Written by: Rik
Date posted: June 10, 2022
I remember really liking the 2005 edition of Most Wanted, but it’s been a long time since I played it: it’s got the kind of punishing career mode that can be very satisfying to beat but which also leaves you kind of broken at the end. I think I must have been a little bit rubbish at ending the big, long chases that you end up in towards the end of the game, and for a while the sight of a big police 4×4 in real life made me twitch slightly.
But, as I’ve given the remake a bit of a kicking, it felt like time to return to the original for a little bit. I’ve played other Black Box NFS games of a similar vintage – Underground, Underground 2 and Carbon – more recently and they all stood up pretty well, so I wasn’t expecting to be disappointed, but being plonked back at the start of the career ladder with the choice of a VW Golf or a Fiat Punto possibly acted as a deterrent to extended play.
After farting around with various things to get it working (fun fact: you can’t have Underground and Most Wanted (2005) installed on the same computer as it will think they’re the same game – you have to rename the .exe of whichever one you installed first to bypass this) I found that for the most part Most Wanted is the game I remembered and loved. Even the ‘start off with a shit car’ bits contained plenty of exciting moments, but in truth they don’t last that long, and if you play your cards right you can get your hands on a fairly decent motor the next time you upgrade.
You have to reconcile yourself with the way the AI works – particularly if you make a big mess of something towards the very end of the race, just watch as the arrows representing your opponents zoom up behind you on the mini-map at an improbably high speed – but the circuit and sprint races against other racers are just part of the overall challenge and such annoyances are diluted as a result. And the police chases feel more organic and satisfying than in Most Wanted (2012) – early encounters give you a taste of what you have to do without being too tricky, while also giving you the impression that when things ramp up, it’ll get much harder.
A bit like when I went back to the original Underground a few years ago, what started as a couple of hours testing out an old favourite soon got out of hand and, in this case, turned into active consideration of smashing through the whole thing again from start to finish. Which, so far, I’ve managed to resist. But I’d still feel comfortable putting Most Wanted (2005) towards the top of the list of NFS games I’ve played, and possibly my all-time list of racers as well.
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