... to say "
it's RICE".
Seriously, this game is the BEST GAME EVAR to help you satiate the litter ricer in all of us!
Matt told me he went and rented it and thought it was cool, so there I was, in the belly of the beast once again (Wal-Mart) and it was staring at me from behind the anti-theft glass. So I had the 180 year old man fumble with his keys for 10 minutes, then wrestle with the glass door (I mean, c'mon that thing's gotta weight near 5 lbs, and it's on a lubricated track, so of course it's near impossible to open, right?) so I could bring home Need for Rice: Underground.
Basically it's like Grand Turismo in that you have a car, and you can buy upgrades and stuff. Then you hit the streets to find races and win money. But there's this added style/reputation element. While spending money on performance parts makes the car faster, you can also spend you money on blinging out your ride. The more bling, the more rep your cars gets. The bigger the rep, the more style points you get for doing stunts like drifts and near-misses and jumps during the races. The more style points you get, the more stuff you unlock in the game.
The physics are laughable... but they're fun. Very arcade-like handling, I'd really like braking to be at least a little necessary.
However, it's a kick in the pants to go flying down a semi-deserted street at 140 dodging cones and street signs. It takes about a hour to get good at the game, then it's just about tearing it up. I've been playing most the races on "Hard" which earns you more money for wins.
There are 4 types of racing in the game: "sprints", where you race from point A to point B; "circuits", where you run several laps around the city; "drifts", where you simply have to get points for haning the ass-end out around a simplified course; and "drag" which is *awesome*.
Usually I don't get excited about drag racing in general, let alone video game drag racing which is usually really lame. But NfS pulls it off. You have this massive tach on the left of the screen and you have to make sure to shift at just the right rpm... if you nail it you get a burst of speed, you miss it and the competition pulls away. Plus you can over-heat the motor if you over-rev too long. Sounds simple till you realize that you have to do this while avoiding traffic, drafting the competition, and managing your NOS!
The only drawback is that you don't really steer... basically the car tracks along one of the lanes in the road, but you can change lanes to avoid traffic, or cut off the competition.
The best part by far of the drag racing are the visuals. You know that 1st drag race in TF&TF? That's *exactly* it... I mean,
exactly. It just looks cool... then you hit the NOS and everything get's blue and stretches out a bit. You just have to see it. In fact all the game's visuals were obviously developed while watching Fast N Furious... it's dead on... so dead on I'm surprised they haven't been sued.
Wow, this review got long. So in short, Need for Speed: Over-Rice is a kick in the pants that will help you get the rice out of your system before you're tempted to do something like paint your headlights or convert your dash to red.
It's no Grand Tursemo, but it will do till GT4 comes out next year! I give it 4.5/5 Pleiades Stars.