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DriftJam| Media| NFS: Underground Review|
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Obviously, the graphics are, how they say, "chocolate and shit", but the concept is almost identical. Only thing is, mine is roughly 2.5 years older. I do wonder who, if anyone might've seen my Demo Reel back then...
Zone Comparison, and NO I'm not crying, just pointing out! Score counting, is about as furious, it appears to be on the frame, just like mine.
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NFS: Underground 
Is it a Good game?

Well, after some thought, I figured I better see what NFS: Underground's drifting mode was all about. Well I installed it, booted er up, once I threw the detail on max, it was agreeable to my wildcat VP970, otherwise, it was fussing about the texturemaps, (looked like UVW was set to FACE, or something he he), anyways, dork moment. 

Initial observations(more to come later): Its a fun game! I will give EA credit for making this a very fun game, you get points for all kinds of stuff that I've always thought would be cool to get points from. Now, perhaps there is a game previous to this where they get their basis, eg, some game back in the laucn days of Xbox (I think) had "kudos" which was about as retarded a name as you could pick. (despite the good tasting snacks). needless to say, I don't think that the game in question (project gotham?) flew all that well coz well, I can't even remember the name of the game. 
Enter Shutoku Battle 1-2 AKA Tokyo eXtreme Racer 1-2, more cheese in the translation department, but thats ok, eXtreme marketing campaigns tend to work out or something. TXR/SB series was groundbreaking in that it had ultra detailed licenced lookalikes, but more importantly, it featured licenced lookalike bodykits too. I couldn't wait to buy this C-Westin looking clone front bumper for my FD, ofcourse it wasn't a C-Westin licenced bumper nor a Mazda FD, but thats besides the point, it was a spittin' image of both.
I'm skipping over Gran Turismo 1,2,3 intentionally, there is no need to even bring the KING of racing games into this picture.
NFS: Underground, well now, we have us an interesting game. It is remenescent of some launch game on PS2, cheesy car models, decent play, same general concept, slightly different overall game mechanics, Midnight Club I think was it's title. Anyways, general concept: you got a nice city to race around in, I beleive in that game there where three cities, USA, Europe and Tokyo. NFS-Underground is not a clone of this game, but its very similar to this style. The beautiful thing about NFS is that you get the different modes, and they are not stingy about it either with 111 different objectives, and a myriad of bonus items. Despite the and "Fast and the Furious"(FaF) mindset you have to have to play in the game, it is genuinley entertaining. 
NFS Underground however was a better execution than the old FaF movie, no motec exhausts here, however, while i'd never put some neon lights, huge vinyl stickers, windsheild banners, or a grip of stickers on my car, you do have to do some questionable things to your car to get points, but thats all part of the fun I guess. 
The play mechanics are *very* forgiving, and somewhat challenging. Rather than make the player concentrate on the nuance of each corner like Gran Turismo does (defanatly not a BAD thing!), this game is more about "hit it fast, hard, and bang/bash/jump, or NOS your way out of it" mentality. This is suitable given the atmosphere in the game, some of the opponents are also quite entertaining, some races genuinley give me a nice thrill, coz it'll be close! Drag racing while not MY bag, is still made fun in this game the shakey cam lends a real FaF touch to it. Don't read me wrong, I didn't hate FaF, I dug the first drag race, that was like 45 seconds long or whatever, very cool effects etc. the NFS-U Drag mode gives an almost identical feeling. 

So my general review is, its a fun game.

The Drifting mode of NFS-U:

Well despite a PAINFULLY obvious resemblence to Drift Jam (keep in mind I did this interface a FULL 2.5 years BEFORE this game surfaced...) I have to admit, it is very good. It's got a nice arcady feeling to it, and awards points based on speed, drift angle, and chained drifts. I can tell someone spent some time tweaking the physics here. There are ofcourse quams a plenty, one of which being, it is WAY TOO EASY to drift. This is not to say that I think it should be nerve wracking, but it should defanatley be a little more spin-out prone. This goes back to the forgiving game play mechanics. The other thing that is odd is that, this is a "tuner" game, I put this in quotes because it is like a marketing term... heh. Anyways, you can fine tune your neon better than your suspension! Its not a problem so much because the cars handle decently however, tuning by nature means tuning all facets of your ride. I personally have some settings I swear by in Gran Turismo, this aspect however is totally omited in the game. Again, not a knock, just an observation. Back to the Drift mode:

Well I haven't bothered with an FF or AWD car yet, so I can't comment on that. FR drifting is, in my opinion, the best way to drift. I went from my trusty MX5 to a RPS13, and now own a JZA80 Supra, the latter handling the best, and drifting the most predictably. I can do swaying drifts, link them, and max out my multiplier fairly easily, I dig the bonus zones, *very* nice squealing sounds, and ofcourse, you can get some nice sideways action in there for sure. Track design is literally a closed circuit, this is fine, I won't diss this, the tracks are custom tailored to drifting, hairpins and chicanes etc. I will have to say, they would've been alot better off designing the drift rings around a dock motif, a'la the docks everyone hears about in Japan that Drifters will occasionally use to get warmed up or meet up. Otherwise the industrial/jersy barrier/painted shoulder circuits you race in aren't really that "underground" and more sanctioned :). 

Given that Drifting is all about having the right setup, you don't even get that element in the whole game. This is rather disheartening because many VG-Drifters spanning from GT1-GT3, pride ourselves on what we think is special about our drifting suspension setting. You can literally transform a car from a lunging-squeamish-massive bodyroll having-understeering-turn like a brick-stock vehicle, into a perfect, taught, tight steering, do-what-you-tell-it-to-do, extension of your thumbs and mind on the controller - drift machine. This methodology gives a game replay value in my opinion, because you can buy a car, tune it one way, save the settings, then go back and tweak out the settings, and have two different setups, producing two different handling characteristic. Matching the tires up really is fun too, you can make a kansai drifting GT machine which allows the high speed drifts threw the tight curve, and gripping on the sweeping esses. Or an exhibition drifter which would drift with great speed and superb style.

Scoring system: its not bad, its similar to Drift Jam, just minus the realtime attack evaluation. 
It will tell you a few details about your drifts eg if they are linked (this appear to be a if speed is >XX and angle change time is <.XX then chain = true type of reasoning) you get points for speed for sure, it works like a multiplier as a matter of fact. Also chained drifts increase your score multiplier, just like in Drift Jam. The simplicity of the scoring system however does allow one to attain huge drift scores with relativley UGLY drifts. An Ugly drift is simply where the car is understeering to the outside of the corner, yet the rear wheels are spinning (trust me its hideous). There is a ton of room for improvement but that is why this is simply one of several modes in this game, for what it is, it is very well executed. 
A few minor dissapointments is that the technique evaluation is purley numeric, and doesn't really take into consideration some key factors that Drift Jam will. (i've thought these out from a programmer friendly perspective too), Also Score multipliers are readily available by simply dragging your tail through a shoulder zone. Now, used strategically, (eg a chicane, or on the outside of a tight curve, etc.) it would be a little better suited, but in it's own way I suppose it awards players who venture close to the wall. I'd say, very smart to include road-zone scoring, BUT not wise to make it so easy to use them to score.

So is it a good game? In a word, NO, it is a Great Game!

My over all rating for this game is a 8/10, and the drifting mode is getting a hard fought 7/10 for right now. 

By comparison, GT2 is a 15/10 in all departments. GT3 is also 20/10. (yeah they are literally off the charts!)