Graphics

Overall, NFSU2 showed great improvement in graphics. The attention given to ensuring the city is accurately detailed is simply awesome. All objects have more detailed textures, compared to NFSU. You can see more realistic roads, tiled floors, pavements and even walls and dividers. NFSU2 even comes with a really impressive simulation of rain, with droplets hitting on the windshield as you drive in the rain.

Rain droplets

The objects around the city are quite amazing, too. I, for one, love the stationary trains in the train docks, the moving subway train as well as the airplanes flying around the city and at the airport. These minor details really make the city come alive.

What I liked best about the graphics engine is the option to change graphical detail settings within the game itself. You can just change the texture detail, reflection detail and even anti-aliasing in the game and see the immediate effect of your changes. In fact, if you have FRAPS running, you can observe how the changes affect the frame rate.

The game lags a little at the starting line when burn-out from car pickups create a smoky effect. Also, depending on your graphics card, the anti-aliasing and reflection updates may affect your frame rates.

One good point about NFSU2 is that the motion blur effect has been significantly reduced. In NFSU, you can barely see the road when you are driving at high speeds! In NFSU2, I reached nearly 300km/h and the road is still visible, which makes for far better car control.

The Visual Upgrades have also been given greater graphical treatment. The cars look nicer overall and so do the parts available for upgrades.

It’s great that the developers put so much effort into the details. They actually allow you to customize neon light colors, even under the trunk and the hood! Even the nitrous purge comes in a variety of colors.

The choice of car vinyl is splendid. A wider range of very well-designed artworks is now available, compared to NFSU.

In fact, instead of buying individual layers of, say, a Flame-themed vinyl, there is now an option to buy the vinyl as a set instead. This means you get those multiple layers in a package. After selecting the design you like, just pick the desired color for each layer.