Feeling some genuine need for speed?

Today, I finally got my new monitor. Other one was broken for some time, so I was using a remote desktop connection (UltraVNC) from my laptop. I hesitated a long time, but after a thorough qualitative comparison between CRT and TFT, I finally went for the CRT monitor. Image quality is still far superior.

Anyway, I was longing to my desktop system since I wanted to test some new game demos which obviously wasn’t possible on the laptop. First in row was the Need for Speed Most Wanted demo.
And I must admit, this last incarnation should indeed be the most wanted nfs in history 🙂 Funnily enough, I just test it the day it is officially released in Europe.
I remember in the ’90s when NFS 1 came out, I was so excited, because I had been playing the demo for months. NFS 1 was an amazing race game at its time. They made a special edition which only gave more of the same joy. So when the sequel came out, I was really anxious to buy it, however, that was my first disappointment. I almost couldn’t believe they made a worse product than its predecessor! They were obviously targetting a different market. There seemed a bit of light at the end of the tunnel with the NFS Porche 2000 release, but since then, gameplay quality just degraded and I really gave it up. What was once the king of racegames to me, seemed to go down the same road as the Test Drive series.

However, stop the moaning now, because there is now NFS MW! 😀 I admit I wasn’t following the latest releases in detail, but with this release, they are really back on track:

1. superb graphics (was never really a problem); this also includes very rich environments
2. rocking soundtrack
3. great cars
4. enjoyable car phyics; they’re not realistic, still not too arcadish
5. nice overall interface and feeling

I also think they made a good demo. There are plenty of race modes, more than 1 car 😉 and also more than one soundtrack 🙂 It’s all details, but it pleases me. I had to finetune the graphics settings somewhat to make it run smooth on my machine (athlonxp 2500 + radeon 9800pro) but I didn’t had to turn everything down (still had a good laugh at the minimum requirements which promise that it should run on a geforce mx! :P). Some new effects I remarked: 1) when driving really fast, you get a motion blur effect which, for one time, only makes it more realistic! It’s not difficult to implement motion blur, yet it’s the art of employing it well. So great job. 2) I was also impressed by the realism of the raindrops on my windscreen. Of course there is also the obligatory shadows and dynamic sun effects. It was actually the first time since long that I felt the need again to upgrade my graphics hardware 😉
I tried to find some nice screenshots which reflect all of this, but it seems no single screenshot is able to convey the feeling..

So stop reading and leech/play that demo! 😉