Need for Speed has long been one of EA's bread and butter franchises, though the ratio of bread to butter has changed a number of times over the years. In other words, it's almost constantly changing from one iteration to the next, sometimes for the betterment of the series, and sometimes not. The latter is the case for Need for Speed Undercover, a game that feels a little lost in its focus and design.

The PSP version of Undercover usually doesn't feature the open world driving of the other versions of the game. Note that I said "usually", as it is possible to drive around the world without barriers, though that's only true for certain race types, like the Lead events (where you must get ahead of your opponent by 300 meters). Aside from these situations, the game is set up as nothing more than a menu-based race scenario. That's fine in and of itself, but with the game capable of being set in an open world, why not take full advantage of it?

If there's oncoming traffic ahead, these guys will probably crash into it.

What's left is an extremely bland event-based game that doesn't do anything new to advance either the franchise or the genre on the whole. Cops will chase after you during a race, but as soon as it's over they're gone, as you're sent back to the event selection screen.

The event options aren't anything new. Things like eliminator events (where the last place person in each lap gets knocked out), your basic circuit and sprint races and everything else here has been seen before. This again might be fine if the game had something to draw you in, but it doesn't.

For one thing, the driving physics are pretty poor. Hitting the foot brake will leave your car mostly unable to turn, so that's useless entering a turn. The handbrake is the better option here, though unless you're in a high-end vehicle, it generally results in you just sliding sideways. It's very hard to actually shift your vehicle's momentum in an arc and cruise around a tight turn.

Source: www.ign.com