Need for Speed Undercover

Need for Speed Undercover Challenge Series Revealed Since we last spoke to the Undercover team I’ve received a lot of emails with people wanting to find out more about the new game modes we’re planning for Need for Speed Undercover. With the new modes due to be released soon I went through the emails and asked Undercover producer and former race car driver Marc DeVellis to answer your questions. Tell u s about Challenge Series? Challenge Series is comprised of 10 game mode themes (Sprint, Checkpoint, Outrun, Circuit, Highway Battle, and Cost to State, Escape, Takedown, Highway Wars and Highway Checkpoint). There are 2 levels of difficulty (Street & Pro) with a Bronze, Silver, and Gold event in each level for a total of 60 unique events. Players are able to earn up to three free Reward Cars; one after completing Street level (Battle Machine from Pro Street); one after completing Pro level (Speed Machine); and one after dominating at least 31 events (Dominator). Players are able to use these cars online or offline their career mode. We created brand new custom menus for Challenge Series tha t our users should enjoy. Players will also welcome the fact that each event is raced in a custom ride with all cars having NOS. Players will have to complete the first 30 events in order to unlock the Pro Level of difficulty. We have created a Summary Screen so that players can quickly see which events they need to race next or simply keep track of the races they have dominated. What was the ideal behind creating a Challenge Mode? We simply wanted to give back to our fans. 60 unique events and three awesome reward cars is a lot of content and took the work of a very dedicated dev team to make it happen. Best thing is it’s free. We have been tuning Challenge Series for some time now and I was able to bring a build home to test and review. The cool thing that our fans will love is that it took me almost seven hours to complete the entire pack. Now keep in mind that I have raced these events hundreds of times so this enabled me to minimize the amount of times I had to re-start or do races multiple times. I would rate my ability towards hard core when referencing racing games so I was very pleased to see how long the play through took. Players will see more laps in the Circuit races, more cops to takeout, more Cost-to-State to rack up and the list goes on. We wanted to embrace the experience without taking too long so balancing out the experience/time was crucial.I am very excited to see the new cars Online and see them at the top of the Leaderboards. Can you give us some details about the new modes Highway Wars and Highway Checkpoint? When brainstorming ideas around new modes, we primarily listen ed to our fans feedback to help guide our decisions. We have seen that Highway Battle is one of Undercover’s most popular modes so we decided to take it a step further and create Highway Wars. In this mode, players will experience three AI opponents rather than just one. The race is a sprint to the finish line and is no longer based on building distance. We wanted to get away from easy/cheap wins. We added a lot more traffic on the highway which results in the players having to be very precise while battling against the AI. There is a designed progression of difficulty from bronze to gold so players will have to keep it clean and nearly perfect if they want to win/dominate the Gold events. First person across the line wins and with three AI chasing you, it is a crazy and hectic experience. In our second new mode, we kept it on the Highway as well but this time it is a test against the clock and precision. Players will race to each checkpoint at top speeds while battling through traffic. As you get to the Gold events, traffic is very dense which requires absolute concentration and almost no mistakes. There isn’t a huge amount of cushion between checkpoints so players have to be pushing the pace the entire drive to complete these events. We used only the best cars in Challenge Series as players will get to experience all the Tier 1 cars, most of Tier 2 and a few Tier 3 that were in Undercover. Highway Checkpoint is where you can stretch the legs on these cars and really get in the zone. Since increasing the difficulty, even if you drive clean, it will still be tight to make it to the next checkpoint. This adds to the excitement as the clock counts down and ensures that players are fully focused making as little mistakes as possible. One of the things the community asks for frequently is online Highway Battle. Can you give us some details about why that hasn’t made it into the update? Challenge Series Events are all raced offline. This enabled us to have a very clear focus and add as much tuned content as possible. The Boss cars and Reward Cars are able to be used later Online. We recommend this since their performance quite amazing. I think it is a great idea looking forward and something that is on the top of our radar. How much help did you get from the community? Everyone who works on NFS is very passionate about our product. We heavily watched all the feedback that Undercover received, primarily from the fans. With the last update, we addressed framerate and difficulty. We looked at the most popular modes and decided to build it out further. We have watched the leaderboards constantly to see which cars are winning and in which races. We have been watching, listening and then designed around what our fans would enjoy. In the patch you made some changes to the difficulty; I’ve notic ed the Challenge series has some really difficult races. Have you done more work on the difficulty levels? We have done some extensive work in this area. Each race and each level was hand tuned to push the level of challenge. Starting with Bronze and progressing through, players will notice the events getting harder all the way up until they reach Pro Gold. They will also notice that the cars used in each event get faster and faster. We added to the difficulty by placing the user in a different car in each event. They will have to adapt to the different combinations of cars and master each style. When they advance into Pro Mode, the level of difficulty jumps to its peak and if they don’t drive clean and almost perfect, they will most likely have to do the race again. Domination times were another area that our fans thought to be too easy and I now challenge them to go after the “Dominator” and try and dominate at least 31 events. What about the cars that I can win during the mode? How did you decide which cars to offer up as the rewards for the series? We looked at all the possibilities and based our decisions on what our fans would appreciate. We started with ‘Battle Machine’ which was an iconic car in the launch of Pro Street (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_wyfM2-ie-g) Players were never able to get behind the wheel so we said, bring her back and let them drive. It is a very light car with huge twin turbo power. It is a blast to drive. We then looked at Rose’s 911 GT2 Hero car and took inspiration from her beautiful custom curves. We then added a new custom wing, gold liveries and pumped up the horsepower. The Dominator is something that is only earned through hard work. On our office walls, we put up a huge poster with the Dominator’s slogan “Winning is not enough.” This is true solely because the only way players are going to win her is by dominating at least 31 events. Since we set the domination times to be very challenging, this is a car that will be earned only through skill and determination. Dominator is a custom Z06 Corvette that sports a custom livery with the #1`number plate on the side. Online players will definitely battle to win this car, take it online, and showboat with the #1 plate. What’s so special about the cars? Can I use this in other modes? These cars are beautiful, fast and free! They can be used Online or offline in the player’s career. I expect the Leaderboards to get shaken up with these cars in the mix. They are not as fast as the BOSS cars put will put up a good race. Need For Speed fans will want to add these into their collection since they are Special Editions, there’s no other way to get them other than to win them. andrew@NeedforSpeed.com