Pros: Sound/Graphics are superb. Nice combination of races, as well as style of game plays.
Cons: Physics still a bit off, not completely realistic, had trouble with EA’s Multiplayer system.
The bottom line: A great game, although not completely upgraded from its predecessor’s. It by itself is a very good game, although can get repetitive, and very easy to be annoyed.
Let me start first off by saying that I have missed a few of the games in the series, only fully playing NFS: Underground and only playing Underground 2 for a little. So I can’t completely relate this game to its predecessors.

Story/ Game play:
I found this to be one of the very good parts of the game. I am generally not extremely into racing games but I found this one to be very good in the control and playability.

You start off being chased by a cop down a canyon, eventually get caught, in which you forfeit your car. From then on you get to pick to start off as either a tuner, exotic, or muscle, which you start by buying and getting cars related to those classes. The goal of the game is to acquire new territory and get more vehicles and territory. Eventually you learn more about what put you in that place, and get to race against the people who put you there.

The races themselves are very well done, there are quite different styles of races, including new ones which are canyon races, in which you race down hill, and there are breakable walls on some of the turns, in which you can crash off the side of the course. Although I miss the drag racing in the game. In the beginning, you always start out behind the people for all the races with multiple people, which get annoying at times later.

Free roam, allow you to drive to all the different races, as well as get down and dirty with the police, if you wanted to start to stir up a little trouble. The cops come in different waves, as you advance in the level of heat on your car. You start off with just simple cop cars, moving up to police SUVs, FBI cars, and then police vipers. The higher you go up the harder it is to get away from each type of cop. As well in free roam and in regular races, there are certain spots, called pursuit blockers where you can hit, destroy something that blocks the road.

Relating to the graphics, this games isn’t totally realistic, as your car can never die or give out on you. Despite the amount of damage and crashes it takes, minus it being stuck upside down which you just restart. Although in the free play game play, if you hit a spike strip than you do lose the tires relating to which hit the spike strip. As well your speed, turning, and general acceleration are all affected by how many tires you lost.

Modes:
Career mode: which was described above, where you gain territory through races.
Challenge series, which you have a given goal, and are given a specific car to accomplish it. Such as score 200,000 points in a drift even with a Mitsubishi Lancer.
Custom races: where you choose which track/race you want to do, as well as picking the car that you wish to race on there.
Unfortunately I was not able to connect to the EA Multiplayer so I cannot comment on how the multiplayer system is, hopefully no other people run into any problems, and I am sorry that I can’t evaluate this part of the game.

Crew
This addition, is very important to the game play. Within certain races, you are given a racing partner. This partner’s can do one of three things in the race. Blocking, scouting, or drafter. The blockers can be activated to take out other racers. The scouts will go ahead and find different shortcuts along the course. Finally the drafters will allow you get draft them till you build up speed, than slingshot past. In addition the crew members give you certain thing, like discounts on parts, or more money per win.

Crew members are acquired through advancing through the career mode, and you can change which ones are active, as well as which you have hired.

Rewards/Challenge Series:
Besides general rewards from career mode, there is a specific list of rewards that you can receive from completing certain things. Such as racing in 20 custom races, or doing all challenge races. That brings me to challenge series, which I mentioned in modes; through challenge series you can get some rewards from winning different races.

Customization
As in the previous games this one contains high amounts of customization. From different types of engines, to the simple different paint jobs, rims, spoilers, and other things. All of these things allow you to design your very own car.

Graphics:
The graphics in this game are very well done, deep definition on the cars, specifically how you customize, as well as different styles of paint that you put on the car. As well there is deep definition done on the courses that you race, boxes and other random objects on the street that are moveable if you hit them. However as previous games this one is focused more on the night time, so the games is darker. Though the rain and shiny paint shines beautifully, as well as canyon races look very well. The game does require more power from the computer to fully show the top-end graphics from the games.
As well the games does not support wide screen mode that I could see.

Sound:
Deep definition on car noises and general racing noises. The sounds are deep and powerful, very accurate to how they normally would sound. However with some cars, having a turbo does get annoying cause of the noise it makes with the sound. As well the cut screens are acted very well. Although the speech from people in duels, as well from crew members do get annoying, as they are copied and pasted, a lot of the times in the game/race.

Final Thoughts:
This game I found to be very good, there are lots of different things that you can do, from beating the career mode, to playing challenge series for different rewards, or just simple custom races. There are lots of different things that you can do. How ever certain races can easily get to you people. The canyon duels I found to be extremely frustrating as you race head to head against a boss usually, and if you are perfect with some of the races you will have no chance of winning. And in attempting to be perfect it is very easy to lose control and slide off the cliff, because some walls are breakable, on turns.

Requirements:
Operating System: Windows 2000 Service Pack 4 / Windows XP Service Pack 2
(64-bit versions are not compatible)
Processor: 1.7 GHz
Memory: 512 MB RAM
Hard Drive: 4.7 GB for CD/DVD versions / 11 GB for EA Downloader version (5GB for download, 6GB for install)
Video Card: A video card with 64 MB memory.
NVIDIA GeForce3 / NVIDIA GeForce4 (Ti series only) / ATI Radeon 8500.
Sound Card: DirectX 9.0c compatible
DirectX: Version 9.0c
Online Multiplayer: 512 Kbps connection; 2-8 Players