Let’s face it, guys: over the past few years, the Need For Speed franchise has completely lost it way. From the “down wiv the kidz” night-racing effort that was Underground and its Carbon and ProStreet sequels, it’s never really been sure of its direction. However, one direction that the game has always excelled in is the original formula of cops and robbers.

With the brand new game, Undercover, it looks like we could be going back to basics, and I’m thankful for it. Lots of tasty info, screens and a video await after the jump.

Need For Speed has always been one of the main kids on the racing game block – it’s almost a grandpa because of how long it’s been around. With 1994’s The Need for Speed, you could hop into any one of several exotic sports cars – Ferraris, Porsches, Dodge Vipers – and take to the mountain roads and city streets for some breakneck street races.

What made NFS novel was the incredibly vigilant police force that conveniently hung around, waiting for you to drive past at 150mph. It meant races weren’t just races but became chases too, as you sought to not only win the race but escape the prying eyes of John Q. Law. It was, in a word, awesome, even when EA went off on a tangent and made a game entirely based around Porsches.

After NFS: Hot Pursuit II on the last generation of consoles things went a little bit awry. Out went the exotic Lamborghinis and sleek Ferraris, and in came Ford Focuses, Peugeot 206s and a heap of other so-called “tuner cars” that were popular with the European, American and Japanese street racing circuit. Unfortunately, the police went out too, which makes no sense, since you’d think they’d spend more time hunting down nitrous-infused hoodlums than they would monitoring what was effectively a virtual Gumball Rally.

With the exception of 2005’s Most Wanted, where tuning was kept to a bare minimum and the police came back for a short-lived stay, Need For Speed had become a shadow of its former self, targeting a more “urban” demographic of teenage males who enjoyed nothing more than reading DUB magazine and pretending to like hardcore dance music while tootling along in their mother’s Ford Fiesta.

Unfortunately, everybody else started joining the street racing circuit, so to speak. Rockstar hitched up with the aforementioned DUB for the third Midnight Club, Juiced introduced team aspects alongside betting your entire car online, and even GTA: San Andreas let you drive into a tuner garage and modify everything from the roof-scoop to the hydraulics.

Everybody was getting in on the act when it came to street racing and with NFS ProStreet it was evident that EA knew the genre was becoming saturated, since they practically cut the only remaining “street” artifact was in the name. Time for a change then, and with Undercover I think they might have cracked it. As I mentioned above, Most Wanted has been the only game in the series since Hot Pursuit II to feature the police, and as a result it’s been my favorite game out of the recent bunch.

The police made the game for me; they gave Need For Speed its raison d’être, made the game stand out from other racers and made it special. Since the whole series lost its way from Underground onwards I’m getting excited for Undercover because it is a reverse reinvention, a back-to-basics racing game.

Head to page two to see what I mean.

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