Need for Speed: Undercover

[powah]

EA's John Riccitiello says that the company was torturing its Vancouver team with a rigorous 12 month development cycle, but that has now been changed for the better.
At the William Blair & Company's 28th Annual Growth Stock Conference, he indicated that he was pretty disappointed with Need for Speed last year.
"I thought it was an okay game, in terms of gameplay. It's not good. But who wanted Pro Street? It was a sort of made up, put numbers on the side of your car and pretend to drive your Ferrari where? Or your Porsche where?"
This year, the company will be releasing Need For Speed: Undercover - a game with a very strong mission structure that Riccitiello compared to The Transporter.
"For those of you who ever saw movies like The Transporter - it's sort of a cult classic among people with a B-movie mentality, which fits me perfectly.
"I liked it. I apologize. For those of you with no taste, and you liked it too, we can go have a Schlitz after this."
He said that the new title is a much richer proposition with a huge, embedded storyline behind it. Thanks to the strong narrative hook, he feels really good about the title.
Riccitiello noted that the Vancouver Need For Speed team had been working for eight consecutive years on a 12 month development cycle.
"Last summer we added head count and split the team in two, so now there are two teams on a 24 month cycle. And this is sort of their first 16 and-a-half month game...Because we didn't do it far enough ago to give us a full two year dev cycle."
Next year's game will be a full two year development cycle, he said.
"We were torturing a very talented group of people up in Vancouver, which makes it harder to be as innovative every year. So, I think we are going to get better from here.
"I'm confident that Undercover is a much better game than Pro Street, and I expect that from this point forward they will do a lot better."

Source

[emil_t]

pah ... and i was hopeing for High Stakes 2 or Porsche 2, but i guess they are going for more green in the blue,
stupid mass consumers not wanting a little bit of simulation

[wooflepoof]

Originally Posted by powah

Source

OT but, Hell yea Pikachu!

[Blayde]

Porsche 2 would be pointless, there aren't that many models to make a new game out of, now NFS: Ferrari

Anyway, i just hope they get more into realism and less into useless bodykits and fake upgrades

[DTMracer]

Prostreet got boring very quickly, as you just raced around a set circuit.

I'd love to be able to take whatever route I want to win a race, just like in real life street racing.

[insane]

I think it shall be interesting.
I'm weird - I somewhat enjoyed ProStreet, however, I enjoyed Carbon even more.

Looking forward to a demo release...

[DTMracer]

Maybe the team should add in a "drive by shooting" challenge...death race style.

[Paco]

So why didn't they call it Need for Speed: Driv3r ?

I want Need for Speed, not need for deliveries or need for escort mission...

Are they using the same writers that they used on the Most Wanted and Carbon stories? That'll be pathetic...

God damn it EA, it's been all downhill since High Stakes...

[Viper007Bond]

This actually sounds pretty awesome.

[Wizegui]

As long as you can drive a Police Charger, or Crown Vic, I might just give this game a try.

[Cosworth]

Originally Posted by Blayde

Porsche 2 would be pointless, there aren't that many models to make a new game out of, now NFS: Ferrari

Anyway, i just hope they get more into realism and less into useless bodykits and fake upgrades

The people behind GTR2 are releasing an all Ferrari sim ....

[LeMans GTR]

I like this idea,

Hopefully I can have a car chase in a ferrari that goes all the way from the winding countryside to the inner city streets

[Ilpav]

I would look into it if they make a good storyline. It'll probably be like the first FnF movie: Your a young detective with the FBI and you join the racing scene to take down some kind of criminal leader, hence the title: "Undercover".

[powah]

My least favourite NFS games were the Underground series. I liked ProStreet though I think it needs some work done on the storyline and gameplay. I think it's good that they're spending more time on this one, only if it doesn't turn out to be something like Underground 3.

[Viper007Bond]

Yeah, I much preferred Pro Street to the Underground titles. I own every title since NFS 3 except for the Underground titles.

[petarkb]

Originally Posted by Cosworth

The people behind GTR2 are releasing an all Ferrari sim ....

With that same physics engine as GTR2, probably. Again.

[jayhawk]

Is this the series of games where you can take a 90 degree corner at 100 mph?

[emil_t]

Originally Posted by petarkb

With that same physics engine as GTR2, probably. Again.

yeah, it's about time they improve that engine, especially the graphics

[_HighVoltage_]

Couple of things I do not want to see in this NFS
- No Tuning of cars - enough already...
- No NOS - They make it look like the cars are jet propelled (and have an afterburner)
- No cheap cars - I want the old school stuff - cars that cost more than 50k in real life, especially some rare cars would be nice

But something tells me, none of the things on my list will come true

[powah]

Originally Posted by jayhawk

Is this the series of games where you can take a 90 degree corner at 100 mph?

Up until ProStreet, yeah.