This game is a better pill to swallow if you lean towards liking the Burn-out games, less if coming from a Need for Speed gameplay point of view.

For me Need for Speed Most Wanted (the original) was for me the pinnacle of the NFS Series. It had everything but multiplayer because of the age it was released. Let's put it this way. They released a PS2 version at the same time. Regardless this game was fantastic.

But again that is just my opinion and you know what opinions are in common with. Let me break it down though.

Strengths of Need for Speed (original)

- Single player (cheesy) but still cool story about working up your ranks.
- Car modifications. Not as much as you would like (is there ever?) but still a great selection of decals and/or body kits.
- Did I say single player? Boss races that had feeling. Chance to gain a pink slip and take your opponents car. Opponents that mattered in single player. Really cool feeling of "working up the ranks"
- Fear. Get busted enough and lose your car. PERMANENTLY. Good stuff right there.
- A real economy. Money got you new rides or greatly needed upgrades. You could get different body kits and greatly change the look of your car (which in turn lowered your wanted level).

Need for Speed 2012

- Not really a sequel to Need for Speed Most Wanted.
- No story. No story at all.
- Great multiplayer.
- Not so hot view options.

This game could have been so much more. It is very pretty to look at. The multiplayer is fantastic but when it comes down to it, it's not a NFS Most Wanted sequel, it's a watered-down Burn-out sequel.

So again if your new to the series or coming from needing a Burn-Out sequel then this might float your boat. Otherwise the only thing this game has in common with NFS Most Wanted the original is cops.… Expand

I was looking very forward to this game. I bought it the day it came out, and have already sold it after becoming the number 1 'most wanted'. What a disappointment. Great graphics, and detail. Awesome transitions into the races, but the fun pretty much stopped there. The races were just repetitive after the first 4 or 5 cars. The 'most wanted' races lacked any depth or story, and anything that made it exciting to get the new car. A HUGE world, and only a handful of races. I missed the knockout races, the drift races, the speed camera races. A 9 for my anticipation... but a sad 4 for my experience.… Expand

As a massive NFS fan this was a huge let down. While it looks nice, its just so boring. The game has no soul and by the midway point I found I was playing it just to sell on and say I'd done it. Avoid this and go buy Forza Horizon, that has everything in it that this game should have had. Namely, its fun to play. Also, the decision to name this Most Wanted is a disgrace. The original had everything you'd want from an arcade racer, this has nothing in comparison. I can't can't help but laugh at this being labelled 'Need for Speed: Most Wanted - A Criterion Game', if I was Criterion I'd be ashamed to put my name to such a weak effort, not including it in the title. Very poor.… Expand

Wow just wow why all this love? I got this game because one of my friends said it was pretty much Paradise 2. let me be clear its not even close. now I have played a lot of NFS games and also Burnout games, but this one seems to take the lazy way. if you don't like Multi player don't bother even renting this game no real single player what so ever, you don't get to earn different cars by taking them down like in Paradise no you get them all but wait there is a catch they are all scattered around the map and the best part if you want to change to a different car you don't get to go to a garage or a junkyard oh no you have to drive all over the map just to find a car you like then take that one. don't even get me started on the police chases. like many of the others said nothing happens when you get busted and it seems more weak no spikes or anything and it seems way easier to get away from them. what about multi player you ask glad you did. this is where it gets OK. it is pretty much like Burnout P's multi was expect of course once again you get all the cars and the races are boring. while some challenges are fun most are a wast of time, and when you take down a friend it just does not feel as great as it should no epic showing of your friends car being destroyed or anything like that just a little thing that says you took down so and so. the controls are just like NFS nothing new about them. as I played the single player for some dumb reason I figured out quickly that they is no customizing what so ever. sure there are things like win this race get traction tires but that's it no hey lets change my color or anything like that unless you go through a drive in and even then you still don't get to chose your color it does it random. overall I am very sickened by this game and also sickened by the BS the critics are giving it. probably got paid to give it a higher raking by EA. only reason it got a 3 is because its sort of fun to play with friends online and the graphics are good.… Expand

No no no no..... Good? It is beautiful, and it has a great concept for multiplayer Bad? everything else. Is this the first multiplayer game that you cant even choose the color of your car? The cars feel so fake, the engine noise can't be right, and the steering feels so lagged out and arcade that the cars don't even feel real. I loved the first Most wanted, one of my favorite racing games, but this game just had me wanting to play the original instead. Critereon... Sorry but please make another burnout....… Expand

Looks good, umm that's it really,why is it that regardless of the make of car the wheels and tyres have been replaced by ball bearings. In a nut shell the physics of driving are diabolical, all cars drive the same, on ice !! This has put me off this game, not sure what they were trying to achieve here, but it has failed !!

Poorly executed game that lacks the original Most Wanted's theme. The charm that the previous Need for Speed games like Most Wanted and Carbon is completely gone from the game. Lack of creativity by making the player drive around the city and randomly winning races for absolutely no reason whatsoever. This is not the Need for Speed game that we have been waiting years for..

Disappointing. I'll keep it short and sweet. I'll start with the good. This game is pretty to look at. Music is good. Excellent marketing. Now the bad. Control is sluggish. It's like Criterion couldn't decide if they wanted to make this a sim or arcade and left it limbo. No visual customization options. You can't even choose color, decals, rims, etc. NO CANDY PAINT :(
Automatic transmission. Period. You do not have the option for manual transmission. No story. Not even a effort to make a story. Earn points to race other cars. That's it. Must FIND cars to acquire them OR earn points by racing then beat another car only then will you earn another car. Only 2 camera views. No fine tuning .for example: adjusting turning/handling, braking, acceleration, height, spoiler height. etc. While in free roam or race GENTLY bump another car or wall or anything and car is wrecked. Cannot deactivate crash camera. Tons of time wasted watching yourself crash. Only through mini-map are tracks clearly designed. Some maps have the assist arrows to go >>. Most don't and you end up barreling through a intersection and find yourself going the wrong way. rent this game. Don't waste your hard earned cash on this like I did. My two cents. I have no idea why so many game sites are giving this game high marks. My only guess is EA supports their website through ads ... and lots of them. If the reviewer doesn't play ball they, take away all that support. This game does not deserve to have the "Most Wanted" title. Stick with the 2005 classic , not this garbage.… Expand

This is such a disappointment, and to call this game Most Wanted is blasphemy. The original is one of the best racing games ever, but this game just feels like a mess. Burnout Paradise was a great game, but I didn't play that game when I felt like playing Need For Speed, so perhaps they should have just called this game something else. Honestly, Forza Horizon feels more like the old Most Wanted to me than this game does. The cars in this new MW feel limp and sound weird, the customization options from the original MW are gone and now you get parts from winning races instead of buying them when you earned enough money. It all just feels streamlined the wrong way, as though EA tried to trim out things that weren't fun but ended up trimming some of the bast parts of racing games.… Expand

Really disappointed. Only 2 camera angles, hard to see checkpoints, stupid crash animations. NFS The Run was better than this! I have played every single NFS title, it's obvious EA are paying for high reviews because I have no idea how the game is scoring so well critically, whilst the customers are unhappy with this product.

A clumsy take on the Most Wanted name, this game removes all the street race style of the original. Even as a solo title it would be weak, but trying to link it to the original is a sad attempt at name recognition.

I remember the 2005 version being my favorite need for speed. How times have changed. Controls feel sluggish. Lighting animations are very realistic but make the game harder to play. In the real world I can squint when the sun is in my eyes. It doesn't work in a video game. Cut scenes are boring and drawn out. I also felt like a magnet to other cars. If I saw them I would hit them. They seem to always be in that sweet spot. This game is going back to the store. Will wait for the next one. Hopefully its better.… Expand

This is the laziest racing game made to date... No story, no customization, no car dealers and no point. This is Burnout Paradise with real cars and a NFS title.. The only thing nice about this game is sound and visuals, but in a game where the only plot is running from cops and the only human interaction is a pain in the butt narrator that luckily only speaks twice during the entire game, that's just not enough... Worst NFS made to date, i even preferred Pro Street and Undercover to this… Expand

Load of crap, constant pauses, car feels likes its floating on the road no feeling of control. Burnout paradise was pure genius this is pure junk, looks good but fails in just about every other way, avoid.

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. If this game was as good as any previous NFS title on the 360 or any of the previous Burnout games on the 360 it would get a lot better user scores. As it is it deserves its user scores but not its critic scores. I always say graphics only deserve a bad score if they distract you and the graphics here distracted me and it has been a long time since I have said that. Most Wanted cars are plain and without characters. The game is without character. Its like they took bits from Burnout Paradise and bits from the original Most Wanted and said - how can we use these bits to make the worst racing game on the 360. In no way recommended.… Expand

This is burnout with a NFS title. The game absolutely sucks. Nothing much more I can say about it. The feel of the driving sucks, the way it goes into a impact replay every time you hit something sucks.... it just sucks. Nothing about this game is good except the graphics. This was a huge disappointment. Critereon need to stick to making arcade games. NFS was a good game. This is just BS!

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. Y la blackList? que paso con la historia?? el garage las tiendas, la customizacion, las partes destruibles para huir de la policia los efectos de pintura y todo lo que se esperaba del Most Wanted original??? Es una basura, otro NFS the run en que pasas por una gasolinera y no podes tener el color de tu auto favorito sino al azar, sin vinilos, etc prefiero 1000 veces el forza horizon, ese si parece mas NFS most wanted con las carreras callejeras y todo lo demas como rivales customizacion, historia etc… Expand

This must be one of the worst racing games I ever played. First of all, the pc version has massive fps drops and is pretty much unplayable. There is also a delay when you turn which makes it impossible to keep the car on the road. The car handling is also terrible and I bet Super Mario Karts have better car handling. It really feels like you driving a boat. Also every time when you start the game you have to watch a stupid intro for about 3 minutes, you can… Expand

This review contains spoilers, click expand to view. I can honestly say that NFS Most Wanted 2005 was, in my opinion, the best game in the NFS series. It had so many things which set it apart from any other racing games. Firstly, I loved the customization. Buying a car that you've had your eye on, with money saved up from races you've won, and then going on to customize the color, body parts, unique paint jobs, rims, window tint and so on.. It was one of the most enjoyable things about the game, making your car unique from everyone else. Another thing that I loved, was the way the heat level worked. The more you used your unique car in police chases, and wanted level milestone events, the higher your heat level would get, only lowering once you re-customize (change the appearance) your car. Another thing that was very enjoyable was the police chases. These were the most Epic police chases of all time. Once again, the higher the heat level, the more intense the police chases would be starting with the normal cruisers, and moving to more intense chases with spike strips and choppers, along with suped up white corvettes hunting you down. You could use pursuit breakers which were marked on your map with an orange triangle to help you successfully evade the police. If you were caught, you were forced to pay your fines with the money you had won from past races, or use a marker so your car wouldn't be impounded. ....Needless to say... EVERYTHING that I loved about the first need for speed, has been left out of this game. No customization whatsoever. The only thing you can change in this game is the color, and that is selected randomly when you drive through shops that are placed throughout the map. This also repairs your car. The only upside to this is that it makes it easier to recover if you find yourself with flat tires after hitting a spike strip during a police pursuit. There are no more pursuit breakers, which makes evading police a bit more annoying.. even if you didn't like the breakers to begin with, the option was nice if you desperately needed to get away from the police to avoid having your favorite car impounded. The heat level isn't nearly as good in this game either... Not that it matters, because if you get busted, there are no consequences. No more paying fines, or worrying about having your car impounded... You can actually save yourself time by just getting busted and skipping the police chase all together, which just makes the game that much more lame.. Busted? oh well... no worries.. just be on your marry way. The currency is gone entirely from this game. No more saving up to buy that special car you had your eye on.. you just find cars randomly throughout the map and can hop in and drive... This isn't all that bad, except for the fact that when you find a car that you actually enjoy driving, you only get to use it for 5 or 6 races/events... then its on to the next car to gain your points required for the next black list member... Oh I forgot... there are no longer even black list "members".. Its just a blacklist number 10-1, with a specific car that you race against. No unique, original story line or characters to face.. just a random car. And so far, it's insanely easy to move up the ranks.. I had only completed 2 or 3 races when it was time to challenge the first black list "car"..
Other notable problems with this game are the lack of manual shifting (the option isn't even there) and the lack of views - behind the car, or in front of the front bumper. The graphics aren't bad, but they're certainly nothing to write home about. In the end, I was so excited for this game because its predecessor was the most enjoyable racing game of the entire NFS series. But when all is said and done, everything that made the first game fun and unique, has been removed from this game, leaving it a forgettable, mildly fun (at best) racing experience.
At this point, I would have more fun replaying the old most wanted game.. They need to take a look at the old game, bring back everything that I mentioned above which made the game unique, and put together a REAL most wanted game, because in my honest opinion, this is not NFS Most Wanted.. it doesn't even deserve to share the same title as its predecessor.
More like NFS Unwanted if you ask me..… Expand

Criterion strikes again, butchering a long-dead hit series with even more of a fluke of a game. I'm going to be a bit personal in this review, first off. The developers at Criterion must not be capable of any form of higher thought process, because if they were, they would have stopped making Need for Speed, and let it die a noble death long before the crap that was NFS: The Run. In short, Need for Speed has become Burnout, because someone at EA was an idiot and cut the Burnout series, then entitled Criterion to get their grubby hands on Need for Speed. Crashing is a good thing, driving isn't, customization is non-existant, police chases are cliche and lame, at best. There is no thrill to this game, nor is there to any recent Need for Speed games. Undercover was the last of them, folks, the very last decent Need for Speed game. As others have stated, you CANNOT customize anything, save for your paint, which is reset whenever you drive in for a tune-up. The "blacklist" is nothing but a boring checklist now, if that. There is no story, no characters, no cars to upgrade to, per se. All there is in this game is more of Criterion's trademark crap, heated to serve. I refuse to even bother going into detail about this game, as there is no detail, what you see is what you get. I was one of few lucky enough to just have played a rental, but if you are considering buying this game, HEED THIS WARNING: This is NOT like the original NFS:MW, and you will be wasting your time any money if you think that it will be anything remotely enjoyable, as Most Wanted 1 was. Criterion, you continue to make a grown man cry with your redundant failure to make games. EA should have let you die out with the Burnout series, and saved Need for Speed the agony that it has received with you at the helm.… Expand

You can call the handling 'arcade', but a better term would be 'garbage'. There's a term in automotive journalism regarding handling called a 'dead spot' in a steering wheel. The handing in Most Wanted is ALL dead spot, until you get to the point that you are spinning out of control or careening into a building. If you have heard that this game is like driving a car on ICE, that is exactly correct. Crashing is frequent, and restarts are constant. After over a dozen attempts, I could not complete the first 'Ambush' race with a time restraint of 2:00. 2 minutes to evade the police?? It takes that amount of time for your 'heat' level to go away. The game design is clueless. There isn't much to do in the world, and all of the cars handle the same. Forza Horizon is the only choice for 360 owners. A used copy of GT5 is a better choice for PS3 players.… Expand

Total garbage. If you enjoy racing games such as Forza, Gran Turismo, Dirt, or anything remotely realistic don't even bother with this. You would be wasting your money. The controls and gameplay are simply horrid. The graphics are great, but when the gameplay is this terrible there's no way to put up with it.

it's a dumb down burnout paradise the music get's old fast it should not be called Need for Speed: Most Wanted it's burnout paradise 2 the Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2005 is way better they did not do well by it