I loved NFS Undercover. Played it for hours

The ambient music included in the garage is stellar. Hell even the whole games ost and soundtrack was amazing. The music had depth and layers of tones and were very abstract. It almost encompasses you with a wave of emotions in which I cannot describe. And don't even get me started with the drums played during takedowns and highway battles. The intensity of these events are turned up a notch with the beats of the drums. I'd kill for a remaster

Best way I can describe Undercover is this is the "Sonic 06" of the NFS Franchise. Both games are bad and put their franchises in limbo but they do have good elements that tries to make the game fun.

I don't think the police actually just give up on losing sight but it's attributed to the cost to state you do. Each heat level has a certain amount of CTS you can do before they call it off as too dangerous.

Mustaneros Custangs Camustangers GTAV car names

23:04 funnily enough, thats how the PSP version played it out, but only for the minor racers working for the gangs. In the main take out Missions you still drive your car of choice

I know this is a small gripe, but Rockport is not based on Detroit. Rockport is NYC, Newark, Philly, Delaware and Baltimore. The only NFS games that took in place in the Midwest were Hot Pursuit 1 & 2, No Limits and Unbound. Also Cross' actor is Dean McKenzie, not Chris Williams.

Honestly I feel Undercover deserves a remake more than Most Wanted. Almost every Need for Speed is pretty much the same, you play as a street racer, start from the bottom and work your way up. I feel playing as a cop going undercover as a street racer would make for a more interesting story just to shake things up a little, but that's just my opinion.

Glad this was suggested to me. A really well put together video which finally talks about a topic that has made me angry for years. Undercover is a bad game, but there are worse entries out there, and it is just another case of online mob behaviour. Keep up the great Work!

What if the cops give up because they eventually realize you're an undercover officer?

I got this game as a Christmas gift back in 2008 in addition to a PlayStation 3 when I was 11. The only other NFS games I played at the time were Underground 1 & 2 on the PC and my grandfather had Porsche Unleached on an old Windows 98 PC he had years earlier. I actually loved Undercover, maybe it was the sensation of the shiny new PS3 I just got and it was a new game after a few years of playing through Underground 2 on almost a daily basis, but I thought it was aamzing. I never noticed the bugs and to my 11-12 year old mind it was awesome. I probably put about 200 or so hours into this game on the PS3 alone. I even remember a friend in school had the PS2 version of the game and complaining about how it sucked, and when I showed him the PS3 version he was amazed by it. Years later when I opened my Steam account I got Undercover as a gag gift from a friend since we used to buy each other stupid shit for birthdays and Christmas as jokes, I was about 16 or 17 then and knew how bad Undercover was at this point, but I played it through then and still had some fun with it. That was about 10 years ago now and I haven't touched it since. Maybe I'll give it another shot someday. If EA hadn't pulled a complete EA on Black Box, this game could have had the potential to be truly great.

Interestingly enough, in the cursed PS2 version, you DO drive a police car to take out the gangs.

13:00 Also about censoring: In a song "Never wanted to dance" by Mindless Self Indulgence there is a verse: "Never wanted to dance with nobody but you wouldn't take no for an answer, you fu**ing b**ch!" They censored the F word and not the B word. If EA wants to censor songs, they need to do it right or not censor the songs at all. For example in NFS Most Wanted soundtrack in a song "Tilted" by Lupe Fiasco they censored "Game Boy Advance" for no reason.

I think that the first NFS Shift is worse than undercover: Graphics may be beautiful, but the tracks don't look that vibrant. They look abandoned. Also in Shift cars' handling is random. One time your car drives smoothly and the other time it keeps spinning for no reason or it doesn't want to turn. Did I also mention that cars in Shift can't drift well? Edit: Also my unpopular opinion is that I had a lot of fun while completing Undercover.

"Undercover is a bad game" *laughs in Big Rigs*

the problem with Undercover's handling is the input lag, there's a mod that fixes that

I know I am late and all but I just wanted to clarify that the "T-Mobile Sidekick" which you later corrected it to a "palm-pocket ASUS PC" is actually a Sony VAIO UX Micro PC Other than that, I really enjoyed this video.

15:54 It looks weird how all of the swat guys unarmed, it’s not like they’re afraid of showing them since they do in the live action cutscenes

I've actually replayed this earlier this year (I fell off of it after 3 hours-ish originally). And in 2022 I felt like I enjoyed it more, so much so I finished it. These days it definitely felt like a game from a different era (in many ways like GRID Autosport) and I really liked how much they leaned into the elements from previous games like Most Wanted and Carbon. The sun-drenched too-much-bloom added to the feeling of having nowhere to run, stealing cars in broad daylight. While playing I wished it would cater the story towards two paths, like when you've infiltrated the car stealing ring, Maggie Q asks you to take down its drivers one by one, starting with your love interest. It would be interesting to kill or spare each driver and see those decisions have at least some small consequences at the end. The highway battles were a big highlight for me and felt like an evolution from the Carbon canyon runs that fit more with this game. Speaking of Prostreet while I didn't finish it, I still really like its approach to UI and aesthetics, very similar to SSX On Tour and Amped3. Hopefully the next NFS game will lean into that too. (It's also a bit wild how Prostreet is very much the grandaddy to what would become the Forza Horizon series in many ways).

No matter how bad it actually is, I can't hate or even dislike Undercover. It was my childhood Need for Speed, and it always will be.

I enjoyed this game on the PS3. I don’t really blame you at all. I loved the highway battles. The soundtrack is nice and I don’t have a problem with the story.

25:14 Nope, it's not an Asus. It's a Sony Vaio UX series UMPC. I recognized it because I've been drooling over one for years

6:20 i had NO idea that there were car lots in this game lmao. I know this game had a rough development, but they couldn't even put icons on the minimap or open world? 8:32 a problem i had with the vinyl editor is that skewing stretching and moving have to be selected individually through a sub menu, which is just too slow for my liking and i never felt that there was something i could do in Undercover that I couldn't in Pro Street (except for maybe the new decals, but then again pro street had decals that weren't in undercover iirc), at least form what i remember.

10:41 THIS. Undercover was my first NFS game and this one piece of the soundtrack stuck with me all this time. Probably the only thing that stuck with me more are the brutal AF busted cutscenes.

Right so, you know that this mod exists for Undercover that technically fixes the whole game and makes it really good called Project Reformed? How Undercover shoulda been.

I never got caught so I didn’t know how fckn HARD the cops come at you like that 😆🤣

I played all NFS from UG1 to Unbound and I honestly enjoyed Undercover a lot

Undercover will always have a special place in my gaming heart

Car Jacking missions would have a severely different connotation if the main character was an Autophile. I mean, the steering has been a little stiff ever since you last drove it... anything to admit, Paty?

The ps2 version is were things truly get interesting. It’s a perfect case of ‘so bad it’s good’. It’s a completely different game except for the cutscenes, and is full of so much weird content that its always intriguing.

So this game has the same story as the heat? It's about stolen cars, and the final bad character is a female cop, who turns on you in the end? The one trying to convince you that the villain in this story is the person she's secretly working with?

You know what's actually underappreciated? This video (and the Viva Pinata one). Excellent work on both, dude.

Hot Pursuit 2 was my favorite. Played Undercover quite a bit after my dad brought it home from his work PC (some coworker had ISO copy). Barely knew english then and I don't understand why I could'n make money even after doing races or most stuff was locked, probably was a demo, but I still liked it. Was the only game I played for a while.

You just got a sub. I never thought I would watch a 30 minutes essay on a Need For Speed game but here I am hoping you'll do some other ones.

A major factor in why the NFS Undercover story didn’t make sense was because half of it was cut. The original plan was for there to be a cop & racer choice system that would factor into the story. But due to the 1 year timeline it was cut so they used what they had already filmed which is why a lot of story points don’t seem to connect right

Undercover had so much potential. I only played the Blackbox-Era games on 6th-gen, so I have no frame of reference and won't speak on the PS3/PC versions, but, Undercover was the only Black-Box era game that I played, that I never beat. I never played UG or UG2, I beat Most Wanted, I beat Carbon, I even beat Pro-Street, but my squirrel-brain (I was born in '01) could never get past the 3 hour mark of Undercover and I never understood why until looking back at it as an adult. This game had so much potential, with the map, and the story, and the gamemodes, but there are some big things holding it back, especially on 6th-gen, as it was the last NFS to be released for 6th-gen and the PS2 port really feels like an afterthought. So, only speaking on the 6th-gen version, the game looks terrible. I mean utterly terrible. Not just the graphics, but the user interface is a joke. It hurts your eyes. The overall presentation of this game is just disgusting. All it would've taken was just slightly more polishing. If they just spent like an extra week or two overhauling the UI and smoothing out some textures it'd be fantastic. Also, if they made it a night-time game it would even just be passable with a shit ton of lighting and reflections. I loved the darker story. I know some people say it was corny, but seriously, like Most Wanted wasn't? I think the only reason people are so critical of the story in this game is because of how PRESENT it is. It seems like every other race is a cutscene. The game is extremely story intensive, for better and for worse. Most Wanted was extremely corny, but there was little to no story or cutscenes, whereas it felt like Undercover predominantly story based. This game had amazing potential, but just fell short.

When you do play NFS Pro Street and make a review out of it I hope you enjoy it, it's my favorite one from the franchise. To me Pro Street was just a game ahead of it's time, where they wanted cops and etc, but I feel like if Pro Street came out when Horizon games came out it would receive alot of positives for it's vibe and atmosphere. (also pro street tip, on some cars, tune the tires and return them to stock tires. The tune will still be equipped and the handling will be more responsive similar to carbon)

My personal hot take: I LOVED Undercover… for PS2. I genuinely think it’s more fun than the newer gen version. Not better. Just more fun.

Pro street was actually really fun I grew up franchise being my favorite now I just don’t find anything special stage on you play overwatch for Fortnite and if I want a bit of nostalgia I’ll play some of the NFS franchise that was the first time I ever played with actual tuning for drag racing I spent hours tuning by charger and a couple other cars just to get milliseconds of the time that was fun

How do you only have 260 subs you deserve more

Oh man the most wanted cutscenes Cross: I want every single unit after this guy Female cop: Everyone, sir? Ronnie: Yeah.

An extremely well made and informed video. Glad it was recommended. Loved undercover. Happy to see it’s getting some love. Keep up the great work!

...nah I much prefer it being a T-Mobile Sidekick. writing off the entire game as an ad for a forgotten phone nobody bought is quite funny.

Good video, I dont fully hate it either. But its nice to see people like you give good outlooks on stuff and not only see bad like everyone else

the police chase music sounds so random that i straight up laughed when it came on

I think Undercover is alright, but it needs some work.

"When Undercover shines it.. really does shine!" Yeah.. right in your eyes; blinding you and getting you boxed in while being pursued.

This was a great video! Kinda Raycevick vibes, keep it up. Incredible you haven't got like a million views

I also enjoyed Undercover despite its major shortcomings. I got extremely close dominating all the races so that tells you I was pretty committed and entertained. I loved the Highway Battles and the music that played along with it was like a version of music that belonged in Carbon. That’s all I remember so I’ll keep that good memory from it.

Most ppl who rag on this game never actually played it. That being said, I was young enough to essentially ignore the car falling through the floor whenever I’d get out of the garage when playing Undercover on my PS3. Had a ton of fun though!

I played pretty much all NFS games in 2019, and I have big soft spot for this one, it has a lot of character despite its flaws.

Absolutely loved this game as a kid! And I completely forgot about how ridiculous some of the arrest scenes are, the one at 16:03 had me cackling with joy :D

100% agree. Got Undercover for Xmas 2008 on my PS3 and loved it. Buggy, glitchy, not as good as Most Wanted or Carbon, plus you could beat it in 3 hours, but... it was a really fun game. I enjoyed the races, cop chases, story, and soundtrack, so it was a classic fun Need For Speed experience for me :)

Respect to the starting “240x”

You gotta love how Black Box made the busted scenes in Undercover too brutal. I know that most people adored MW 2005 and Carbon's busted scenes, but for Undercover? You'd just end up getting tackled, punched, or kicked in the face by the TCBPD.

I played it when it came out. It had so much potential. The bugs plagued the game and the constant sliding when turning did take some fun away. But I still beat the game. And had fun.

Also police isnt based on heat but story progress weirdly enough.

If the police have to chase you down, they're bringing an asswhoopin with them.

I will never understand why people are so obsessed with playing "legitimate" copies of games that aren't being solid anymore, especially when we're talking about games this old. It's not like the developers or even the publisher are seeing any of that money if you buy some used copy on the internet. There's absolutely no distinction between buying a used copy of a game and piracy, except that one of them involves paying way more than a product is actually worth to someone who didn't make it.

bruh the audio mixing was painful having to adjust the volume throughout he video

so i just replayed undercover the past 2 days...and i was done playing the game until the end within 2 days and no i didnt speed run the game, i could have easily finished it within a day if i tried. The game is very short ! The story feels like it was cut off, even after the last mission, chase says that what we did will have very big consequences, but we never get to know what the device she wanted to take did and what consequences she was talking about...Almost like the story was meant to go on and have another plot twist or reveal what all this was about. Game had so much great potential, if it got another year for development it would have been a banger...

The T-Mobile Sidekick was full of NFTs and crypto.

If you're gonna play ProStreet I'd strongly suggest getting it on PC. I know you probably won't be able to find a legit copy easily, but having played the game both on PC and PS3 I strongly suggest PC.

I'd check out the PS2 version of this game. It's what I played and I enjoyed it so much more than the PC version. The world looks better, there are safe house, handling is basically ripped from Most Wanted, and there is music in free roam, which turned me off hard on the PC version. Would love to hear what you think of that 6th Gen version vs the PC/PS3/360 versions

Undercover on the PSP is so nostalgic for me and playing it on PC recently was pretty fun. I wish I had it on 360 back in the day.

DANGEROUSLY underappreciated.

This is literally my favourite NFS and in not afraid to admit. Oh and it has one of the best soundtracks and especially map in the franchise, fuck the 2005 fanboys.

At first I hated this game but then I loved it after I learned how to abuse the physics and take every turn at 250 MPH. The game became fun and easy at that point.

BlackBox had only 6 months to develop this game So it's a miracle this game is even working from start to finish

Having played this game on both wii and later on managed to get a PC copy I feel like the wii Version somehow was better?

NFS Pro Street for the 360 was fantastic. I loved playing it... until my save files became corrupted, and new files would not save any progress. Good times. May not be the right place to ask, but if anyone knows how to fix that please let me know.

Many ppl dont know the "Blackberry Playbook" version of this , rubbish but fun

On PC there are alot of visual settings you can turn down to make the game look alot less blurry or bloomy

I don't see how Undercover's a "bad" game. It's among my top five Need for Speed's. My only gripe were the frame rate drops. I don't care about story when it's live-action scenes.

If underground didn’t exist. Undercover would be legendary. Handling with pads was much better then most wanted. It combined all of the previous titles. Maybe I’m wrong but this game was great. Still own it

This game made me fall in love with Highway pulls and battles

still a better game than F&F Crossroads that is, especially the fact that you have this ex-SMS CEO Ian Bell f-head gushing over that his F&F game is gonna beat what NFS is doing for the next 6 years

from what video is the soundclip at 22:18? is that internet historian?

Wait getting a legit copy of ProStreet on the PC is that hard? I've had the physical DvD since it came out lmao

i completed it thrice (yes rookie numbers) and the stuff you said about the AI (both racer and cops) i've never experienced, the only thing i had a problem with rubber banding (but that may also have been my fault to certain point) and minor framerate issues thats all i have bought the steam version at the right time (missed out on run and shift :') ) also what contained in that phone, from what i think was sensitive data regarding government or other stuff (its possible)

glad to see someone is appreciating this game, carbon was my fav game back then but this game was something, idk how youtube suggest me correctly, thanks for the video

This game is in my top 5 in the franchise just because of how fun it is. Most Wanted, Carbon, and ProStreet are my top 3, in no particular order because it just depends on how I feel that day. Underground 2 is 4, and Undercover is 5.

NFS Undercover isn't an Eye candy...but it is a good game And yes not at all boring like some individuals tend to call it

Also really glad this was recommended to me, I never hated undercover as much as a lot of the community, I just thought it was very meh but relatively enjoyable nonetheless. By the way, you definitely deserve so much more recognition! This video is really high quality and you definitely spent a lot of time working on it.

All I’m gonna say is the Highway battles nearly made me jump off a bridge

I can appreciate the story, even if the gameplay can feel off at times.

Those arrest animations are wild lol

4:02 I'll recommend to just pirate the game, the console version is buggy, and it won't matter if u pirate it, it is not available to buy in any online store and the game is 15 years old. 14:11 Car sounds in undercover are from prostreet but toned down a little. To me nfs undercover is so bad, it becomes good.

I loved NFS UC however…a lot of features mentioned…I don’t think we’re on the wii actually so there may be some differences

Good video, man. Undercover is so underrated and it kills me that it doesn't get a lot of attention. Keep it up, dude. You're gonna blow up. Can't wait for more.

I'm already fell in love with Undercover back when i was still a kid & the only thing that i had is a PS2. I was expecting to played the exact same Undercover like most ppl played it on 7th gen console & PC ver only to find out that THE Undercover for PS2 is a completely different thing compared to what BB made (different devs, different engine, and its a reskinned/heavily modified ver of Carbon). a few years later i manage to play THE main ver of Undercover and i was honestly a bit dissapointed for when it doesn't perform like what i used to imagine back then. But eventually i grew to accostumed for what it is, its an unfinished mess and theres a worst unfinished games out there but this game manage to kept me engaged to replayed it once more and i accept it for what it is I'm so glad that theres still some ppl out there that cared enough to try to fix this mess of a game to make it more enjoyable. Glad that this game never become a forgotten piece/a mere footnote in NFS History for its failures

It‘s called a 240SX, not a 240x

Amazing video! I'm just poping here to say that I have amazing memories about Pro Street I think you should give it a go

I honestly don't get the insane hatred for undercover. I loved it personally.

need for speed sucks which is a fair assessment to make in 2008 and now it has no competition which isn’t good. Its just not being paired enough from the other game’s to need for speed up.

Heeeeeey fellow Undercover enjoyers! I liked this one for some reason. Like, I see it's ugly a bit, little customization, but everything else was just... good. Music is awesome (as mentioned in the comments - ambient and garage music is just MWAH), story is kinda silly but hey, I'll take it, we just need a reason to do stuff in these games anyway. But the moment you show your real face, oof... That was good. You know what, I'm gonna install it again. I need a break from Armored Core games.

I only ever remembered Hector cause every show or movie I've see him act in his name is hector. And specifically in the time period this came out he made reappearances in prison break as ... Hector .. hah.

240 SX Sounds Amazing in Underground 2, CARBON and Pro Street PS2

NFS Undercover was a solid game. Was it the best? No. But it was a nice game.

This was actually my first nfs game and god damn do I remember it as the most fun I've ever had, I remember doing something to my save state and losing progress a lot then learned to unplug my ps3 so I could play that initial cop chase over and over lmao