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Starter Guide
What Kind of Game is Need for Speed: Most Wanted?
Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an open-world arcade racer that rewards exploration, environmental destruction, stunt driving, and high-speed chases. Your ultimate goal is to challenge and defeat a pantheon of Ten Most Wanted racers.
To gain enough credibility to challenge these ten elites drivers, you’ll need to acquire Speed Points. Speed Points are earned for winning races, finding secrets, and causing general mayhem.
Where Do I Start?
Need for Speed drops you into the middle of the action and leaves the choice of how you will play completely up to you. After completing your first mandatory race you are free to explore the city, finding hidden Jack Points where new cars are available for immediate acquisition.
The key to early success in Need for Speed is focus. Explore the city for a while and get your bearings. Serach the back alleys and garages to find a car you like, and then stick with it. Accept some race challenges and build up your Modifications on your chosen vehicle. The sooner you tune a single Car up to decent specs, the sooner you can start winning some police chases for serious Speed Points. The sooner you have Speed Points, the sooner you can challenge the Most Wanted and gain access to their supercars.
How do I Unlock Cars?
Cars are scattered throughout the city in hidden Jack Spots. Once you locate a Car, it becomes permanently available through your Easydrive menu. Outside of the Ten Most Wanted supercars, every car in the game is available to you from the get-go. You just have to find them all.
Thanks for our Interactive Map, that won't be much of a problem for you.
Top 10 Most Wanted cars are unlocked by beating Top Ten drivers in a street race. Winning these races releases a version of their car which wanders the city. Execute a Take Down on that vehicle and it becomes yours.
Which Car Should I Start With?
Different stock models provide trade-offs in durability, acceleration, top speed and handling. Our our Cars section provides complete statistics for every stock vehicle, and you can use our Interactive Map to locate whatever vehicle sparks your interest and add it to your garage.
Cars have six statistical characteristics:
- Acceleration, the measure of how quickly your car moves toward Top Speed.
- Top Speed, the absolute maximum speed your car can reach.
- Control, the steering and handling tightness of the Car.
- Weight, how well the Car holds to the road, and how well it jumps (lower Weights usually jump further and higher).
- Offroad, the Speed and handling of the Car when it leaves pavement
- Toughness, the Car's resistance to damage and ability to ram roadblocks and resist Take Downs.
If you're a racing game newbie, we recommend you select a vehicle with good Acceleration and Control over Top Speed. New drivers tend to appreciate more forgiving steering in turns, which is where most races are won and lost. Top Speed on the straightaway is wonderful, but getting good speed and angles out of a turn results in even more important consistent speed.
With this in mind, new players may want to consider road-stable vehicles like the Lancia Delta, Mitsubishi Evolution X, or SRT Viper for learning the ins and outs of street racing, and then branching out to other models as their skills grow.
There is more to each Car than its statistics, however. Cars also have unique feels, transmission quirks, and peculiarities in handling tot indicated by Stats. you should give every Car are fair shake to find one that suits your driving style.
What are Police Chases?
Police Chases are instigated by tapping a police patrol car and then making a break for it. Every moment of pursuit your Speed Points increase, but to claim the full culminating reward you have to successfully escape and avoid detection. If you are Busted, you lose all potential points.
Early in the game you may want to avoid police chases. Many stock vehicles are easily matched by the speedy police cruisers, and police radios guarantee you’ll need to deal with interception from every angle. If you want to get into chases early on, play a few races in a fast car first and equip it with appropriate upgrades.
Winning a chase is a matter of getting out of sight and staying there until the Heat dies down. If you have enough raw speed on a straightaway, you can pull ahead of pursuers, then dive around a couple of corners and find a handy alcove to hide in. If you can’t find a good unblocked straightaway, try finding a section of snaking streets or off-road jumps to throw off pursuit, then level out and hide.
There are six degrees of Heat that increase as you further agitate and collide with police vehicles. Later Heat stages introduce SWAT elements, vehicles that can trash any unreinforced car frame with a single swipe. Do not attempt to ram through SWAT barricades without an upgraded frame. You’ll accordion your car without scratching the paint on the paddywagons.
Police also have a tendency to interfere in races, and you’ll need to watch out for their aggressive attempts to pin you against nearby buildings.
What are Security Gates, Billboards, and Speed Cameras?
Fairhaven is crammed with Security Gates, Billboards, and Speed Cameras, Ramming through Gates and Billboards grants you speed points assuming you survive the crash. Zooming past Speed Cameras likewise increases your point totals.
Our Interactive Map of Fairhaven includes an ever-growing inventory of locations for each of these beneficial
What about Modifications?
Winning races grants you access to Modifications. Each race spells out what upgrades you’ll gain for placing before you begin, so you’ll have the freedom to pick and choose.
Modifications apply only to the model of car you’re driving when you win a race, so you’ll need to win races in different vehicles to fully equip your garage. Each car has its own set of races and modification rewards to match.
Modifications come in all types: Nitrous Boosts, special Tires, Body reinforcement and a host of other customizations.
Using the Easydrive Menu, it's possible to apply Modifications on the fly, customizing your Car in reaction to upcoming terrain or driving condition changes.
There are also more powerful Pro Modifications, earned through reaching Milestones. Onc eyou have earned a standard Moficiation, you can check it on your Easydrive menu to find the Milestone requirements necessary to unlock the Pro version.
What is Easydrive?
Easydrive is the Need for Speed: Most Wanted HUD menu system. It allows you to perform three important tasks: choosing Cars via teleportation to previously discovered Jack Spots, customizing your Modifications in mid-race, and setting routes to or teleporting to Race locations.
How Do I Win Races?
Remember these fundamental rules of the road to increase your win ratio.
- In Slow, Out Fast: When entering a corner, let off the gas or, if it’s sharp, brake. Halfway through the turn, begin to accelerate. It’s a simple concept, but absolutely key to winning tougher races.
- Remember that Straight Lines are Faster: As much as possible, keep your car on an imaginary straight line from where you are to where you want to be. Watch the Horizon, and line yourself up on straightaways with the place you imagine yourself entering the curve.
- Don’t Oversteer: Nudge the wheel rather than spin it. Don’t overcompensate for obstacles or incoming traffic. At high speed even the slightest tap of the stick sends you several feet off your previous path.
- Learn the Route: Some of the more difficulty races fly by so fast it's hard to tell where you're headed. Your first few attempts might not be successful, but that doesn't mean they're not useful. Spend some time acquainting yourself with a race's route, noting sudden turns and police Ambush points. Knowing what's coming will significantly increase your time on retry attempts.
- Give Em' A Love Tap: Need for Speed is a full contact sport. Don't hesitate to execute Take Downs on rivals to gain valuable seconds.
- Customize your Car: If you just can’t seem to keep up, check your available Modifications. Is there a certain item available that might increase your efficiency that you’ve neglected to equip?
- Step Away and Come Back: Step away from the event in question and concentrate on building up Speed Points in other ways. Go earn some new Modifications in other events, try out new Cars, and then return rested, more experienced, and better equipped to win.
What About Multiplayer?
Need for Speed’s Public multiplayer mode is a series of events runs in a non-stop sequence in each online game. Players take part in one Race, Jump Challenge, or other event, then are immediately directed to a Meet Up point and launch into another competition. During and between events there are rewards for Takedowns and acts of showmanship. There is no break in the action, just a continuous series of driving modes introduced one after the other. A queue in the top-right corner of the screen indicates the order of upcoming events. New players drop in and out continuously.
Teams are automatically assigned in team events and then broken up when the event ends. Two players may compete in one event as rivals and then immediately be paired as allies in the next event.
Some events restrict Car configurations, for example, "muscle cars only" or "race cars only."
Online racers all have a Speed Level based on performance in online events. In Public games, racers are automatically paired against players with comparable online skill and experience. As players gain Speed Points online they gain access to new upgrades for their online configurations.
Online Modifications are earned through meeting special online Milestones. The more experience you have in a particular car online, the more of these Milestone thresholds you will reach and the more multiplayer Modifications you are likely to unlock. Check your Easydrive menu while playing online to view these Milestones.
In addition to some Modifications, online racers also have access to Sweet Revenge Mods, special car configurations earned through online play. Mods have a variety of effects, including extended Nitrous Boosts, powerful Automatic Takedowns, and a variety of other effects.