Written by: Rik
Date posted: June 27, 2007

During ‘Hot Pursuit’ mode in NFS 3, you could overhear the radio chatter of the various cops after you – they’d say things like “I’m in pursuit of the Porsche – he’s going over 100…” – or whatever, all delivered, logically enough, in a terribly macho American accent. In Road Challenge, some of the courses seem to be based in Europe, and so there are a couple of variations from the glossy US voiceover.

Well, I say ‘a couple’ – it’s actually one. While every other European country in the game seems to be policed by US highway patrol, while racing on the vaguely UK-sounding circuits you’ll be treated to some comedy Scottish accents dimly reminiscent of Mike Myers’ ‘Fat Bastard’ character from Austin Powers. While they are pretty bad, they’re also fairly easy to ignore – except for the odd occasion when a copper informs dispatch that he’s joining pursuit, when he makes some ridiculous announcement along the lines of, “Lights on, flashy-flashy, vroom vroom…”

Jesus! Make no mistake, the first time you hear it, you’ll probably be so surprised/appalled/amused that you’ll crash your car and get arrested. Maybe it’s some kind of deliberate tactic to put you off, I don’t know. There aren’t any English accents in the game, by the way – just Scottish – even though one of the tracks is called ‘Durham Road’. For those of you who don’t know, Durham’s not in Scotland, although I’d hate to have heard what kind of terrible approximation of the Geordie accent EA would have come up with.