Twelfth game in the series eh? Well you'd think that by now something that had been around that long would've really got a sense of what people wanted from the series. There are certainly other titles out there that offer a decent take on a driving game, of any kind, be that futuristic, realistic or err... optimistic! So, whatever your flavour the industry has catered. What, therefore, does the Need for Speed series offer over anything else?

Well it used to be all about the whole cops 'n' robbers vibe, but these days they've tried to go for a full overhaul and revamp of the title to include more customisation, a solid storyline and a cityscape you can bathe in. Whether it would love up to all that I'd have to see.

Need for Speed: Undercover joins the rest of the industry in laying itself much as a film would. From the start, after an intro taking a leaf out of Miami Vice, the game plunges you into a high speed pursuit between you and the cops. This brings up an interesting first point – no tutorial. Now I got lucky and went straight for hitting the R2 button to accelerate, hoping to fall in line with other titles of the same ilk and struck it lucky. [You could have akways... you know... read the manual or something – Matt]. For those of you who are used to hitting X would've looked like a right plonker suddenly hitting the handbrake. Nor are you aware that you can hit the square button to slow time down and increase your manoeuvrability for a short period. Would've also been useful, but hey putting aside for now it's a pretty cool intro.

You unfortunately don't have much choice other to smash into the side of a police barricade. Whether this actually gets you caught or whether you already worked for the Blues who knows, but you then become a driver trying to work your way into the underground street racing mob. Or at least that's what it seems as the little movie cutscenes aren't exactly clear on what's happening and are acted by a bunch of high-school rejects. But we'll run with it for now.

You've got your starter car, which is certainly better than my starter car which closely resembled an Austin Metro, so you can count yourself lucky there. The aim of the game is to complete missions around the map to gain reputation in order to infiltrate and take down the mob from within. Sounds easy enough? Well it is pretty much. While I thought that perhaps the initial idea was to warm you up to the life of high speed driving action and that the challenges were yet to come, they never appeared. After you do certain head-to-head missions you'll get the choice of taking home a car which usually kicks all kinds of ass. In this case I went for the Lotus Elise which felt like it was literally going to tear itself apart with how fast it could get off the start line. Again, I assumed that the challenges would come with others getting better cars too, but no. I suppose you have to appreciate the wider audience this incarnation of Need for Speed might open up to with being that much easier than your standard not-so-serious racer.

Winning cars also kind of writes off the idea of buying cars in the shop, unless of course you never get the ability to win a super car at any point in the game then maybe it's worth the cash spent. However, I can't see what would be the point as far as the story goes as the cars you get more than do their job. Still, it can be worth a visit to the garage to fine tune your car for not only performance upgrades but the usual tweaks I'd expect most townies to want to get involved with. There's always a paint job or too worth the smidgen of cash you have to spend. Don't ask me why people would want to spend real money on a car mind you, which is also an option using your PS3 wallet.

The car handling isn't that bad, perhaps comparable to Burnout crossed with Sega Rally. If there's a car you get that you don't like the handling on you can always upgrade it, but I find that, say, the Lotus is such a superior car that once you find one of it's calibre you don't have to change for quite some time.

Whatever car you do have, perhaps the most important change is how you'll never be able to outrun the cops in a straight line. They're somewhat more intelligent, but have stupidly powerful cars to boot. Either while roaming around or starting specific missions, you'll have to face off against the Blues bringing more driving skill into the equation over any other element of the game. It's still easy of course. They've set the missions up so you have several hotspots that help you eliminate one of the cops, you can ram them or simply out manoeuvre them and hide. So, that's fun for a while.

But the cops are just one of the main storyline missions that are made up of a variety of different races and “challenges”. For the most part these make up the grind that's you trying to level your reputation up to progress down the main path of storyline missions and unlock new locations and... more missions. There are your standard races, head to heads, ones that will have you causing the state some damage while being chased by cops and races that require you to keep the lead for a set time or distance to name a few. Anything with a limited time to it is probably the most challenging you'll find in the game, all the rest relate to what's already been said on the “easy factor”.

I can see where this review is going. Largely I'm going to end up repeating myself over and over as I harp on about how the game fundamentally sits on the shelf as a good idea, but then flumps about a bit in it's insecurities until it finally squelches into your PS3 with a flop of “meh”. It has some many inconsistencies, from not being able to hit cars for fear of being slowed to a crawl, to the missions where you're supposed to hit them. My head hurts in trying to figure out what went wrong.

The sound department win the award in my book. Great sound track and some really decent SFX at least helped in keeping me playing the game beyond all patience. Hopefully with any luck it'll lucky 13 when the next in the sequence comes along.