Upon start-up you are given a fairly lengthy menu option list that allows you to compete in a career mode, challenge mode (against other drivers with the chance to unlock new tracks), custom and quick races online (we will come back to the online part later).

The career mode contains some neat cut scenes depicting the story line, which involves around your characters return after one race went wrong and all your mates get nicked but you ran off. So to cut a long story short you owe them big time and are forced to compete in races to pay off your debt.

To start with you can pick your car by test driving a few of the available models which consist of muscle cars and posh sports cars like the Alpha to name but a few and then you are introduced to your first crew member who has many skills to aid you during a race, for example blocking skills or showing you where a short cut is. More Crew members become available during the game which open up a strategy screen allowing you to pick the best crew member for a particular race.

Races revolve around capturing city blocks, if you win enough races your team takes over that block. All the action takes place on the streets or on winding roads for more complex tasks. You have Sprint, Speed trap, Drift and checkpoint style of racing. The Speed trap is pretty good fun as you have to get the fastest recorded speed on camera in order to win the race. The drift revolves around you scoring points by dong the best drifts -going side ways around corners without touching the walls.

When you first start the game properly we were unsure exactly what we were supposed to do, for example after a race you are just left there free to drive around the city. Its only after a while you realise that you can use this free time to have fun with the cops in good old fashioned chases or drive to your next race via a GPS position that guides you there.

Racing against the cops is pretty good fun, you get a heat meter that makes you more prone to getting picked up by nearby cars and then you can gain points by outrunning and smashing into them. Crashing through a police road block was satisfying to say the least (though don't try this at home folks!).

Of course the main aspect of the game is to win and use the money you have earned to customise your car. You customise your car at your safe house and can turn you car from a milk float into a power house with everything from custom paint jobs, body kits, Nitro’s (for short bursts of speed), new tyres, to suspension being available - afterwards you can then take an image of your car and upload it for the online community to see.

You can also customise each part further by adjusting each parts balance, which proves useful during the different styles of racing.

In fact we have to say the driving experience handles pretty realistically, so when you adjust your car for over or under steer for example you do notice it and it's something you need to do as the game will become very difficult to complete otherwise.

The campaign is addictive but it can get really frustrating especially on the drift and boss races where you have to first beat them in a straight race and then in a pursuit race, in other words the closer you get to them whilst driving down a step winding road the more points you score and then the roles are reversed and they have to keep up with you. This is darn tough to do with a keyboard so a Joypad will be the preferred method of choice for controls.

Graphically wise you do get some pretty neat visuals, speed is represented by a blur motion and the cars look sweet on-screen (it's really cool seeing your custom car hit the road for the first time), but the city terrain tends to get a bit samey after a while - which mimics the game play - and though you can crash into items around the roads there is not much visual damage to the cars, but it is neat when you crash into a truck carrying logs as they fall off the back. During racing knocking objects and cars into the path of your competitors is all part of the game.

Sound effects are also used to good effect with realistic tyre screeching noises and a cool Police radio broadcast which occurs when you are being chased by the cops. The cut scenes are also used to reasonable good effect.

EA have thrown in a reward card system into the mix that can be used to claim prizes - such as new cars and EQ. So in order to get these prizes you need to have completed certain goals, it’s a bit like the Rank system from Battlefield 2 all over again.

We would comment on the multiplayer modes but we could not get them to work and believe us we tried and on several computers (let’s just say we were really frustrated about this).

The game informs you to check for a patch which we do, but the game CD states there are no patches available, this then proves incorrect as there is a 1.3 patch on the EA website which is needed in order to play the online game. But after all this messing around the patch does not work and this seems to be a common problem that several people have found, some get it to work, others don't.