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NFS Most Wanted Review: Thrilling racer

After playing Most Wanted, we’re going to give anywhere named Fairhaven a wide berth. If this game’s anything to go by, such cities are grim industrial nightmares, primarily populated by unhinged racers, doddering senior citizen drivers, and psychotic police. As the setting for a racing game, though, Fairhaven takes some beating.

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpGS1K9mLPQ]

The aim is to become Most Wanted, by working your way up the ranks of the street racing circuit. You start off with underpowered cars, earning cash for winning races and other challenges, and gradually amass a collection of vehicles with which to cause havoc. The actual racing is superb, with some of the best and most natural handling on iOS. The tracks are smartly designed – if very, very gray – with shortcuts to discover, and gloriously lengthy bends to cater for outlandishly long drifts.

Unlike the other titles in this feature, Most Wanted adds the law to the mix. The police radio will bark about a ‘suspect’s vehicle’, and then angry cop cars pile in, and roadblocks are created for you to smash through. The cops don’t seem terribly concerned about your rivals, which is odd, but then this is a game where you can have a head-on smash with a truck, fly Dukes of Hazzard-style through a cliff-top sign, and the only downside will be finishing second in the race rather than first. Fantastic!

We won’t be able to talk ourselves out of this altercation with the cops.

We won’t be able to talk ourselves out of this altercation with the cops.

Price: $4.99/£2.99

Size: 637 MB

Version: 1.0.2

Platform: iOS Universal 

Developer: Electronic Arts

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