The ninth installment in the Need for Speed series features street racing-oriented gameplay, with certain customization options from Need for Speed: Underground. This is the first Need for Speed game released for a seventh-generation console, being a launch title for the Xbox 360. The game was widely acclaimed, becoming the best-selling game in the franchise with 16 million copies sold. It is also considered by many fans to be the best entry in the series.
Not for this version, though. The article here is talking about the Nintendo DS version, which received generally negative reviews. Not to mention, to make matters worse, this was also my first game for the Nintendo DS, so it was a very poor introduction for me to that device.
The opening scene is very cringeworthy, and the graphics are extremely muddy, and almost as bad as the graphics in Big Rigs: Over the Road Racing and London Racer. The cars have block-like shapes and have horrible textures, making them look like cardboard boxes painted up to resemble cars.
With very floaty physics and overly sensitive controls, the rubber-banding is significantly worse than in the other releases, making racing feel very slow and tedious, even when you're going at your vehicle's max speed.
Nitrous was removed, you know, that boost of speed that almost every street racing game had. Even the GBA port had nitrous so there was no reason why it couldn't be in the DS version. Even the police will only chase you when they feel like it.
No reward is given for defeating Razor (the boss of the game); if you win the game with 100% completion, the only reward is just a notice.
The soundtrack is generic that lacks the licensed music from the console and PC versions. It also reuses the music from the GBA version, only in higher quality.
Should've stuck with giving me something completely different for DS instead. What was I even thinking...