign, and style that screams poorly done, Americanized Saturday morning anime. These are all pretty big flaws in my book, but the game holds up in the fun department. The five gentrified race locations whittled down to their base stereotypes are Rio de Janeiro, Cairo, Madrid, Singapore, and Dubai. Each race location features race circuits, elimination courses, drafting, drifting and speed challenges, drag races, and tons of loading time. The difficulty of the game never rises dramatically, any number of control scheme works well enough without much to learn (it even suggests one-handed driving), and it offers “corrective steering” in the options menu. Need for Speed Nitro is clearly developed and marketed to the casual, “everyone who owns a Wii” demographic.
Casual gamers who are new to racing will most likely enjoy the game a great deal once they get past the ever-present, fun-leeching load screen. Fans of the series will immediately be disappointed by the complete lack of substance and finesse that they’ve come to expect from the Need for Speed moniker. The game is divided into three cups, or classes, starting with bronze. Silver and gold are only playable after completing the levels below them. Each level boasts a star rating totaling either three or five stars, and a great deal of my playthrough was spent attaining the maximum rating per level, because that’s where the challenge of the game was hidden. I use the term "challenge" quite loosely in this respect.
The more stars you have, the more likely the game will unlock car modifications, level challenges, and extra cars. Star ratings are based on your quickest lap, your final placing, and the amount of style you’ve got. Style, of course, is based loosely on how cool of a driver you are and how well you take turns by drifting, how closely you get to the car in front of you by drafting, or how much air you get. If you’re in the lead, then your car garners much more style by covering the landscape in graffiti, which as we all know, is quite pimpin’. I guess. The incentive to collect and acquire keeps the game going much longer than it would without it, because the cars, the really nice cars, are locked until you’ve nearly completed all but the very last gold cup circuit. The campaign is both fun and frustrating for one to four players, but the Arcade mode, where players compete with each other, is quick fun all around.
Need for Speed Nitro is a great introductory racing game for those apprehensive to try a genre they may not be familiar with, a fun game you may throw on to kill a few minutes, or a distraction to enjoy with a few friends. It is not by any means a precision, sports-tuned, physics heavy racing game or on par with other Need for Speed games in the series, save maybe the DS version. Racing fans may be disappointed by the shallow gameplay and campaign, but collection junkies will like the challenge of unlocking everything. Skilled drivers could have the game beat and a full garage of cars in less than ten hours.
The Good
Again, Again, Again: Some tracks are challenging enough to keep all but one star from your total rating. Frustrated completionists will find the redundancy fun.
The Bad
No Diving: The game is quite shallow in many aspects. Controls, physics, presentation, campaign, level length, unlockables, options, and customizations leave much to be desired.
Dealing With It: The load screen. You’ll be seeing a lot of it and it’s always the same image and the same repetitive, annoying drum beat. It will break your mind.
The Ugly
Expectations: The Need for Speed series has generally provided a top of the line racing experience in the past but Nitro does not live up to that legacy. Fans of the series best steer clear of this one.
Disclosure: Retail disc provided for review by EA.
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