The Need for Speed series and I go way back, to the PS1 days. In that time, I've raced hover cars through a future Las Vegas, passed untold hours with tons of unaffordable cars on wildly varied tracks, and I've battled with the highway patrol. I'm a fan of the spin-off Underground series, although I don't think it's perfect. Other games have done certain things better, whether it's the visceral punch of Burnout, or the more satisfying driving model in PGR2. But the NFSU games have a nice customization factor, and Underground expands on that while throwing in some guilty pleasure pop culture. So it's with excitement that I dig into EA's first NFS foray on the PSP.

However, there are some issues at the outset. Don't get me wrong-I'm realistic about the technological limitations of the platform and the media size of the UMD. It's a next-gen handheld, but it's not a PS2. Still, I had a big problem with how the analog stick behaved. It has the largest dead zone of any racer I can remember. What this means is that the car really doesn't start turning until you've pushed the stick a good deal out, and then it turns hard. I dug through the game options extensively, and couldn't find a way to adjust this. You also can't remap keys, but you have four presets to choose from, two each for manual and automatic. Thankfully, though, the D-pad is there as an alternative, and tap-turn steering feels a lot better.

Dig through the options and you will find that you can edit the EA Trax playlist of 33 songs. In this menu, there are also a couple music videos you can check out, from Soulwax and The Donots, and the quality is surprisingly good, considering that it's a full clip wedged onto a 1.8GB game disk. It's great that you can edit the playlist, because it's ridiculously varied, as has become typical with EA Trax. It appeals to everyone, even if not not really clicking with anyone in particular.

Source: www.ign.com