Need for Speed – Most Wanted – Black Edition | The Black Edition is a special collector’s edition of Need for Speed: Most Wanted to be released in celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Need for Speed series.

The Black Edition features additional events, bonus cars, three bonus vinyl, and a special challenge series event.

It also comes included with a special feature DVD that contains interviews and videos relating to the development of the game.

It was made available for the PC, PlayStation 2, and Xbox releases in North America, but was only made available for the PlayStation 2 release in Europe.

The Black Edition was not made available for the Xbox 360 release in North America and Europe, but Japanese Xbox 360 releases of the regular Need for Speed: Most Wanted include the Black Edition DVD with Japanese subtitles.

Gameplay – Need for Speed – Most Wanted – Black Edition

In the game, players take part in illegal street races across Most Wanted‘s setting, utilizing a variety of licensed real-world cars that can be upgraded and customized with new parts while contending with the involvement of the police in their efforts to impede the player. Racing events feature a mixture of competitive racing across the circuit or point-to-point races, and checkpoint, sprint and drag races. The game features three modes of play – Career, Quick Race, and Challenge Series – with a fourth mode allowing for multiplayer to be available to players on certain console editions. While many of the racing events feature those used in previous entries in the games, particularly the Underground set of games, some events – Drifting, Street X, Underground Racing League tournaments, and Outrun – are absent from Most Wanted, and replaced with two new ones.

• The first event is Tollbooth, a checkpoint-styled solo race, in which players must hit a set of checkpoints, each one within a set amount of time; reaching a checkpoint quickly adds the time left over to the timer for the next checkpoint.
• The second event is Speedtrap, in which players compete in a competitive checkpoint race, and must hit each checkpoint at their fastest speed; upon crossing the finishing line, each checkpoint’s total speed is accumulated to determine the winner. Speed accumulated by the player or opponent gets deducted by 10 km/hr after an opponent crosses the finish line first; this is signified by intermittent flashing on-screen until the player (or the other opponent cars) crosses the finish line.

The game features a selection of stock cars to choose from, each of which can be modified during the game’s career mode with upgrades to enhance its performance and visual appearance. Customization of the car’s appearance is limited; the main emphasis of customization is to reduce the car’s heat level rather than for reputation as in the Underground series – while some elements that were possible in the previous installments were removed, others received minor changes such as players being able to make use of whole body kits on cars, the use of only one vinyl for the vehicle, and exterior colors is limited to the car’s main body, wheels and window tinting. Additional cars are available for the player to use – most of which are acquired from the game’s Blacklist Racers or unlocked after defeating a Blacklist Racer, while others are bonuses available from completing challenges; several cars available in the game are exclusives added in by the Black Edition copy of the game. Police cars cannot be driven in the game, except during special events in the game’s Challenge Series mode. Most Wanted, like the Underground series, avoids the use of major vehicle damage on all racing models, with only scratched paint and heavily cracked windshields constituting the whole of the racers’ damage modeling. Police cars, on the other hand, sustain heavy damage when hit by the player’s car or caused by the player to crash into other cars or obstacles.

During races and the game’s Career mode, players can make use of Nitrous Boosts to help give them an edge against opponents. Unlike Underground, which first introduced the gameplay mechanic, Nitrous Boosts recharge over time, thus allowing the player to re-use it when needed. Players can use a second ability to help out in tough situations called “Speedbreaker” – when used, the ability slows down time (similar to bullet time), induces drift, and momentarily increase the weight of the player’s vehicle to make it harder to be pushed around, thus allowing players to maneuver their vehicle out of a difficult situation.

While the concept of players being engaged by police had been a feature of most entries in the series since the first Need for Speed title, the development of Most Wanted to be saw the gameplay mechanic enhanced and firmly introduced into the series through the employment of a complex system. When players become engaged in a police pursuit, usually from conducting a traffic offense (referred to as “Infractions” in the game) in sight of a police unit (such as speeding), their aim at this point is to escape from the pursuit by either evading or taking out pursuing vehicles. The game’s on-screen HUD is modified during a pursuit, including highlighting pursuing police units on the mini-map, displaying the vehicle’s heat level, and adding a Pursuit bar at the bottom detailing the number of police units in the pursuit, how many have been evaded, and how many have been taken out. The pursuit system calculates how the police handle the player via the heat level accumulated against the player’s current car. Heat accumulates from committing offenses and continually evading capture by the police, with higher levels of heat causing the police to be more aggressive, from employing additional tactics and tools (such as roadblocks, spike strips, and police helicopters), to involving stronger, faster police cars such as police SUVs and Federal units. If a player has only one car actively pursuing them, reinforcements may be called in and arrive after some time.

Players can lose the police through skillful driving, making use of their special abilities, ramming pursuing vehicles, and utilizing “Pursuit Breakers” – environmental traps, highlighted on the mini-map, which when triggered cause a certain number of police vehicles to be taken out of action, such as smashing through a gas station. Evading and losing the police – either by disabling/immobilizing vehicles, gaining some distance from pursuers, or a combination of both – does not end a pursuit, once there are no more active vehicles. Instead, the player enters a “cooldown” period when this happens, which pauses the pursuit (and any reinforcements being called in), they must hide and avoid being spotted by police for some time. The length of time for this period is longer at higher levels of heat but can be decreased significantly if the player reaches and hides in special concealment spots around the game’s setting, which are marked on the mini-map during this phase and are used to place them out of sight of police units. A pursuit fully ends when the player successfully escapes the police or is overwhelmed and trapped, and thus “busted” as a result.