Previews// Need For Speed World

Because you have the luxury of a mouse while you play (as well as a high resolution monitor), a lot of the Need For Speed World features are packed into the very top of the screen in bitesize icons. Click on the house, for example, and you get taken to your Safehouse for customisation and other options.

A map can be accessed and moved around the game screen so you can reference it while you drive, and online community leaderboards show who is king of the hill amongst friends and strangers.

It's this 'friends' business that Black Box is emphasising – as you would expect, it would seem pretty pointless to have an MMO without socialising in some way. There's a buddy list and a string of players you recently raced against, along with multiple options in the way of statistics, awards and information.

Right click a player and you'll get to cross-reference your win-lose ratio with them, send them messages, gifts and plenty else. Facebook support is included as well, so if you haven't quite irritated your pals enough with farming requests you can tell them all about your racing exploits. And as you'd expect, there's a cheeky chatbox in the bottom left corner of the screen to trash talk your heart away.

Getting into a race is a case of using the mouse to either host or join a particular event using the map dialog box. You can either use a keyboard or an Xbox 360 controller to burn rubber – I found the latter to be a bit more comfortable but for the former it's simply a case of using WASD for turning and throttle.

The handling is a lot like Most Wanted – solid for the most part – but in some cases it was way too easy to smack into the scenery. I'd like to think it was me being rubbish, but you never can tell.

To add to the racing thrill, you can take advantage of numerous power ups. These range from traffic magnets to slingshots and nitro boosts. My favourite happens to be a juggernaut-esque ability that allows you to smash right through any traffic. Lovely.

You only have a limited number of power ups to use in the game (and a recharge period after you use them in a race), but you can buy more by either earning them after each race or by spending real-money Speed Boost points.

All in all, Need For Speed World seeks to capture the very essence of all that was good in the series – cops, crashes and nitro boosts. Without the obnoxious rapping, of course. And as it stands, it succeeds. What will be the real test is the community reaction to the game, and whether Black Box can iron out a few of the network bugs in time for launch.

This may well be the first MMO that I bother to look at though. And I'm not even much of a racing fan. Weird.

Need For Speed World will be releasing on Windows-only PC platforms in Summer, with English and German languages available at launch.