Svenne reviews: Need for Speed II SE

I've always liked racing games, and the Need for Speed series was my first experience with them. My earliest memory was when I played NFS II on my dads Intel Pentium 133 (he had it from 1995 until 2001 when he bought a Pentium III). The part I remember most is when I managed to glitch up the colors, turning the game into a rainbow mishmash.

As time passed, I got newer NFS games, and when the Pentium III broke I had to abandon NFS II in favour for games such as Need for speed Underground. Back then I didn't really have a sense of good games.

Everything turned around when I got Need for Speed: Undercover for the PS2 (wich my parents bought me and my sister in 2007) for christmas present 2008. I was extremely happy; this was the best and most awesome game ever. However, as soon as I inserted it into my PS2, all hope was gone.
The game had severe visual bugs, the storyline sucked, and the gameplay was more like Ridge Racer than Need for Speed. After that, I lost faith in all new NFS games.

Now, with an old PC running Windows 98 SE, I am back to where I left off, to fully close the circle: Need for Speed II SE.

Anyway, enough with this emotional crap, let's get started.

Code:

Test system:
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CPU: Intel Pentium II 400 MHz/100 MHz FSB.
Memory: 192 Mb (1x64 Mb PC100 + 1x128 MB PC133@PC100) DIMM SDRAM.
Graphics: ATi Rage Pro 4 Mb.
HDD: 6 Gb.
CD-ROM: 32x.

Since I lost the original game disc, I had to torrent the game from TPB.

Gameplay
This is the major difference between this and newer NFS games. It's way more realistic; you have to brake when cornering, colliding with traffic actually makes you crash and not just plow through - with other words, it's awesome.
There are three levels of realism: wild, arcade and simulation, where wild is the easiest and simulation is the hardest. All modes are quite intense, and you'll be quite tired after just a few races.
There are three different game modes: single race, tournament and knockout. Single race is quite self-explainatory: you race a single race, can choose any car, can race with or without opponents. In the tournament mode, you race a series of tracks, and are limited to a single vehicle class per race. You can save progress to continue later on. If you win the tournament, you'll unlock bonus cars. In the knockout mode you race a series of track, and you can choose any car you want - but you'll have to stick with it through the whole competition. The driver who gets last in every race gets knocked out. You can't save progress in a knockout, so you'll have to race on all tracks.
The games opponents are really good; miss a few turns and you'll loose. This makes the game challenging. Something that's not as good is the traffic Ai: they don't swerve when you drive towards them, and they even collide with eachother.

Content
By default, there is seven tracks and and thirteen cars unlocked. There are also three bonus cars and a bonus tracks. There are three car classes: A, B and C. The C class cars are the slowest and cheapest, and the A class cars are the fastest and most expensive.
Unlike the newer NFS games, each track has it's own unique design. They take place in the mountains in tibet, the austrailian outback, and northern germany just to name a few examples.
The music is another major difference; instead of the shitty rap/hip-hop there is techno and heavy metal.

Graphics
There isn't really much to say about the graphics; we're talking about a 13 year old game here. They are nice and colorful compared to todays yellow piss-filters. There is a glide mode for 3dfx's voodoo cards, but I don't have one (yet), so I can't try it out.

Conclusion
The second game in the NFS franchise is probably the best; realistic and challenging gameplay, great tracks, awsome music, loads of fun. EA games should really learn from their past when making games.

pretty good, short review. There were a few spelling and grammar mistakes but other than that it seemed pretty solid.


Speaking of EA learning from it's past, NFS: Hot Pursuit (The new one, not to be confused with the old one) is actually looking pretty good.