Why I love Need For Speed Underground 2!

Growing up, I wasn’t allowed to play many games. I had one laptop and some flash sites that I spent most of my time on. Now, as a grown-up, I feel like I missed a lot. This is why I have been exploring and playing old games that I’ve never played before. One of those games include Need For Speed Underground 2. That game feels like it was made by God compared to the games that I actually got to play as a child (fucking Garfield 2 on the pc. ;_;) I feel like with Need For Speed I can relive my childhood the way I always wanted it to be (this is mostly a trans thing tho lmao.)

Need For Speed Underground 2 is a racing game focused on underground car culture. Japanese cars, tuning, wacky car design, and street racing. The game has a lot of customization options to change the exterior of the car, as well as tuning to make sure the internals are as powerful as they can be. The game is mostly focused around races, but there is an open world to explore as well. There are a wild variety of races: Circuit, Sprint, Drag, Drift, Street X (similar to circuit but with a small track), U.R.L (circuit but on an actual track rather than on a street), Special Events (less of a race and more of a mission where you have to get to a certain point on the map before the time runs out), and Outruns (you have to overtake your opponent and get far away from them to win). I like all of the race types except for Drag, I just don’t think I have the reflexes for it.

I love the overall atmosphere of the game, especially the visual design. Yeah, the game looks very old, but I think that’s what makes the atmosphere even better. I love the reflections on the cars, the reflections on the road, I love making my car as outrageous looking as possible (gotta put underglow on every car lol). I love the late night setting of the game, and the thrilling races in the midst of it all.

I guess the game really does replicate a feeling of rebelliousness that I never got to experience until now. I think the music in the game also helps with establishing that atmosphere. For me, it feels like the perfect soundtrack to a Need For Speed game. There is a lot of rock and metal while you’re outside, racing and exploring the world, mixing with the aggressive sounds of the engine. But while you’re inside, tuning or customizing your car, the genre switches to hip hop, giving a slightly more relaxed atmosphere. When you first boot up the game, you hear a remix of Riders on the Storm, with vocals of Snoop Dogg. It feels like the perfect start to the game as you are introduced into this world of underground car culture and become intrigued by what’s to come.

The selection of cars is very wide, from incredibly cheap cars to straight up SUVs and expensive cars. One of the first cars that you can select is a Nissan 180sx, which I approve of. The 180sx is my dream car, I think its one of the nicest looking Japanese cars, plus it has pop up headlights. So, of course, I picked that one as my first car in the game. Technically, you can make a sleeper in the game, but the game rewards you for customizing the exterior of your car.

Fuck it, car show off time:

In terms of gameplay, this is an arcade racer, meaning that the controls are not going to be very realistic. The cars all handle differently, some have stiffer turning, others can oversteer. There is a whole lot of driving in the game, and I think sticking to racing lines are a must, even if this isn’t a very realistic game. The AI cars can get aggressive and spin you out, which always keeps you engaged. You can do the same thing to the AI cars though, and sabotage their chances of winning the race by spinning them out. Many people have pointed out the rubberbanding AI issue in these old Need For Speed games, but I think this aspect was pretty tame in this one. I never felt that the AI overtook me by cheating. Compared to the first Underground game, the AI in this one is pretty fair. This could just be my game though.

Circuit, Sprint, Street X, and U.R.L modes all play fairly similar. U.R.L usually has multiple races per event and is structured like a tournament. Circuit and Sprint can sometimes get long and frustrating if you lose your focus on it. Street X races are usually pretty short, but they always start out with you crowded around many cars trying not to spin out, and then either the AI performs perfectly and you have to restart the race, or you manage to overtake the AI and come first. I enjoyed the Drift mode a lot. It doesn’t completely change the handling of the car in Underground 2 (at least I never noticed that) and it makes me feel cool lol. Drag is a mode that I struggle with since the first Underground game. Luckily, in Underground 2, you don’t have to play every drag event on the map. You can just skip most of them, but you’ll have to do at least a couple. Since I am so bad at drag, what I usually do is I sabotage the AI cars so that they get totalled and I get to take as much time as I want to win. XDD This is truly a skill issue, but I am less enthusiastic about the drag races than I am about normal circuit races.

Overall, I really like this game, even if it gets challenging at times. I played it on my PC with a controller and I think that this game was a lot of fun. I definitely recommend it if you enjoy racing games with a focus on car customization. This has been more of an infodump but idk where else to put this information lol.

Warioware: Smooth Moves (Short Review)

Recently, I have played Warioware: Smooth Moves for the Wii. This is the first Warioware game I’ve played that was made for a home console. As always, it is fun and full of different microgames to play although it is somewhat slower than the original Warioware for the Gameboy Advance due to the motion controls. It is not sluggish by any means, it just gives you more time to adjust to the microgame.

The game itself shows you what position you should hold the Wii controller before each microgame starts, and gives you time to get into the right position. I think the introductions for each position of the Wii controller are hilarious, they are very overdramatic in classic Warioware fashion. The microgames themselves range from somewhat basic (balancing an object on your “hand” using the Wii controller) to ones that include cool references, and even to some weird and bizarre microgames. One of my favourites is where you have to high five a Nintendog. I think that is very cute but also nostalgic (I used to play a lot of Nintendogs before I got a dog.)

The game itself has a fairly big amount of content to play through, as well as challenge levels where all the microgames you’ve already played get thrown at you randomly. I enjoy trying to get all the microgames to show up so I can play the challenge levels with every microgame in the game.

The game isn’t without it’s flaws though, as sometimes the game will not recognise what movement you’re making, and it’s kinda confusing at first to figure out exactly what kind of motion you have to make to beat each microgame.

Apart from that, I think the game is fantastic and a ton of fun. It isn’t very expensive and in case the price rises, the Wii is a very easy console to mod. ;))