Developers of racing games received a new injection of life and purpose in the last two years. The growing popularity of street racing and modding has flourished in the popular culture, while Criterion's Burnout series has blazed a path all its own, bringing arcade racing back to its pre-Gran Turismo glory days. The Need for Speed series has never clung to a particular aspect of pop culture like Rockstar's Midnight Club or a particular car like Sega's Ferrari 360, but the long-time series struck gold with its light implementation of modding with Need for Speed Underground, selling more units worldwide than any game in 2003 with 7.5 million. Need for Speed Most Wanted continues the street culture thing, but EA's Canadian development team has mined one of the better iterations of the series, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, fusing both rudiments into a newly refined, yet strangely familiar racer.

<b><center>Beautiful+lighting+systems+create+fantastic+scenes+like+this.</center></b>

<b><center>Get+ready+for+high-res+cars+galore.</center><center></center></b>

NFS Most Wanted is a well-balanced, challenging, and substantial racing game that's worth your while on any system, including this most recent iteration on Xbox 360. It returns the series to its cop chasing days while incorporating street cars, culture, and an impressive display of stylized FMV without forgetting the fundamentals: People like to drive sweet-looking fast cars, they want more than a little freedom, and hey, if there are a hot chicks too? All the better.Though this is obviously a racing game, the first, most noticeable aspect of Most Wanted is the story and presentation. The game is draped in a crazily chromed out, sepia-tone landscape of industrial structures, and populated with heavily bloom-lit FMV characters. The first time you see the story being told, like me, you will probably gasp in horror, "Wha??? The return of crappy FMV?!?!?!!! OOOHHH NOOOOO!" But this mixture of animated, highly colored FMV characters and stylized backgrounds is both imaginative and refreshing. And it's risky. I wouldn't touch FMV with a 50-foot pole if I was a developer these days, but this presentation is creative and striking. The actors aren't phenomenally awful either (though the voice acting does have a streak of heavy cheese running right through it).The story is a typical Saturday morning special narrative. It spins an unimaginative tale of revenge and restoration of order, and the bad guys, Razor, and the local cop who meanly keys your car in the beginning of the game, are just annoying and evil enough to get your goat. From a creative standpoint, the story is worthless, but EA liked its trial run with Brooke Burke last year in NFSU2 and retained a less cold, angular female figure to narrate this game with Josie Maran (who, in my opinion, is svelte, curvy, and far better at her job than the icy Burke). So, you'll keep wanting hook up with her as often as possible.But that's not all. The tutorials and blacklist characters are introduced with flair and a friendly 'tude. Whole chunks of the background dramatically drop into place to form a landscape before you start a race, and the whole presentation is laced with slick, stylish graffiti and flickering Fight Club imagery. I like it all. EA may be a corporate, market-driven mega-company with monopolistic tendencies, and this may be just another attempt to tap into the "underground street market," but it's done with appealing artistry and smart style.Depending on which version you buy, you'll also receive a different technical set of visuals. The PC, GameCube, and Xbox versions display minimal to no flickering or aliasing, while the PS2 version instantly gives away its limitations. The Xbox 360 version, easily the best looking of the bunch, offers several visual elements you won't see in the other games. EA laser scanned each car, which provides an even more realistic look to each vehicle, and its Canadian development team normal mapped both the cars and the streets, giving each a crisp, sharp appearance. Somewhat like the streets in NFSU, the streets appear wet when they're not, a result of normal mapping some obstacles. But since you're usually driving quickly over them, you may never even notice.Another visual goody is found in the tree shadows, which apparently no longer cast fake shadows, but instead cast dynamic shadows, thanks to EA's work on the lighting system. If you've seen the dynamic lighting in the current gen games, then you're in for a real treat on this next gen title. The sunlight looks like it's coming down in perfectly clear, sharp lines, and when it hits the cars, it reflects off everything, the rims, the bumpers, the windows, the fender, the grill, you name it. Also, the 1080i and 720p modes do look better than the 480p modes, but the difference in this game is less noticeable than one would have thought. There are subtle changes, like sharper, more curvilinear surfaces on the vehicles themselves and on general objects, but the difference isn't vast.