Need for Speed is to N-Gage what the Yugo was to the automobile market. This pint-sized knock off from the PC and console series is a one cylinder wonder, as in I wonder how it even got moving in the first place. EA really under achieved on this title and I’m tempted to say it’s a complete failure.

But complete failure might be a little too strong, not much, just a little. The game does give you two options, quick race and career neither of which is extremely interesting. Partially due to the extremely blocky and jagged graphics on the cars and the environment in general and partly due to the terrible sounds.

Where does one begin when faced with such a large pile? The graphics as they’re the majority of the game I guess. Simply put, they’re terrible. I haven’t seen graphics this bad since the SNES. In fact I would imagine this game to be a direct port but I don’t want to cast aspersions on it. I just can’t understand how this passed any type of QA because on the whole, the graphics are extremely sub standard.

But hey, don’t worry because the graphics were outdone by the horrible sound. When two cars collide they sound like someone putting their foot into an aluminum garbage can, repeatedly. The engine sounds reminde me of go carting and the music is something akin to 8 note midi...from a time before CDs in a long forgotten land.

So it looks and sounds bad, but it’s got to have some good gameplay to get released on N-Gage right? Wrong! A shame really. The gameplay isn’t terrible. You have your standard driving and drifting, turbos and take downs, it’s just that it’s all extremely uninteresting and not in the least bit challenging.

That’s not to say that some of the races and missions aren’t difficult, they are. They’re just far from being challenging and closer to boring. Really, no one in their right mind should consider getting this game. It doesn’t look, feel or play like NFS and is extremely disappointing overall.