This allows you to quickly perform a few tasks without having to pause the game. In this menu, you can drill down into the available races for your car, tweak your car's upgrades, engage in a most wanted race, and a few other options. To switch between cars and access a majority of the game's content, you use EasyDrive, a simplistic menu that can be invoked at nearly any time and shows up in the upper right. These vehicle locations, called Jackspots, are scattered throughout the game world, with some in plain sight and others hidden in alleyways off the beaten paths. Acquiring new cars isn't a matter of ranking up or amassing cash to make a purchase if you see one sitting in the game world, you drive up to it, push a button, and it's yours. This relatively powerful vehicle is a nice departure from the novice starter car, and that's not the only way the game breaks the traditional mold. The game literally and figuratively gives you a running start, putting you behind the wheel of a speeding Aston Martin as your first car. Rather than soaking the proceedings in the sometimes brooding rebelliousness of the original, the new game is all about being outwardly rowdy with as little downtime as possible. The game is geared around racing, evading the police, or getting back into doing one of the former as quickly as possible. What Criterion has done is reshaped the game, taking the thematic elements of the original and what worked out of Hot Pursuit and heading in a completely new direction. This is not a laundry list of shortcomings, though. Even the majority of the car customization has been dropped, with cosmetic changes thrown out completely and performance mods rarely resulting in physical changes to your car's appearance. There are no characters, as every racer is only seen in his car and with nondescript helmets. There really isn't much of a story to the game, other than that you are a new racer in town trying to run against 10 of the city's titular most wanted racers. Oddly, Hot Pursuit's DNA was not completely eschewed in favor of the previous Most Wanted. The reboot of Most Wanted is one of the most enjoyable games that the series has had in a long time. Whatever the reasons for that dissonance in the gameplay, Criterion has certainly gotten a much stronger footing this time around. Criterion's previous effort into the franchise was Hot Pursuit, which felt like an unstable marriage between its venerable Burnout franchise and the slightly more traditional Need for Speed series. The original game was arguably one of the overall best releases that the Need for Speed series has had, and it felt cohesive in its mix of street racing and evading the inevitable police pursuits. From a franchise perspective, remaking 2005's Most Wanted is something akin to treading on hallowed ground.

Need for speed most wanted pc review