VROOM! Need for Speed Most Wanted

 I could have put this in the "N" entry but I wanted to talk about my NHL teams.  So since I couldn't think of a good "V" game I actually played, I'm going to talk about Need for Speed: Most Wanted.  While there were some Need for Speed games before this one, I didn't ever play those.  Though some dick in Russia used my Origin account to download one.  And then changed my account's default language to Russian so I had to use Google Translate to change it back.

Anyway, I got this game free on Origin.  It was pretty fun to drive a bunch of different cars around.  You get everything from super-exotic sports cars to an F-150 Raptor pickup and a Land Rover SUV to actual F1 race cars.  There's even a Ford Focus, though it's a higher-end sportier model than either of mine.

The game is somewhat open-world in that you can just drive around grabbing the different cars where you find them and dodging cops.  There are also different races you can partake in that take you around whatever city.  There are different difficulties to the races and some you only do one lap while others you have to do a few laps.  It can be really difficult.  It's more difficult when you have to use the keyboard controls because you don't have a controller that works with Origin for the game.

There's a "heat meter" on your screen that lets you know if the cops are after you or not.  The heat meter goes up when you steal a car or when you hit another car or hit a pole or something.  If you go speeding past a cop, just like in real life they might come after you.  And if you hit one with your car, they'll definitely come after you.  Then cops will keep chasing you until you can lose them and the heat meter goes down.  A good way to lose them is to get in a different car when they aren't close by.

Unlike The Godfather or Simpsons Hit & Run or other games, you can't take just any old car and drive it around.  There are only certain cars at certain points.  Some of the higher-end cars aren't unlocked until you beat them in a race.  There are in particular 10 elite sports cars to race and once you beat them, you get them.

Real 2014 Porsche 918 Spyder, not actual gameplay

My favorite car to drive around was the Porsche 918 Spyder.  It was a two-seat roadster that was fast but I always thought more maneuverable than some of the high-end sports cars.  I mean some of the really fancy ones were like steering the rocket car in the Simpsons game when you really get them up to speed.  When you're doing races, especially the kind with laps, you need to be able to make turns and veer around objects, not just go flat-out fast.

Actual gameplay

The picture above I posted on Facebook and it came up as one of my "Memories" which is cool.  I think this is the roof of a building where I was hiding out from the cops.  In some spots there are ramps you can use to get to roofs to hide from the cops and to find hidden cars that you can drive.

I did, through much difficulty, get all of the cars in the game at some point.  Then I stopped playing for a little while and when I tried to play again, the screen kept jumping and flickering so I had to stop.  I haven't seen if I could play it on my newer PC yet.

Besides the Spyder, it was often fun to get in the F150 and basically use it like a tank against other cars--especially the cops.  You couldn't really lose the cops in the F150 because it's slower, but you could push them around a lot better than in a Bugatti or F1 race car--or Focus.

For whatever reason there are no people in the game.  You can't run over pedestrians or anything like that.  Maybe that would have made it too mature or something.

I think through Origin you could buy extra cars and upgrades and things like that but I never spent any money on the game and still did most of it.  There were also I think expansion packs to let you access more of the city like the airport and things like that.  The game would just stop you and make you turn around when you got to the edge of one of those areas.

It was a fun game but I never tried getting any of the sequels or the ones before.  I did watch the movie with Aaron Paul, though it wasn't really that good.