The Need for Speed series has offered gamers a world to release an unconscionable sense of recklessness since the first coming of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on PlayStation in 1998. After a relative streamline of success with games focused on either aggressive high-speed cop chases, or underground street racing with custom pimped out rides, Electronic Arts has come up with a new formula that integrates both concepts into one in their latest release: Need for Speed Most Wanted.

Set in a large industrialized landscape, you, the new guy in town, are trying to make a name for yourself by making your way up the black list. The black list contains the names of the top 15 most wanted street racers in town and, of course, none other than the biggest a-hole in the game has made his way to the top of the list using the car that he stole from you. The story is very straight forward and hardly original, but the presentation of the story is done in a very unique and stylized way using real actors in full-motion video cutscenes. I actually think the first hot babe you see in the game had a few minor roles in some movies including Van Helsing – but don’t quote me on that.

To make your way up the black list you need to challenge and beat each racer on the list starting from the bottom. But before you can challenge a black list racer there is a pre-requisite of races and challenges you are required to beat in order to be considered worthy enough as a rival. The system EA put in place here is very well thought-out. Players can’t just rocket to the top without any real challenge. To beat the game you actually have to play it, if you catch my drift. The pre-requisites involve winning a certain number of street races, and completing milestone events to accumulate bounty. Once you’ve gained enough notoriety you will be issued a challenge by the next person on the list.

As you progress through the black list, the requisites for challenging the next rival become more difficult to complete and take more time to fulfill. The gradual increase in difficulty as you progress through the ranks is very evident, and you’ll be quick to realize that your Fiat Punto or Chevy Cobalt isn’t going to cut it anymore. Now here is the good news: you don’t actually have to blow major sums of cash to get awesome cars. When you beat a challenger on the blacklist you are given the option to pick two out of six possible rewards for winning. Three of the rewards include goodies like unlocking performance parts that can be used in the mod shop to upgrade your vehicle. The other three rewards are labeled with question marks and two of them give items that work like "get out of jail free" cards. And most importantly, one out of the three mystery rewards is the pink slip to your opponent’s car.

Money in Need for Speed Most Wanted is best spent towards modding up your car to tweak its performance and to give it your own unique look. EA took the popular customization feature that they introduced in Need for Speed Underground and transferred it over to Most Wanted. Some fans of the NFSU and NFSU2 games might be disappointed by the significantly lesser amount of customization options that are available in NFS Most Wanted, but if you’re primarily a fan of the "pursuit" part of the Need for Speed series, like myself, I have no doubt that you will embrace this as a welcome merge. And fret not, because the game features some smoking hot cars that you’ll be drooling over regardless of whether or not you choose to customize them.

The police pursuits lay down the foundation for what truly makes the game so fun to play. All of us as humans have that irrational side that whispers "keep going" when we’re pulled over by the police – or at least I do anyways. And as immoral as it may sound, Electronic Arts has provided us with a venting place to let these emotions loose. There’s nothing quite like the rush you get from having twelve pissed off cops chasing right on your tail at breakneck speeds with a roadblock only a few meters ahead and a split second to react. One neat feature in the game is your car’s “heat meter”, which measures how badly the cops want to bust your balls. The more you encounter police and cause trouble, the more heat your car will accumulate. With a heat level of three, cops will be extremely aggressive to you and come in mass numbers. It’s a nice new feature especially if you just want to go into free roam mode and rouse some trouble for the fun of it.

The graphics in the game aren’t too shabby, but the environment itself is somewhat static. Anywhere you go, the environment pretty much looks the same. The city – unfortunately – is located in a place where weather patterns follow closely to those of Los Angeles. Basically you’re left with a whole lot of sunshine, and an occasional grouping of dark clouds. Sometimes it rains. But when it does, it never seems to last for more than 45 seconds. It would have been nice to see some other weather patterns that affect driving conditions such as snow or fog, but the lack of a more dynamic environment only puts a minor dent in the game when compared to the grand scale of things.

Two interesting new features worth mentioning are "pursuit breakers" and "speed breakers." A pursuit breaker is an object in the environment that can be knocked down to help get cops off your tail during a pursuit. These objects are scattered all over the place and can be seen on your map if you decide to hunt one down. As an example, you can smash through a gas pump at your local gas station causing an explosion that forces the roof to collapse behind you and cuts off any ensuing cops. Speed breaker is a feature that causes time itself to slow down, allowing you to easily maneuver around hazards such as roadblocks and spike strips. Sadly, and for reasons I'm not aware of, EA has decided not to implement the replay feature in Most Wanted and I know it will be missed by many fans of the series.

The biggest dent in the game is the lack of effort EA put towards multiplayer. It’s a common two player split screen style racing set up that can be seen in almost every other racing game on the market, which is fine. But for some reason there aren’t any cops in multiplayer mode. After approximately 10 minutes of racing a friend I can’t help but begin to think "how am I going to get him out of here so I can go back to my single player career." Single player is where the game truly shines.

Overall, Need for Speed Most Wanted is a game that’s easy to pick up and hard to put down, with a substantial amount of realistic action crammed into every high speed pursuit you engage in. If you’re already a fan of the Need for Speed series, then this is a must buy. If you’re not familiar with the series, I’d highly recommend giving this game a shot. I feel confident in saying you’ll become a fan of the series after giving the career mode a test run. Plus, if you’re a car junky you can grab the Black Edition of the game, which features a couple more high-end cars. Aside from some multiplayer issues, EA is definitely going in the right direction with the series.