Need for Speed: Underground is pure arcade-style driving game which takes the series away from the original racing theme into the highly publicized illegal street racing scene popularized by movies like The Fast and The Furious and games like the Midnight Club. So, if you're a car lover you want to own and drive ultra-fast - turbocharged - Nitrous-powered - cars, NFS: Underground could be good choice for you. Keep reading to see what you can expect.

NFS: Underground is a lot like it's predecessors. At the beginning of the game you will be able to create an unique driving profile. Once you've adjusted the settings to your preference, you can select one of the following racing modes: Go Underground, Quick race, and Play Online. The Underground mode is basically the main single-player career mode that contains over 101 races on 20 different tracks. You choose the difficulty level of each challenge, obviously, the more difficult challenge you choose, the higher your rewards are when you win each one. The rewards include "Underground" ranking on the charts, magazine covers and also new parts and body kits for your cars. To make gameplay more various, the game includes a number of different race types - essentially you have classical Race, Drift, and Drag. The classical Race is actually broken up into a number of styles, including Sprint (race from point A to point B), Circuit (multi-lap), and Lap Knockout (cars in last place are booted each lap; last car across the line wins). The Drag races test your reaction time and the Drift races try your ability to slide the back end of the vehicle out around turns. The Undeground mode should keep you busy a couple of hours. For those who wish to get started as soon as possible, there's the quick race option. This particular mode also allows you to participate in circuit, sprint, drag, drift, and lap knockout racing modes. You can also choose a free run mode on any of the unlocked courses and using any of the unlocked vehicles you’ve got.

There's twenty licensed and fully customizable cars available to race, unlike the Midnight Club series which doesn't use "real" cars. In NFS: Underground you'll find a Acura Integra, Dodge Neon, Ford Focus, Honda Civic, Mazda Miata MX5, Mazda RX7, Honda S2000, Toyota Supra, Toyota Celica, VW Golf GTI 2.0L (115HP), and a few more. All the cars are rated in handling, acceleration, and top speed, but I'd say that in practice the cars don't drive all that differently, especially once you've purchased some upgrades in the career mode.

One of the best features of this game is the ability to upgrade your vehicles and customize them before racing. There is a ton of ways to customize your ride with parts to have better performance on the inside, such as the engine, brakes and the all important nitrous oxide boost. There is also a ton of available paint jobs, decals spoilers, bumpers and more for decorative and practical purposes, so you can truly create your own unique racing car.

NFS: Underground also allows you to race up to four players in multiplayer over the Internet (no subscription fees required). In the multiplayer, the PC players can race against PS2 players and vice versa. Unfortunately, NFS: Underground does not support LAN play :( Shame on you EA!

There's no doubt that NFS: Underground is the best looking arcade racing on the PC. All the cars are beautifully rendered and gorgeous to look at. The game also features a pretty dramatic motion-blur effect that you will experience at high speeds.

However, the game does suffer in a few areas. For example, the tracks look too much similar - you'll find yourself taking the same turns and using the same paths but just in a different order. There's no damage model for the cars. Also the missing LAN support is really bad surprise. That's why I cannot rate this impressive arcade racer higher than 82%.

As I stated before, NFS: Underground is an arcade-style racing game that is designed to provide fun. So, if you are looking for a racing simulation that is 100% based on reality, look elsewhere. To my surprise, I find this game very entertaining, especially the drag races rock :) This game is good looking, and very addictive. I'd recommend this game to any arcade racing fan. Download playable demo (220MB).

Minimum system requirements:
Windows 98/ME/2K/XP, Intel Pentium III (or compatible) CPU running at 700Mhz or higher, 32MB DirectX 9 compatible video card (Geforce2 or higher) using a supported chipset*, 128MB RAM (256 MB using Windows 2000 or XP), DirectX compatible sound card, 2 GB HDD space, 8x CD-ROM, Network card for broadband connectivity for MP.

*Supported GFX chipsets: ATI Radeon 7500 or greater, Intel i865, Matrox Parhelia, NVidia geForce2 or greater, SiS Xabre 400