Review: Need For Speed Undercover (PlayStation 2)

Publisher: Electronic Arts

Developer: EA Black Box

Designer/Director: Oliver Mariott

Need For Speed Undercover was probably the most anticipated game of of 2008. I saw the HD trailers and, seriously, I was quite excited. I couldn’t get my hands on the game until this March. The controller was shaking with anxiety and excitement. The game I always wanted to play was here! A note here: Since this game is based on the MostWanted and Carbon formula, comparison to them and other EA titles is inevitable.

The game starts with a cutscene. Chase Linh (played by Maggie Q) is speaking with an oversized police officer about a “dangerous” mission. Then a chopper is shown – chasing down a car and BANG! you’re driving the car. The first mission is evading the cops, and I’m like “whoa! This is gonna be great!”. But even before you finish that thought, the pursuit is over. Sob. What started as an amazing aderalin rush turned out to be a crap race. What a waste. But hope is still there. After the ProStreet fiasco, Electronic Arts wanted to cover-up; and they returned to their original successful formula of illegal racing and high speed, engangin pursuits, from their Most Wanted and Carbon titles. Undercover is no big improvement. Its only mildly interesting.

You work undercover for the police and race (illegaly, of course), join other gangs with leaders having loony names such as G-Mac, and bust them by “taking them out”, which is nothing but ramming their cars real bad. As the story progresses, you begin to frame your “friends”. Mistakenly, you frame Chau Wu – a ruthless leader of the crime syndicate. To pay for your mistake, you must steal a Porsche 911 Turbo having some evidence which Chau Wu believes G-Mac stole it from the dockyards and is with this girl called Carmen, but is mistaken himself, as two other crackpots Hector and Zack stole it, and return it to Chau Wu. Since Carmen fears Chau Wu will kill her (as she has the car), she tells you to steal the car from her again, which Chau Wu thought G-Mac stole it from him but was actually stolen by Hector and Zack from Chau Wu. Anyway, you don’t care and simply steal the car and keep it with you, for no apparent reason. Chau Wu holds Chase Linh hostage and wants the car back. You get the Porsche to Chau Wu, and find Chase Linh has been involved with Chau Wu all the time. Chase kills Chau and escapes with the Porsche. You have to get her back. Its done it three minutes and twenty seconds flat. The police arrests Chase, and we find that the “evidence” in the Porsche was actually a PDA, containing the her criminal records. Thats it. No high-speed pursuits. Nothing.

The entire story is told in cutscenes, which is enacted by real people. The acting is atrociously pathetic. Even a star cast of Tusshar Kapoor, Koena Mitra and Dino Morea would have done a better job. In many of the cutscenes, which come after a couple of races, Chase Linh says “That’s enough. We have what we wanted.” after you do some job for her. But what did she want? You have no idea. You just get on with the game. During the cutscenes, the camera focuses on Maggie Q’s body, rather than her face, and the other people in the room. In every cutscene, you have her butt, her chest, her lips and her hand holding a mobile phone. End of cutscene. The dialogues have an amazingly low volume. I had all the volume settings maxed out in the game, and even though my PlayStation is wired to my home-theatre, even a reasonably high volume does not help you to understand the dialogue. There are no subtitles either. Its not because of the heavy American accent. I could easily understand what people said in other NFS titles.

The gameplay is actually good. Its entirely in daylight. The sky looks extremely realistic. Graphics are also good. There is enough detailing in the cars – even the traffic and cop cars. But strangely, the road has reflections of the buildings. The reflections look good and you feel “Wow. Thats good detail.” But the reason is: why? Does it rain everyday in the city? If so, why don’t we ever experience rain during races or free roam? It is as beautiful and as useless as Windows Vista’s Flip 3D.

The races are too easy. Even if you crash and your opponents are way ahead, you can easily beat them. Cases have arisen where I had a split time of nearly 43 seconds and still came first, that too in a sprint (an event with no laps). The game physics suck. If you crash into the wall, your car makes a full 360 turn. Damage is not at all visible, although the game does claim to have damage. You can get totalled in a highway battle (which is a new type of race event), but it never happened to me. I deliberatly crashed into walls, traffic, and huge eighteen-wheelers, and only then does my car get totalled. The damage is not distinctly noticable even now. You may claim that happens because of the low graphics engine of the PlayStation 2, but what about Burnout Dominator? The crashes are realistic here, and so is the damage within the races. What is even more maddening, is that when you take out a car by ramming into it, the damage cannot be seen. But when the cutscene is shown, scratches are seen all around the car. The pursuits are good, as the spike strips emerge quite quickly, and so do the helicopters. But again, its too easy. You get cornered by four cops against a wall with no pursuit breaker in sight and have all your tires spiked, and still you escape and successfully evade the pursuit.

The choice of cars is vast. There are many cars to choose from. But the real sh0w-stealer is the customisation. An immense choice of vinyls, colours, hoods, rims are there. Too many. You can actually spend three full hours deciding what’s good for your car. The right-analog stick rotates the camera, so that you can see how the car looks from every angle. This, is probably the best aspect of the game.

Besides the Career mode, there is the Challenger Series, with pre-customised cars given to you to complete races. Of course, its easy. You get the drill.

So to sum it up, Need For Speed Undercover is a mildly intersting game with an extremely easy difficulty. The customization part is good, but the races and the story aren’t. Buy it, if you want, for the customization, and only if you’re bored with MostWanted and Carbon, and have finished both of them five times each. Only than can you hope that something different will help you. Download a torrent, buy a pirated DVD, or borrow it from a friend, but do not buy the original. It is not worth spending money.

Detailed Ratings [Out of 10]

Gameplay: 4

Graphics: 6

Difficulty: 2

Plot: 4

Physics: 2

Rating: 3.6/10 [Poor]

The Hunt For CA-101

I’m not Ethan Hunt, CA-101 is NOT a secret code for any Halloween document, nor is this Mission Impossible: 4. It is this:

That is the CA-101. I bought a Nokia 7610 Supernova in November last year, and Nokia never gave a data cable with it. Losers. Why couldn’t they have provided one small cable and increase the price by a mere half-a-thoushand bucks, for a eleven thousand phone?

So I really needed a cable for this phone, as it had a 3.2 megapixel camera, and I wanted to check out the picture quality after transfer. Initially, it did look like it would get a universal mini-USB cable into it, but I was wrong. Thank god I didn’t buy a PlayStation Portable transfer cable.

Practicals ended on Friday the 13th and I thought this was the perfect day to hunt for the cable. I knew I would get it from the Mobile Store in Pitampura. So me and my brother (Adarsh) set out to buy one. I checked it up on Nokia’s official website, and saw that my phone needed a CA-101 type cable.

I chose an eco-friendly and highly economical transport to reach my destination. I cross the road through the subway, and approach the Mobile Store, with a familiar red-coloured banner.

Closed.

Damn. It’s always open whenever I go to Pitampura – enticing me with a display of some of the most gorgeous phones I often dream about.

But now, its closed. But wait! There’s another one! Its small, but it exists! Yay!

I enter the mobile store with a floursih, with an aura of confidence. Let’s get this cable!

Me- “Bhaiya, wo Nokia 7610 Supernova ki data cable de do.”

Shopkeeper- “Sorry, bhai. Woh to hamare paas nahi hoga.”

Adarsh- “To kis se le?”

Shopkeeper- “Wo peeche uncle ki dukan hai, aur aage computer ki. Pata kar lo.”

Meanwhile, Adarsh quietly steals takes a nice glossy looking booklet, giving info about the latest Nokia phones. 7610 Supernova is a “Hot Pick”. Doesn’t mention anywhere that it does not come with a cable.

Sheesh, man! I was positive about finding this at the Mobile Store! But hope is still there. We go to “uncle ki dukan” which is just around the corner. Its a Vodafone store.

Me- “Uncle, woh Nokia 7610 Supernova <flicks phone out> ki data cable mil jaayegi?”

Uncle- “No. Nokia Care mein try kar lo. Kohat Enclave ke paas hai”

Me- “Pakka?”

He glares at me with a look sure enough to defeat a Basilisk, and so me and Adarsh set out. We return to the Mobile Store.

“Aage ek computer ki dukan hai. Koi A-C-C-E; aisee hi koi naam hai. Shayad ass-her hai”

I think it was Acer. Adarsh tells me to try out RPG, which is just nearby. No luck. He recommends Nokia care.  We decide to go to “ass-her”, which is indeed – Acer. No luck here too.

“O jee Nokia Cee-ere par try kar lo.”

Well, you see, we were in a fix. Mom had given us about six hundred bucks to get the cable and snack about. Now we had no cable, had no clue where we would find it, and we were hungry. Very hungry.

If we eat something here and go to Kohat Enclave and get the cable, fine. But if we eat, and don’t find the cable in Kohat Enclave, we’d in trouble. Deep trouble. It would hurt our ego, and my parents would never trust me for going out and getting something expensive. I tried to find out Nokia Care’s number, but Opera Mini did not render Nokia’s store locator site. Even Google search didn’t help, as I was low on battery, and Opera Mini drains it like I drain ginger beer. Yes. Beer.

Finally, Adarsh advised me to take a risk and eat. Then we’d go to Kohat Enclave via Metro (which is a road cross away), and try at Nokia Care. His arguement was that three people had recommended it, so certainly there would be some chance. I must admit it was right, but I knew he was doing it to eat something. Bad boy.

We ate dahi bhallas at good old and not-so-economical-now BTW.

BTW is associated with discerning consumers for Tikki, Bhalla Papri, Gole Gappe etc. The success journey began years back when Mr. Satiram Yadav thought of starting this business realizing the weekness of Indian women for the delicious taste of Tikki and Bhalla Papri.

And oh BTW, did you know BTW has its own site? It would be cool enough if BTW had its own Wikipedia page, BTW. And oh BTW, you can also order BTW stuff online!

After a snack, we rush to Metro, catch a train and off to… Keshav Puram. Adarsh’s mistake. Wrong platform. So we rush back to the other platform and this time end up at Kohat Enclave. We reach the Nokia Care centre, which (thankfully) has the cable! We were told it was new cable, and so its availability in the market was sparse.

Yay! We returned home, and tested the cable. It worked. Cool, eh?

My Reactions To Slumdog Millionaire

After Slumdog Millionaire began its winning streak throughout the world by winning BAFTAs, Golden Globes, and more famously, eight Oscars, most of the Indian (like me) and film critics (again, like me) liked it, India being the land of controversies had other ideas. They started slamming the film and called director Danny Boyle many dirty names which would be uncouth to mention here, as I would risk receiving an R rating for Shadow Line, which some controversy-lover would definitely like to give. I’ll try looking at some of these aspects and sort them out according to my understanding.

 

Movies like Taare Zammen Par were better movies than Slumdog Millionaire and should have won the Oscar.

 

Ignorant fools, behold! Can’t you understand that Slumdog Millionaire is a HOLLYWOOD film, and Taare Zameen Par is a BOLLYWOOD film? Get it? The Academy Awards are only for American films, and not for Indian ones. Indian films can only win an Oscar if they meet certain conditions. Did we give a Filmfare for Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King, even though it won eleven Oscars? Did Titanic receive a Stardust award? No! Because they aren’t made for Indian audiences – the main target is Amercians! It is directed by a foreign director. So what if it was shot in India? When Kal Ho Na Ho was shot entirely in New York, did the Americans say complain about a foreign language film being shot on their soil? I hope you get my point.

 

Slumdog Millionaire did not deserve to get so many awards.

 

Why? Why does it not deserve so many awards? Other films nominated for the Best Picture category in the Oscars had certain flaws. The Reader had an unnecessary excess amount of lovemaking, Frost/Nixon was boring for many, The Curious Case of Benjamin Button is quite boring too, although the storyline was damn strong. Milk had a strong message to give, but many were against its controversial topic. This leaves you with Slumdog Millionaire. Although the story line is pretty unbelievable, yet it is a great fantasy about love and hope during despair, which the world really needs during this financial crisis.  It captivated hearts even though a third of the film is a foreign language, and it had a cast composed of no big stars. It had a great music score, for which Rahman deserved two Oscars. The sound mixing had trains arriving on tracks, which accurately resembled trains. Danny Boyle did an awesome job as a director, handling real people from slums without a common language to communicate. The screenplay was aptly modified to make the movie more pleasing and interesting. So there you are.

 

The blind(ed) kid could not possibly know of Benjamin Franklin’s existence on a hundred dollar bill.

 

Ok that, I agree, is a wee bit tough to justify. You must remember, Jamal and Salim (Malik) used to go to school. Similary, that child (Arvind) might also have learned about it in school. That does sound far-fetched, I agree. Another possible explanation could be that after begging for such a long time on the streets, he might have learnt about this fact from some American he must have come across. Remember – Salim and Jamal were very small when they left Maman, and now there were in their mid-teens – big enough to wander around Mumbai and work in restaurants.

 

Jamal did not mention Surdas in the flashback.

 

Even I was stumped at this one, but after watching it again, I found the answer. We need to me a bit more careful while listening to dialogues.  

[Maman calls Jamal to sing that bhajan song]

Maman- “Yaar Jamal, wo Darshan Do Ghanshyaam wala gaana suna de; woh Surdas wala. Mera favourite bhajan hai woh.

Big mistake here. Sorry fellas.

 

India has been showcased as a poor country full of slums. 

 

Well, people, wake up. Look around you. There are so many slums and poor people living way below the Poverty Line (which Rs 434 per month). Nearly 4.2 % of the population is food insecure. Children are really mutilated and forced to beg as shown aptly in the movie. And slums appear only for a mere fifteen to twenty minutes in the film.

 

Well, that pretty much sums it up. Comment about this, and we’ll debate.

Blocking An Application

The registry can be modified easily to make way for a lot of tweaking. Blocking access to an application is one of those great things. No, as usual, I’m not going to use any third-part app (as they can be dangerous). Lets do some registry hacking by ourselves!!

1] Click Start –> Run… or hit WinKey+R on your keyboard to open the Run… dialog box.

2] Navigate to HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Software …

…/Microsoft/Windows/CurrentVersion/Policies …

… /Explorer.

3] Right-click on any empty space in the right pane, and go to New –> DWORD Value.

4] Name the newly created DWORD Value as disallowrun. Press Enter to confirm the renaming.

5] Double-click disallowrun (which you just created) and make sure the Value data is 1 and the Base is Hexadecimal. Click OK when you’re done.

6] Again, right-click on any empty space in the right-pane, and select New –> String Value

7] Name the new String Value anything. I named it notepad, as I want to block the Notepad application. Hit Enter after renaming the file.

8] Double-click the String Value which you just created, and enter the exe name of the file you want to block. It is notepad.exe in this case. To find out the exe name, open Task Manager (by typing taskmgr in Run), and identify the exe name of the application you’re running. Type it into the Value data and click OK.

9] Close the Registry Editor, and restart your computer. You will find that the application is blocked.

Comment if it worked, or didn’t!

The Ironical Oscars

Slumdog Millionaire won eight Oscars, making it the most memorable one for us Indians. But ironically, nearly none of the English pictures that won the main awards were original in their stories. Strange, isn’t it? I have proof:

Slumdog Millionaire [which won 8 Oscars, including Best Picture, Best Director and Best Adapted Screenplay] was adapted from Vikas Swarup’s Q & A.

Milk [which won Sean Penn the Best Actor in a Leading Role] is based on American politician Harvey Milk, which indicates that the story was not made from scratch.

The Reader [which won Kate Winslet the Best Actress in a Leading Role] is based on Bernhard Schlink’s award winning novel by the same name.

The Dark Knight [which won the award for Best Sound Editing and Best Supporting Actor] is based on Bob Kane’s creations – Batman, Joker, Bruce Wayne, etc.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button [which won the award for the Best Visual effects, and also had thirteen nominations] is based on F. Scott Fitzgerald’s short story by the same name.

The Duchess [which won the award for the Best Costumes] is based on Amanda Foreman’s best selling biography of Georgiana Cavendish, Duchess of Devonshire.

Wall-E [which won the award for Best Animated Feature Film] is (very) loosely based on a Robinson Crusoe-sque story (okay, that seems far-fetched)

Oh and BTW, I realised that by my self. Its not pinched from anywhere else.