Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012) / YMMV

For the 2005 game, click here.

Awesome Music: Has its own page.
Badass Decay: Compare the police vehicles encountered in the 2012 game to those in the previous Criterion-developed installment, the 2010 Hot Pursuit. While the police in Hot Pursuit had a whole fleet of exotic vehicles, here they only have cars that you'd see in real-life police forces (except for the Corvette). Evidently, the Fairhaven City PD has a smaller budget than their counterparts in Seacrest County.
Best Level Ever: Hughes International Airport. While it's locked behind the Terminal Velocity DLC, what you get is a very nice, sprawling, and all-around fun part of the map that has terrains of all kinds as well as a huge runway to farm Customization upgrades.
Broken Base: The 2012 game splits the Most Wanted fanbase quite hard, with one side (particularly the hardline classic fans) welcoming some of its changes such as the removal of tuner customization options, and the others (especially tuner and longtime fans) berate it for the same reason as well as seeing it as an affront to the franchise for hijacking the name of the 2005 game. Some of these both sides also see it as trying too hard to imitate Burnout Paradise, though the vice versa aren't rare.
Big-Lipped Alligator Moment: The surreal event intros, especially the Ambush ones.
Complacent Gaming Syndrome: Track Tires + Lightweight Chassis + Powershot Nitrous + Aero Body + Short Gears = An easier time in races, if not full-on Game-Breaking depending on the car this combination is used on.
Critical Dissonance: Criterion's game was highly rated by critics and won several driving or racing game of the year awards, but a portion of the Need for Speed fanbase as well as some of the Burnout fanbase hated it with a passion all the way back to when it was first announced. It's mitigated somewhat by the fact that the game was the seventh-best selling game of November 2012 in the U.S. (and that's not accounting for PC and digital sales), the fifth-best selling game in the UK on the week of its release (the fourth-highest new title for the week), outperformed 2011's The Run in sales, and won the 2012 Spike Video Game Award for Best Driving Game.^note That means that there could have been just a Vocal Minority complaining about the reboot, with of course a Silent Majority supporting the game.
Fandom Rivalry:
- Fans of the 2012 game had one with fans of the first Forza Horizon. These two games are completely different, but they were released around the same time (during Halloween and All Saints Day), share a lot of the same cars (even in later DLC for both games), are open world racers^* and, the straw that broke the camel's back, they both have a song in common: "The Power" by DJ Fresh and Dizzee Rascal.
- Of course, as this page and the 2005 game's YMMV page have detailed, there's also a rivalry between both Most Wanted games' fans.
Fan Nickname: Some fans call it Burnout Fairhaven, since it plays more like a Burnout game (in particular Burnout Paradise, named after its location Paradise City). There are even PC mods that change the title card to use this nickname for the logo.
Funny Moments:
- If you're in a police pursuit with squad cars hot on your tail and you take a lift on a ramp, there's a fair chance the cops will follow behind you. Cue flying pig jokes as they haplessly hit the ground upside down or slam into a building for having the bright idea of following your hypercar with their Crown Vic cruisers.
- When they aren't annoyingly frequent, some of the ways in which your car bounces around or flies off the map during a crash can be amusing. A particular example is flying off of the ramp in front of the Koenigsegg Agera R's jack spot in McClane; sometimes you might just make it over the bridge by crashing on it and letting the game's physics put the car right where you were going to land anyway... Nailed it!
- The presence of Icona Pop's "I Love It", as mentioned above. Nothing says Soundtrack Dissonance like jumping your car into a bridge...
  I don't care
  I love it!
Game-Breaker:
- The BMW M3 GTR. It is part of the Race class, which is composed by cars with excellent acceleration and cornering abilities in exchange of a terrible top speed that cannot reach 300 km/h even with Long Gears - the BMW M3 GTR does not have such a limitation, while its acceleration and handling are still on par.
- In a similar vein, the Hennessey Venom GT has the highest top speed and acceleration in the game and solid handling to keep the former traits under control. If it's available on a track, it holds the world record - no question on that. If the Koenigsegg Agera R is the Infinity +1 Sword of the non-DLC cars (Being "just" the second best car), then the Venom is the Infinity Plus Two Sword of the whole game.
- The McLaren F1 LM, another Race class car, is an incredible Fragile Speedster of a car that can keep up with pretty much anything while boasting excellent top speed and acceleration; especially when paired with Short Gears, Lightweight Chassis, and Aero Body to make it fly on Fairhaven's roads.
- The Audi Clubsport Quattro. It has an engine with 496bhp and a 0-100km/h time of 3.7s, but it also has all-wheel drive, enabling it to go off-road without issues, especially with off-road tires. Adding to this, it's built like a tank, making it great for pursuit racing. The only thing keeping it down is that it is slower compared to the other cars, but that's nothing the Long Gears upgrade cannot fix. Oh, and unlike the BMW and the Hennessey which are both DLC, the Clubsport is in the game from the get-go, and can easily be found just moments after starting the game.
Germans Love David Hasselhoff:
- According to research done by the staff of NFS, the Italian players of Most Wanted 2012 play the most of the time with the Lamborghini Aventador, Pagani Huayra and Alfa Romeo 4C Concept. They also drive the Aston Martin V12 Vantage more than any other player in the world.
- Apparently in 2014, Arizona torrented Need for Speed: Most Wanted^note more than any other state relative to the national average.
Good Bad Bugs: One very useful bug in 2012 is to change mods after hitting the apex of a billboard jump to extend your distance and prevent your car from leaning too much forward doing so.
Only the Creator Does It Right: The 2005 game by late EA Black Box^note is highly-preferred over Criterion's game by several fans.
Polished Port: Criterion did put a lot of care into hardware support for their Most Wanted.
- Most Wanted U for Wii U was meant to be this, considering it looks much nicer than the earlier console versions and has the sweet GamePad features. However, without any DLC releases to that version beyond the on-disc standard inclusion of the Ultimate Speed Pack due to a lack of sales for the platform, former Criterion Games vice president Alex Ward blasted both EA and Nintendo saying that they screwed over the Wii U version.
- Before the Wii U version's release, the same game also had a version for Play Station Vita that was really the full console version with only a few graphical drawbacks, as well as an additional ten exclusive events added in. It goes to show how good Criterion is at working with various hardware.
- In fact, all versions each contain their own exclusive features. Xbox 360 uses Kinect for tight voice control integration with EasyDrive (though it's single-player only and you'll want to be careful saying anything that sounds like the word "map"), the PlayStation 3 version contains PlayStation Move support (but you need a wheel accessory in addition to the Move controller and PlayStation Eye), and the Windows version has 12-player online multiplayer and the best graphics overall with 60 frames-per-second support. To say nothing about the latter's optimization making it easy to play on pretty much anything and still look good.
Scrappy Mechanic:
- The complete inability to personalize your cars' appearance (even the car colors are randomized each time you repair in single-player) makes it feel that you "borrow" instead of really "owning" your car. Sure, you can change the liveries for the Need for Speed Heroes DLC cars, but that's about it.
- The crashes. They are frustratingly frequent, not as pretty to look at as in Criterion's Burnout series or Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (most use the same boring camera sweep over and over again), and the cutscenes take way too long to get over with. It gets worse if you crash just after completing an event, lengthening the time it takes for the game to take your car out of being crashed.
So Okay, It's Average: Criterion's Most Wanted is a perfectly competent game if one can get past the lack of aftermarket customization, the crashes, and the different drifting and handling mechanics compared to both the 2005 original and the Burnout games (especially Burnout Paradise).
Song Association: This game sort of, though not entirely, helped Icona Pop's "I Love It" garner attention in the United States and the United Kingdom. So if you're an American or British gamer, you could say that you've loved it before it was cool. The game is also this for Muse's "Butterflies and Hurricanes" thanks to its use in the opening (and being remixed in the game's menus).
Spiritual Successor: To Burnout Paradise. Collectables? Check. Wicked jumps? Check. Menus that can be navigated without pausing? Check. Big emphasis on online multiplayer? Definitely. Instant repair shops? Yep, and they change your car's paint in single-player. DLC packs that added cars (including a pack that references pop culture icons) and even a new area? You bet. No Plot? No Problem! Even the 2012 game's cover is inspired by the Paradise cover.
Tainted by the Preview: When Criterion's Most Wanted was shown to be like Burnout Paradise instead of the original Most Wanted at E3 2012, a good amount of Need for Speed fans got really upset about it. Also inverted by some fans who got excited for the game because of the similarities to Paradise.
That One Level:
- In the 2012 game, three Speed Run events, "Downgraded", "The Getaway" and "Needle Point" are easily the hardest events in the game. This is because of:
  - Being Speed Run events. These in and of themselves run counter to the design of the game, which usually encourages a "by any means necessary" style of driving. If you have to plow through some scenery or bang up against the walls or your opponents then it's usually more advantageous than playing it safe. However, in a Speed Run event, you're tasked with maintaining a certain average speed, thus demanding precision driving to keep your speed up.
  - They often show up as "Hard" difficulty events, meaning you're going to be hitting a high-speed target (in the area of 120 MPH normally for Downgraded, up to about 150 MPH for Needle Point). Unless you get a really good run going, you're barely going to be above the threshold by the final curve. The high speed target also demands a very clean run in order to avoid losing speed (so even the occasional traffic bump can be the difference between winning and losing). Some Speed Runs are more tolerant of mistakes but not here.
  - Now for the events themselves: Downgraded takes place on a very unruly course full of blind turns, narrow roads, and requiring some keen cornering skills; The Getaway has a very rough beginning where you keep switching between on and off-road sections (and a nasty jump that will punish you if you don't take the stairs well), and has a blind turn through a shortcut while you go at very high speeds (if you are driving the Bugatti Veyron Super Sport or the Koenigsegg Agera R); Needle Point puts you on the fastest cars in the game through crowded highway sections at over 200 MPH on several points, police Corvettes that try to T-Bone you, several jumps that, if you don't brake, will end with your car crashing on a wall (God forbid if you are using Aero Body Pro), and a noticeable off-road section (when your cars are terrible in that aspect, even with Off-Road Tires Pro) where you have to make sure you don't fall. These make it very difficult to maintain your speed consistently if you're keeping in mind the above (that, being a Speed Run, precise driving is a must). You're going to have to hit certain sections just right lest you set yourself up to botch the section immediately after.
  - There's a modicum of Luck-Based Mission at work here due to the traffic pattern. You might get a great traffic pattern that keeps the obstructing cars out of the way for most of the event or you may get saddled with an awful traffic pattern that throws cars at you at the worst times (coming around one of the blind turns or having both lanes occupied at the same time with no good exit strategy).
  - These elements come together to create a perfect storm of annoying circumstances. You're basically doing a No-Damage Run in a game where that is virtually impossible. The precision and the hope that the traffic is on your side can result in many restarts as you keep getting tripped up on one thing or another.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Poor Most Wanted 2012. One must wonder What Could Have Been the fan reception for that game if it didn't have the 2005 game's title. Or was given an entirely different subtitle, for that matter.
Unexpected Character: Regarding this game, no one really expected to drive an entry-level pickup truck (the Ford F-150 SVT Raptor, although there were drivable pickups in Nitro) and three street-legal, high-performance roadsters (the Ariel Atom 500 V8, the Briggs Automotive Company [BAC] Mono, and the Caterham 7 Superlight R500, though the last one previously appeared in Shift 2: Unleashed) in a Need for Speed title. Other unexpected cars include the Marussia B2 (made by Russia's first supercar manufacturer), the Range Rover Evoque (The latest drivable SUV in an NFS game since Underground 2), the Shelby AC Cobra 427 (a classic roadster, previous appeared in Motor City Online), and the Hennessey Venom GT Spyder (a Pimped-Out Car based on the Lotus Exige).
Visual Effects of Awesome:
- For a game made in, well, 2012, the game still looks quite incredible well after its release, with each car model being very intricately detailed (whether in perfect condition or after taking one too many crashes; which is liable to happen often, after all), and Fairhaven itself being quite easy on the eyes with the abundance of Scenery Porn. As mentioned above in Polished Port, the game's also perfect to play on portable computers like the Steam Deck, Asus ROG Ally, or Lenovo Legion Go.
- The pre-race cutscenes for the "Most Wanted" events in the 2012 game border on Product Placement, using similar graphical effects to what you might find in a car commercial, giving you an indulgent look at your opponent's ride.

YMMV / Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012)

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