The Need for Speed series is one of the longest running and most popular racing game franchises today.

Undercover sees you take to the streets as an undercover cop posing as a street racer to work deep into the city’s criminal heart. Very well made cinematicaly, this game features characters played by the likes of Christina Millian acting in a live action cutscenes bringing the story together.

While graphically brilliant, Undercover seems a little rushed to be completed, i cant help thinking if theyd spent an extra 6 months focusing on the gameplay, this would be an all round masterpiece.

The in game driving is fairly good, but can be twitch and hard to control. customization seems lacking in a few areas where previous need for speed titles exell. again it feels rushed. there seem far too few choices for body kits and such, whereas other areas like wheels are far too overpopulated.

The game has a stunning array of  cars ranging from ford escorts to full blown hyper cars such as the Pagani Zonda and Buggati Veyron, unfortunately these cars handle nothing like there real world counterparts, i guess EA are leaving that for simulations like Forza 2.

Overall this game is good, but could be far far better had EA spent more time thinking “how can we make a brilliant game?” and less time thinking “how fast can we get this in stores?”

The party piece of the call of duty series has always been its online multiplayer. most of all with the recent Call of duty 4: Modern Warfare, becoming the most popular all format multiplayer game in history.

World at War, or CoD5 as many people call it, is no let down in the online department either. With a relatively lag free server network and upto and above 250,000 users playing online at any one time (on xbox live alone), CoD5 is shaping up to be another record breaker added to the series.

The weapon system is in pretty much the same format as CoD4, unlocking new guns as you gain in rank, and various attachments for each weapon when you get a set number of kills with them. Guns range from bolt action rifles such as the American Springfield, to a classically styled double barrel shotgun. where as attachments can be anything from a bipod to mount your lumbering machine gun, to a bayonet to increase you melee range.

The maps are well designed and diverse, and if all the little glitches Treyarch missed are ironed out in updates, they are very cleanly made. settings range from the tiny “dome” map,  set on the roof of the German headquarters.to “seelow” a huge farm setting where tanks are the fastest way to get from one side to the other.

As for the tanks, they prove to make a big difference, love them or hate them you will always have to deal with them on the larger maps. in my eyes they are overpowered and over armored, they can fire a single shell in the general direction of a foot soldier and get a kill, whereas if said tank is hit directly with 2 or more bazooka rockets it may yet survive.

Unlike any Call of Duty title previous to it, World at War has a excellent co-op mode with up to 4 players. Consisting of the 2 campaign modes competitive (where players gain points from killing enemies) and non competitive, although both entertaining and rewarding, there not the best part of the co-op modes. That honor goes to the Nazi Zombies mode, in which you have to defend a house from waves of attacking undead. i find this alone a rival to games like Left4Dead despite being only a minigame.

overall call of duty: World at War is an excellent multiplayer game and with the map pack being released later this year, playable long after the single player mode has grown boring.