6:03 last time I played NFSU2 I used my first car as the 'victim car', I put all the highest rated parts on it for the DVD and magazine covers and was able to keep my other cars looking decent lol
The colored shapes represent different areas of Bayview - green square for Beacon Hill, Blue triangle for Jackson Heights, Orange Circle for Coal Harbor. Was meant to be a shorthand you “learned” over the course of the game and exploring. The clue that was supposed to give away the shops was the colored light in front of the entrance.
Yeah, Underground 2 is very deep game. One note about handling, though - the game doesn't really teach you how to tune things, unfortunately, but if you get the good suspension setup, brake bias, and tune spoilers/body kits to provide you with downforce, you can make some crazy racing machines. Underground 2 is a NFS game where grip turning is actually faster without any gimmicks, but style points still give you some nitro to catch up.
I remember slowly tuning my Ford Focus to an absolute grip slayer in order to get the best possible times in the Street-X races. Took the car to the tuning shop, Tested it on the test track, and slowly changed the settings little by little to where it performed the best until i could no longer press anything out of it anymore. It took me a long time of trial and error. But i ended with a car that was very easy to toss around, very good with momentum, and extremely grippy. From there on i just did some Street-X races and just tried to get the best times, Which lead to me trying to beat my own records. After that, I did the whole thing again but with the Volkswagen Golf. That alone was enough to keep me in that game for such a long time.
One thing i find intrigue in NFSU 2, was getting to the deeper side of underground racing Sure you were pretty much invisible in a superior car but its comes with a price, you have ppl that really dont welcome you and will do what it takes to eliminate you
It's kinda crazy how we keep looking back so fondly on older racing games, there were so many amazing ones that still hold up today. New racing games just never capture my attention like these. I'm going to give the new forza motorsport a try next week but I don't have high hopes for it
It’s because developers back then were allowed more liberty. It was always about money after said development studios got bought by bigger companies, but at least they could more or less follow their passion projects, if not slightly altered due to demands. And so one can easily tell if a game was made with passion or greed. They dared to take more risks as games also didn’t cost as much then as they do now. They didn’t have to make ‘perfect’ games and so a lot of good things ended up seeing the light of day, though, there was a whole lot more shovelware too.
@@Jules-69lolit was good up until horizon 3 Horizon 4 was the start of the downfall with its sort of battle pass and the exclusive cars locked behind it
People keep telling me the only reason I think these games are better than the new ones is cause of nostalgia but what they don’t understand is that I’m actively replaying them all and I still think they’re better. Underground 2 is quite literally the reason I’m into cars. I dream of owning a blue em1 civic, a yellow evo, and a bronze 350Z only because of this game.
Apart from the stars system, NFSUG2 customization is still goated and unmatched. And the depth of the career mode has never been an issue for me, actually it's refreshing to go back to old games like these where you actually had a progression and a path to follow instead of getting rewards for doing the most basic stuff (forza anyone?) Anyway, i hope EA will manage to capture that "essence" of the game and make something similar that can bring the NFS franchise back to its glory days of the Black Box era
Unfortunately they never will, black box was the subsidiary that made these early nfs games for EA and they were fired and decommissioned over a decade ago by EA sadly...
this game is one of those gems that i go back to regularly, ive must've beaten it like 15 times, you pointed out what i liked the most about it and its how many different race types are and how they are all scattered in different parts of the map, its crazy how this game doesn't bore me but the newer driving games do
3:53 Thank you for describing this as simply as possible. This is something that is true for open world action adventure games as well. It's impossible for an open world game to look as good as non open world games (there are some outliers like RDR2)
I think the reason why it still looks so good is that it had a clear artistic direction, something that most new games (not just NFS) lack. Plays amazingly even today. Completed it for like the fifth time on my phone via AetherSX2 emulator while I was travelling.
Iam so grateful that I grew up just right in time for Underground 1 to be released and playable by me. Imagine everyones exitement when Underground 2 was announced and hit that good. Only in the last years I expanded my horizon regarding racing games, but These NfS games together with MostWanted and ProStreet are hardcoded into any PC I owned since them and now as a 30+ old I still play them from time to time :) The few drawbacks of Underground 2 can be fixed with mods like FastTravel, shorter URL races, No Star system...
still one of my all time favorites. remember always having a sacrificial car for doing those magazine covers to keep my main ride lookin pristine. lost hours driving around as a kid. think i'm gonna play it again. love the videos, keep it up
Sometimes I forget how "tiny" the car pool for this game was. It was so immersive, and you could modify them so much it was almost impossible to see the same car with the same parts twice. Its always fun to go back to it, and as soon as they finish the nvidia rtx remix mod I will play it all over again, for the god-knows-how-many-they-were time
THIS!! My number 1 racing game to this day. Also take the 240sx, add stage 3 hydraulics, stage 3 NOS, and fully upgrade the motor. Have the front jumping on hydraulics while holding nos, let go when it starts lifting and you can do a wheelie for a quarter mile without hacks or cheats.
Played U2 as a kid religiously, never played U1 until after like 10-15 years recently I installed both and started playing both. Jeez, U1 is so addictive to play for me, but U2 either it is boring or just as you said - takes a lot of time to get going, but I've just started stage 3. One thing I don't like is that U1 tracks are so much more fun to race on for some reason and U2's big world is just not like this. It also has these stupid quirks with construction zones, but except for this one drag race, racetrack slammed in the center of the city for whatever reason, not being able to connect main world with any of those additional locations including the airport with the free roam mode. It feels like they spent 1 year adding this massive content to the game, but then they realized they have to ship it quick and just fixed most functional stuff and left OCD level details "as is" for people like me to suffer. Like it's something they settled on, not fully intended. U1 in it's limited scope felt much more finished. I really hate it, but it is how EA was always making money efficiently, and it works, unfortunately. I don't enjoy it, yet. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I should really treat it more like a second life, not rush it. :)
I played NFSU2 so much online back in 2005. There was a track that allowed you to glitch out of the map and race around the whole city online. Played a lot of Hide and Seek in the ol shipping yard
What i love from nfsu2: -car variety -locations -car customization -physics What i hate from nfsu2: -too much scrapped content -you are forced to drive to the locations -you have to restart race in world map to earn money -you have to ruin your car in order to advance in the campaign mode -too much waste of time
About customization: When i was a kid i was the only kid on the block to have a ps2, we used to play all of us at my home, everyone had their own car, uniquely picked for each, we played tournaments on 1v1 elimination races, for us as kids, it was almost a real life shonen anime thing to do. This game made have an awesome childhood. (I had a white 350z, champion once)
i remember playing the demo on the burnout 3 takedown disk. this is easily the best NFS we have gotten. the customization is massive, the car selection is great, and the beginning actually felt like a BEGINNING. your car is painfully slow when you first start. unlike the first game, where performance parts were priority, this game focuses most on looks before speed. that comes at a downfall being forced to customize to progress. but with the amount of options you have, it was nice have a car that wasn't a rocket ship 30 mins into playing the freeroam...is the literal embodiment of "looking through rose colored glasses" it was huge for the time. being able to drive to events, and finding the shops was really cool. don't get me wrong its really fun to drive your custom built car all over town, but god....DAMN, it will get old very quickly on multiple playthroughs. there were plenty of times where I was like "man, I wish I had a fast travel right about now". im really 50/50 on basically being stuck with 1 car for the whole game. the first one you collect so much money that you can trade cars every single race. this game is....not that. money is TIGHT for the first 40% if not more. you get free cars sure with the URL, but no money to actually upgrade them. it does make your connection to your car more personal, but also takes the fun out of actually being able to use any of the new stuff out of quick play.
Wonderful video. Even though I played UG2 late in my childhood, I loved every bit of it. Nowadays I still love playing UG2 but I wish there could be more cars.
If you want to play this game and not have your cars look like F&F rejects, I recommend taking your first car (or any car you don't care about) and tacking as many high-level visual upgrades to unlock the magazines with, and have your second car as your main race-winning car. Just beware you do need to invest a bit on your tacky car's engine because some magazine covers have a time limit to get to them. Or you can use a mod that disables that entirelly, your choice.
Underground 2 will probably be my favorite racing game of all time. Aesthetics, customization, length, music and Bayview are just excellent. It has it flaws, like the URLs and the game in general being extremely long and repetitive for example, but the overall experience is way much more than Racing games offer today. I replayed it waaay too many times lol Loved your vid! ❤
underground one and two are the only games EA looks at and goes "hey money.... mehhh i dont need it" what a waste of potential. thank god for emulation.
Damn, Underground 2 is the reason I've bought my own IS300 (Sportcross estate) a couple of years ago, that's what a good racing game can make you do. And yes, I have most of Underground 2 soundtrack mp3s on the radio playing while driving.
Great Video homie. Loved you made this video. Need for speed underground was such a great Bop. The soundtrack, the cars, the customization and map was so awesome. Heck the graphics still holds up pretty well to this day ❤🐀. Good video blue tag
If you played this game back in 2004-2005, then you know this is the real deal, I'm really happy that I've played this when I was 7 y.o, love your videos bluetag you're the only RUclipsr that create videos with love and honestly, keep going brother ♥
Also I started on Underground 2, I had the first one beside of it but 2 was already in the console. We went to dad's friends and he was selling it to us with both games for 100 bucks back in 04 or 05. I've also ALWAYS loved open world, starting with Spyro back in the day, so it was a no Brainer to just start on 2 at the time. Don't get me wrong, I love 1 and especially the soundtracks but as you said, there's more time in NFSU2, so therefore more memories.
I didnt really grow up with Underground 2 and Most Wanted but I enjoyed every second of these two classics when I got them around 4-5 years ago Im definitely going to play Underground 2 again after Im done with Gran Turismo 4 which I recently started playing again and the new Forza of course :3
Want to note a couple of things. - Understand that this game was limited to a CD. There were no online updates, DLC or anything. What went out went out. Additionally developers were limited to what they could actually cram into the CD. It’s incredible to see they managed to fit what they did. - Back in 2003 all this shit was the rage. I remember feeling so cool putting spinners or seeing hydraulics on a car. They aged horribly but seeing it back then was 10/10. - Additionally, being able to customize cars so much.. I was like 8. So seeing all this stuff I could do to a car really unlocked imagination in me and I’m sure tons of other kids. - There were again no updates. When you bought a game, that was fucking it. Nothing more. So they had to cram it with tons of stuff.
I love this game, for the reasons everybody else does, and I live in a place called Bayview, which itself has an active car culture community, which this game also helped evolve.
I got into a whole genre of rock music because of this game... Every time i was riding beacon hills and Jackson Heights In My Head by QOTSA would come on and the mood would change in an instant...
You gotta give NFS Shift 2: Unleashed a look. It was my favorite "sim" style game because of the audio, graphics and absolutely fantastic sense of speed when using the "helmet cam" pov. Most immersive racing game ive played because of the combination.
I'll never forget the day i came across this game at a KB Toys back in the day when you had the big tv's right next to the counter showing the new games released at the time. I had to beg my dad to buy it for me, man i was not disappointed and play it for hours on end and thanks to this game my interest and love for cars was born. My only problem is finding hidden races on the World Map. You'll get a call every now and then about a race somewhere on the map, although they won't tell you where or at least a hint "to my knowledge" about where it could be, so you'll be driving for hours trying to find it to no luck.
Just a little suggestion for anyone playing this game on PC. There is a mod that removes the star rating system but you are still able to get all the magazine covers and complete the story and the best of all, you can customize your cars as little or as much as you want. You could even just do performance upgrades but keep all the customisation stock and finish the game like that.
Man nfs underground 2 was amazing its not the best game in the world but it definitely felt like an improvement over underground 1, my main grip was that you had to rice your car in order to progress through the story, and some events won't show up until you unlock a car part that has a better rating, i remember getting soft locked from the game because the game made me rice my mazda rx8 and as a result i didn't have enough money and the worst part was that there were no events popping up, so i was just stuck completely and had to make a new save game, another thing that i wish i knew before i started from scratch was that the hookup races do pop up and its the only way you can counter the soft lock but there's one small issue, the game mentions it to you at the beginning and never brings it up, so if you deleted the tip you'll get stuck, im sorry for the rant and i really love nfs underground 2 but the rating system was its only issue that i had with the game.
hahah holy crap, I can definitely see how frustrating that would be! I'm pretty sure I remember the same happening with my dad after he kept receiving messages saying he needed to return Rachel's car, weird.
I couldn’t even tell you how much time I spent playing this and Mindnight Club 3 Dub Edition! They’re the best racing games I’ve ever played in my life
When the the intro is like you get a lend ent car upon arriving on a plane, I knew it os going to be a great game. (Test Drive: Unlimited/ GTA San Andreas)
I used to play this game when i was like 10 with my cousin. Lately i’ve got this itch to try it again from pure nostalgia reasons. Since I don’t have much time to play games nowdays the expirience was excactly as you’ve pointed out. Playing for longer than 1-2 hours was kind of exhausting and boring, but a quick session every now and then kept me playing only this game for over a month. Its still a great expirience. Only thing that is annoying is that on pc it only supports older resolutions with mostly 4:3 aspect ratio. It is posiible to mod the game for 1080p, but doing so messed up my save and i gave up after that :(
UG2 is really popular like MW05. We can say that those games are racing's Counter Strike/Half Life. Timeless masterpieces. Dozens of customization options gives a freedom to your choice. No matter who you are, you can tune your car and make your own signature ride. "Yeah I'm driving this, wanna race ?" UG2 was the reason why I like supra. Not because of sound or $ load of engine. In music, Black Betty and Rush Hour. You can also play 10 min demo version in Burnout 3: Takedown's disc. Both games are featured in E3 2004. Edit: MMO (World) Across the Country (The Run) Rockport's #1 Criminal (Most Wanted) Not actually Most Wanted (Heat) Smart Phone Editions (No limits, Burnout Fairhaven) Legal Racing (Shift) Cops vs Racers (Hot Pursuit)
I have never played Underground 1. But U2 was and still is my favourite even I have never finished career. Soundtrack is amazing, I remember almost all songs. Choice of cars is quite good, I remember that I was playing with Peugeot 106 for long time. It had so good steering that I didn't need better car. It was a great game to explore and race but I played it about hour per a week and at some point it became a little bit exhausting. I especially hated drag races, they were so annoying. And for me looking for shops also was frustrating sometimes. But anyway huge dose of nostalgia here!
The ONE thing i really have a problem with this game is Caleb and his Crew as well as their cars being so painfully forgettable next to the Eastsiderz, i legit even forgot they existed before replaying lol
You should 100% talk about juiced. Game was basically NFS for men with more challenge less ugly customisation and a much much bigger and more interesting car list with unique customisation options for each car.
This game was my first experience into not only the NFS series but racing games in general, I remember picking a car, customizing and the doing some races and outrun, as a kid, I never got much far besides the first area, but i remember this game fondly, I love the map, the race layouts and the mechanics of doing tricks to refill your nitro. I definitely wasn't perfect and I hated how changing colors was locked at the start, but it was a really fun game nonetheless, thank you for reviewing this game BlueTag.
I beat the game with a near stock looking r34 if I could remember correctly. But honestly in 2004 it didn’t even matter because it looked cool during this time period, nowadays it’s just way over the top
You're a bit wrong on the design of the map in NFSU vs NFSU2, they are both built as one single world with race maps drawn on the streets (except for special events like drift and URL), and the only difference is that U1 doesn't allow you to drive around randomly outside of races. But as far as design goes, they are done in the same way, and the only difference is that normally you don't have time to stop and stare into something in U1, because you're always in a race, while in U2 you can do that. It's quite possible that they wanted U1 to also be open world and just didn't have time to finish that part, so they scrapped it, but the world was built for it.
from my experience with no-clipping, the map in the original is far from an "open world" sure, some roads are connected but even if you had the freedom to run anywhere, 90% of it leads nowhere, mostly ending in a few feet after the barriers and it's also nowhere near the size of UG2!
Well I can tell ya from my perspective that it is still a nice playable game even the grafics are awsome but you really need to get clear about with what car you want as your perfect car and you have to win every outrun race for all the special performance parts 😉 I played it this year again on the PS2 and it still hooked me again
From the Underground 1 - Underground 2 - Most Wanted - Carbon "quadrilogy", this is the only one I couldn't finish, and I started it twice! There were SO MANY F*CKING RACES, I finished a batch on the next to last map bit unlocked and it just wouldn't give it to me, and then who knows how many more batches to finish the game.
This game is special. The cars, the customization, the city, the race variety, the soundtrack, looking for hidden shops, challenging NPCs to street races, etc. etc. The star rating system is really the only thing I don't like. It even came with a demo for Burnout 3, which I remember playing over and over because I never got the full game.
THis game was my first racing game as a kid and I loved it. It took me forever to even get to the final area but The soundtrack influenced me heavily. It and Midnight Club LA both have such banger STs. I still kick it to them to this day and often play them while playing other games, they're just that good. The gameplay was fun and I honestly prefer this to a lot of modern handling physics, though it is a bit annoyingly slidey at times. I loved having SUVs but I wish a couple trucks could've been added too. And with how you can pimp em out, it makes me sad when I see them in modern games with 3 options total and nothing interesting. Sure it's entirely a product of its time and has been heavily outdated, but it's charming, unique, and honest about itself, even if it's cheesy and derpy and gets annoying sometimes. You don't really get the same vibes from modern racers.
To be honest star system of customization could be made better by calculating rating based on the parts that you own and install once and after that you are free to put any part of your liking without removing this system but adjusting a little so that i becomes more better instead of removing it like some mods do , i think that mod would be good if it implemented this...
I do think it’s important to continually consider how games are aging, as a game that was considered a masterpiece on the SNES, might mean almost nothing to someone who grew up knowing the might of an Xbox, simply due to how much better game design got. Honestly, I think NFS Undergound 1 really hasn’t aged great, the gameplay loop is really meh, but Underground 2 is still pretty fun, if a little too grindy. Hasn’t aged perfectly but I’d say it’s still fun today
Awesome video and the most annoying thing for me was this : (The most annoying thing in the game need for speed underground 2 was to upgrade the mechanical part of the car for all types of races: sprint, drag, drift, circuit, outrun, and other types of races) even i upgrade about from 1 to 4 or 5 cars in career game
Can we all take a moment to appreciate that this was an awesome racing game and it even had a demo to another awesome racing game(burnout 3) built into it
I beat this game using PCSX2 last month and I mostly enjoyed the campaign. However, the points I didn't like were covered in this video. Like, I should be able to beat the entire game without visually modding my car. In Most Wanted and Carbon, it served a purpose in reducing the heat level of your car but its optional. Also, some of the magazine events are annoying where the star icon appears on one part of the map but the actual photoshoot is waaay across in another area. As for grinding for cars, I don't remember needing to do that bc the sponsorships in the game let you pick a free car from the lot. Also, a fully upgraded Corolla is apparently the best car iin the game lol.
6:03 last time I played NFSU2 I used my first car as the 'victim car', I put all the highest rated parts on it for the DVD and magazine covers and was able to keep my other cars looking decent lol
haha that's a great idea actually, poor starter car taking all the crap though
I would always whip the hummer for shows. Didn't require a lot of parts for some reason and it wasn't exactly the most fun the drive in races.
@@BlooTeg Upgrade its performance a bit, though. Some photographers can be impatient.
Just use the novisualrep mod
The colored shapes represent different areas of Bayview - green square for Beacon Hill, Blue triangle for Jackson Heights, Orange Circle for Coal Harbor. Was meant to be a shorthand you “learned” over the course of the game and exploring. The clue that was supposed to give away the shops was the colored light in front of the entrance.
This game looks even better than I remembered. NFS really made the best racers back in the day
not if you play on ps2, this is the power of a good PC version of any game in the long run
ITS NOT nostalgia nfs u2 is the best game in the series.....
@@bmqww223 the entire Black Box Era is probably the best
@@pyrophobia133.......... undercover
Aesthetics >>> graphics
Yeah, Underground 2 is very deep game.
One note about handling, though - the game doesn't really teach you how to tune things, unfortunately, but if you get the good suspension setup, brake bias, and tune spoilers/body kits to provide you with downforce, you can make some crazy racing machines.
Underground 2 is a NFS game where grip turning is actually faster without any gimmicks, but style points still give you some nitro to catch up.
I wish I could get more into that, it was a very cool addition to see!
I remember slowly tuning my Ford Focus to an absolute grip slayer in order to get the best possible times in the Street-X races.
Took the car to the tuning shop, Tested it on the test track, and slowly changed the settings little by little to where it performed the best until i could no longer press anything out of it anymore. It took me a long time of trial and error. But i ended with a car that was very easy to toss around, very good with momentum, and extremely grippy.
From there on i just did some Street-X races and just tried to get the best times, Which lead to me trying to beat my own records.
After that, I did the whole thing again but with the Volkswagen Golf.
That alone was enough to keep me in that game for such a long time.
One thing i find intrigue in NFSU 2, was getting to the deeper side of underground racing
Sure you were pretty much invisible in a superior car but its comes with a price, you have ppl that really dont welcome you and will do what it takes to eliminate you
Honestly, I loved the tuning. You could make some ballistic machines or some absolute pieces of trash
It's kinda crazy how we keep looking back so fondly on older racing games, there were so many amazing ones that still hold up today. New racing games just never capture my attention like these. I'm going to give the new forza motorsport a try next week but I don't have high hopes for it
Definitely gonna try it out too!
It’s because developers back then were allowed more liberty. It was always about money after said development studios got bought by bigger companies, but at least they could more or less follow their passion projects, if not slightly altered due to demands. And so one can easily tell if a game was made with passion or greed.
They dared to take more risks as games also didn’t cost as much then as they do now. They didn’t have to make ‘perfect’ games and so a lot of good things ended up seeing the light of day, though, there was a whole lot more shovelware too.
@@balazs7235and most devs were people who enjoyed cars and wanted to spread their love for cars.
>there are great racing games today
>like Forza
Bro
@@Jules-69lolit was good up until horizon 3
Horizon 4 was the start of the downfall with its sort of battle pass and the exclusive cars locked behind it
Back when good quality games isn’t defined by the number of DLCs
....name a game of ANY era whose quality is defined by number of DLC lmfao
@@TheBig451 *cough* PAYDAY *cough* *cough*
@@TheBig451 GTA Online 💀
The Sims@@TheBig451
@@SudeennnSampay day was an actually good game tho
People keep telling me the only reason I think these games are better than the new ones is cause of nostalgia but what they don’t understand is that I’m actively replaying them all and I still think they’re better. Underground 2 is quite literally the reason I’m into cars. I dream of owning a blue em1 civic, a yellow evo, and a bronze 350Z only because of this game.
Apart from the stars system, NFSUG2 customization is still goated and unmatched.
And the depth of the career mode has never been an issue for me, actually it's refreshing to go back to old games like these where you actually had a progression and a path to follow instead of getting rewards for doing the most basic stuff (forza anyone?)
Anyway, i hope EA will manage to capture that "essence" of the game and make something similar that can bring the NFS franchise back to its glory days of the Black Box era
No they won t 😂
Isn’t NFS 2015 basically this but with writing issues and online only?
Unfortunately they never will, black box was the subsidiary that made these early nfs games for EA and they were fired and decommissioned over a decade ago by EA sadly...
this game is one of those gems that i go back to regularly, ive must've beaten it like 15 times, you pointed out what i liked the most about it and its how many different race types are and how they are all scattered in different parts of the map, its crazy how this game doesn't bore me but the newer driving games do
3:53 Thank you for describing this as simply as possible.
This is something that is true for open world action adventure games as well.
It's impossible for an open world game to look as good as non open world games (there are some outliers like RDR2)
About the tier tuning parts. It wasnt stupid back in 2000s. The coolest car really looked like monstrosity and everybody loved it
The way you said hey in the beginning was cute af. No homo.
The way you commented on my video was cute af. No homo.
Underground 2 and prostreet those two games are the best in the series. those two games captured the car culture perfectly.
I think the reason why it still looks so good is that it had a clear artistic direction, something that most new games (not just NFS) lack. Plays amazingly even today. Completed it for like the fifth time on my phone via AetherSX2 emulator while I was travelling.
Iam so grateful that I grew up just right in time for Underground 1 to be released and playable by me. Imagine everyones exitement when Underground 2 was announced and hit that good. Only in the last years I expanded my horizon regarding racing games, but These NfS games together with MostWanted and ProStreet are hardcoded into any PC I owned since them and now as a 30+ old I still play them from time to time :)
The few drawbacks of Underground 2 can be fixed with mods like FastTravel, shorter URL races, No Star system...
Uffffff, NFS2.... always come to mind the intro with "Riders on the Storm" with my man Snoopy Doggie
Snoopie Doggy DO double G
good times!
still one of my all time favorites. remember always having a sacrificial car for doing those magazine covers to keep my main ride lookin pristine. lost hours driving around as a kid. think i'm gonna play it again. love the videos, keep it up
Sometimes I forget how "tiny" the car pool for this game was. It was so immersive, and you could modify them so much it was almost impossible to see the same car with the same parts twice.
Its always fun to go back to it, and as soon as they finish the nvidia rtx remix mod I will play it all over again, for the god-knows-how-many-they-were time
Don't forget the Unreal Engine remake 2Unreal5Underground is doing
THIS!! My number 1 racing game to this day. Also take the 240sx, add stage 3 hydraulics, stage 3 NOS, and fully upgrade the motor. Have the front jumping on hydraulics while holding nos, let go when it starts lifting and you can do a wheelie for a quarter mile without hacks or cheats.
Played U2 as a kid religiously, never played U1 until after like 10-15 years recently I installed both and started playing both. Jeez, U1 is so addictive to play for me, but U2 either it is boring or just as you said - takes a lot of time to get going, but I've just started stage 3. One thing I don't like is that U1 tracks are so much more fun to race on for some reason and U2's big world is just not like this.
It also has these stupid quirks with construction zones, but except for this one drag race, racetrack slammed in the center of the city for whatever reason, not being able to connect main world with any of those additional locations including the airport with the free roam mode. It feels like they spent 1 year adding this massive content to the game, but then they realized they have to ship it quick and just fixed most functional stuff and left OCD level details "as is" for people like me to suffer. Like it's something they settled on, not fully intended. U1 in it's limited scope felt much more finished. I really hate it, but it is how EA was always making money efficiently, and it works, unfortunately.
I don't enjoy it, yet. We'll see how it goes. Maybe I should really treat it more like a second life, not rush it. :)
I played NFSU2 so much online back in 2005. There was a track that allowed you to glitch out of the map and race around the whole city online. Played a lot of Hide and Seek in the ol shipping yard
I avoided this account a few days ago and didn't realize it'll come back and talk about my favourite childhood game.
What i love from nfsu2:
-car variety
-locations
-car customization
-physics
What i hate from nfsu2:
-too much scrapped content
-you are forced to drive to the locations
-you have to restart race in world map to earn money
-you have to ruin your car in order to advance in the campaign mode
-too much waste of time
good points!
About customization: When i was a kid i was the only kid on the block to have a ps2, we used to play all of us at my home, everyone had their own car, uniquely picked for each, we played tournaments on 1v1 elimination races, for us as kids, it was almost a real life shonen anime thing to do. This game made have an awesome childhood.
(I had a white 350z, champion once)
Dude, being able to customize cars for quickrace without spending any money to play with friends is an underrated feature
was just scrolling by to check if you mean the BEST NFS ever. And yeah... NFSU2 the onliving legend
i remember playing the demo on the burnout 3 takedown disk. this is easily the best NFS we have gotten. the customization is massive, the car selection is great, and the beginning actually felt like a BEGINNING. your car is painfully slow when you first start. unlike the first game, where performance parts were priority, this game focuses most on looks before speed. that comes at a downfall being forced to customize to progress. but with the amount of options you have, it was nice have a car that wasn't a rocket ship 30 mins into playing
the freeroam...is the literal embodiment of "looking through rose colored glasses" it was huge for the time. being able to drive to events, and finding the shops was really cool. don't get me wrong its really fun to drive your custom built car all over town, but god....DAMN, it will get old very quickly on multiple playthroughs. there were plenty of times where I was like "man, I wish I had a fast travel right about now".
im really 50/50 on basically being stuck with 1 car for the whole game. the first one you collect so much money that you can trade cars every single race. this game is....not that. money is TIGHT for the first 40% if not more. you get free cars sure with the URL, but no money to actually upgrade them. it does make your connection to your car more personal, but also takes the fun out of actually being able to use any of the new stuff out of quick play.
In the beginning theres actually a hidden unmarked event on the map if you do the race aswell she gets super pissed. Neat detail
true!
Wonderful video. Even though I played UG2 late in my childhood, I loved every bit of it. Nowadays I still love playing UG2 but I wish there could be more cars.
If you want to play this game and not have your cars look like F&F rejects, I recommend taking your first car (or any car you don't care about) and tacking as many high-level visual upgrades to unlock the magazines with, and have your second car as your main race-winning car. Just beware you do need to invest a bit on your tacky car's engine because some magazine covers have a time limit to get to them.
Or you can use a mod that disables that entirelly, your choice.
the modding one seems like a better choice hahaha
- maaaan, Queens of the Stone Age - In My Head is the ultimate driving banger -
Underground 2 will probably be my favorite racing game of all time. Aesthetics, customization, length, music and Bayview are just excellent. It has it flaws, like the URLs and the game in general being extremely long and repetitive for example, but the overall experience is way much more than Racing games offer today.
I replayed it waaay too many times lol
Loved your vid! ❤
Thank you so much!
underground one and two are the only games EA looks at and goes "hey money.... mehhh i dont need it"
what a waste of potential. thank god for emulation.
Ultimate review - I recently replayed almost all NFS starting with 1s Hot Pursuit (including Underground 2) - I can agree with every statement.
Damn, Underground 2 is the reason I've bought my own IS300 (Sportcross estate) a couple of years ago, that's what a good racing game can make you do.
And yes, I have most of Underground 2 soundtrack mp3s on the radio playing while driving.
hahah the IS300 was one of my favs in MC3!
Great Video homie. Loved you made this video.
Need for speed underground was such a great Bop. The soundtrack, the cars, the customization and map was so awesome.
Heck the graphics still holds up pretty well to this day ❤🐀.
Good video blue tag
hell yeah! thank you!
@@BlooTeg you welvome mate
If you played this game back in 2004-2005, then you know this is the real deal, I'm really happy that I've played this when I was 7 y.o, love your videos bluetag you're the only RUclipsr that create videos with love and honestly, keep going brother ♥
thank you, I appreciate that
Also I started on Underground 2, I had the first one beside of it but 2 was already in the console. We went to dad's friends and he was selling it to us with both games for 100 bucks back in 04 or 05. I've also ALWAYS loved open world, starting with Spyro back in the day, so it was a no Brainer to just start on 2 at the time. Don't get me wrong, I love 1 and especially the soundtracks but as you said, there's more time in NFSU2, so therefore more memories.
I didnt really grow up with Underground 2 and Most Wanted but I enjoyed every second of these two classics when I got them around 4-5 years ago
Im definitely going to play Underground 2 again after Im done with Gran Turismo 4 which I recently started playing again and the new Forza of course :3
nice! have fun with GT4! Gonna play the new Forza too!
Want to note a couple of things.
- Understand that this game was limited to a CD. There were no online updates, DLC or anything. What went out went out. Additionally developers were limited to what they could actually cram into the CD. It’s incredible to see they managed to fit what they did.
- Back in 2003 all this shit was the rage. I remember feeling so cool putting spinners or seeing hydraulics on a car. They aged horribly but seeing it back then was 10/10.
- Additionally, being able to customize cars so much.. I was like 8. So seeing all this stuff I could do to a car really unlocked imagination in me and I’m sure tons of other kids.
- There were again no updates. When you bought a game, that was fucking it. Nothing more. So they had to cram it with tons of stuff.
The soundtrack was killer to this game, they dont have the Snoop/Doors song on anything, but i still listen to that Skindred song to this day.
it's on Spotify now!
@@BlooTeg you just made my day lol
Underground 2 is the goat of car games
Almost looked like NFT...and my favorite NFS was burnout or Hot Pursuit 😅
"The Worst NFT Ever" lol
@@BlooTeg nice quick thinking for video idea 🤣
I love this game, for the reasons everybody else does, and I live in a place called Bayview, which itself has an active car culture community, which this game also helped evolve.
now that's cool.
NFSU2 and Midnight Club 3 DUB edition were THEE street racing games of the ps2 era
I got into a whole genre of rock music because of this game... Every time i was riding beacon hills and Jackson Heights In My Head by QOTSA would come on and the mood would change in an instant...
oh hell yeah!
This game left the biggest impact on my childhood and idgaf if it’s nostalgia I love it so much! I adored ug1 but I got immersed in ug2
You gotta give NFS Shift 2: Unleashed a look. It was my favorite "sim" style game because of the audio, graphics and absolutely fantastic sense of speed when using the "helmet cam" pov. Most immersive racing game ive played because of the combination.
always a good time when a new bluetag video comes out
Always a good time making videos! B)
I'll never forget the day i came across this game at a KB Toys back in the day when you had the big tv's right next to the counter showing the new games released at the time.
I had to beg my dad to buy it for me, man i was not disappointed and play it for hours on end and thanks to this game my interest and love for cars was born.
My only problem is finding hidden races on the World Map. You'll get a call every now and then about a race somewhere on the map, although they won't tell you where or at least a hint "to my knowledge" about where it could be, so you'll be driving for hours trying to find it to no luck.
I don't think I got as deep to actively seek hidden races but I could see that being pretty frustrating
@@BlooTeg Oh trust me, it is very frustrating and time consuming
Such a classic, we LAN'd this in the basement for days. Another bluetag banger thanks man gg
thank u!
BLOOteg casually making awesome videos in a speed that is faster then SUUUUUPPPPRRRRRRAAAAA:
The 2000's were awesome 😌
Just a little suggestion for anyone playing this game on PC. There is a mod that removes the star rating system but you are still able to get all the magazine covers and complete the story and the best of all, you can customize your cars as little or as much as you want. You could even just do performance upgrades but keep all the customisation stock and finish the game like that.
One of my favorite PS2 games, along with Madeascar and Fire Pro Wrestling Returns.
One of the greatest and most iconic NFS games ever made! 😍 What a great video, thank you for this! 🔥👏
Man nfs underground 2 was amazing its not the best game in the world but it definitely felt like an improvement over underground 1, my main grip was that you had to rice your car in order to progress through the story, and some events won't show up until you unlock a car part that has a better rating, i remember getting soft locked from the game because the game made me rice my mazda rx8 and as a result i didn't have enough money and the worst part was that there were no events popping up, so i was just stuck completely and had to make a new save game, another thing that i wish i knew before i started from scratch was that the hookup races do pop up and its the only way you can counter the soft lock but there's one small issue, the game mentions it to you at the beginning and never brings it up, so if you deleted the tip you'll get stuck, im sorry for the rant and i really love nfs underground 2 but the rating system was its only issue that i had with the game.
hahah holy crap, I can definitely see how frustrating that would be! I'm pretty sure I remember the same happening with my dad after he kept receiving messages saying he needed to return Rachel's car, weird.
cannot agree with the statement that UG1 looks better than UG2.
I couldn’t even tell you how much time I spent playing this and Mindnight Club 3 Dub Edition! They’re the best racing games I’ve ever played in my life
When the the intro is like you get a lend
ent car upon arriving on a plane, I knew it os going to be a great game. (Test Drive: Unlimited/ GTA San Andreas)
I used to play this game when i was like 10 with my cousin. Lately i’ve got this itch to try it again from pure nostalgia reasons. Since I don’t have much time to play games nowdays the expirience was excactly as you’ve pointed out. Playing for longer than 1-2 hours was kind of exhausting and boring, but a quick session every now and then kept me playing only this game for over a month. Its still a great expirience.
Only thing that is annoying is that on pc it only supports older resolutions with mostly 4:3 aspect ratio. It is posiible to mod the game for 1080p, but doing so messed up my save and i gave up after that :(
Man I love you and your content man it’s so good I get genuinely happy to see an upload
I really appreciate that! thank you!
Flyboogie that’s my namee
UG2 is really popular like MW05. We can say that those games are racing's Counter Strike/Half Life. Timeless masterpieces.
Dozens of customization options gives a freedom to your choice. No matter who you are, you can tune your car and make your own signature ride. "Yeah I'm driving this, wanna race ?" UG2 was the reason why I like supra. Not because of sound or $ load of engine.
In music, Black Betty and Rush Hour.
You can also play 10 min demo version in Burnout 3: Takedown's disc. Both games are featured in E3 2004.
Edit:
MMO (World)
Across the Country (The Run)
Rockport's #1 Criminal (Most Wanted)
Not actually Most Wanted (Heat)
Smart Phone Editions (No limits, Burnout Fairhaven)
Legal Racing (Shift)
Cops vs Racers (Hot Pursuit)
I have never played Underground 1. But U2 was and still is my favourite even I have never finished career. Soundtrack is amazing, I remember almost all songs. Choice of cars is quite good, I remember that I was playing with Peugeot 106 for long time. It had so good steering that I didn't need better car. It was a great game to explore and race but I played it about hour per a week and at some point it became a little bit exhausting. I especially hated drag races, they were so annoying. And for me looking for shops also was frustrating sometimes. But anyway huge dose of nostalgia here!
The cutscene setting up the premise of the game gives me major nfs carbon on the DS vibes
oh true!
The ONE thing i really have a problem with this game is Caleb and his Crew as well as their cars being so painfully forgettable next to the Eastsiderz, i legit even forgot they existed before replaying lol
I still play underground 2 from time to time. Its still really good for the most part. Its actually aged ok
In one of the first sponsors they give you the option of a free car lmao... I got that inmediately hahaha
You should 100% talk about juiced. Game was basically NFS for men with more challenge less ugly customisation and a much much bigger and more interesting car list with unique customisation options for each car.
Just finished Game 2 days ago and its still awesome
This was the only nfs that had dyno tuning. Never happened again
Can’t wait until you get to Carbon, IMO the most underrated out of the 4 games that came out in that era (2003-2006)
I'M SO HAPPY TO SEE THIS !!!!!!!!
SAME!
This game was my first experience into not only the NFS series but racing games in general, I remember picking a car, customizing and the doing some races and outrun, as a kid, I never got much far besides the first area, but i remember this game fondly, I love the map, the race layouts and the mechanics of doing tricks to refill your nitro. I definitely wasn't perfect and I hated how changing colors was locked at the start, but it was a really fun game nonetheless, thank you for reviewing this game BlueTag.
thank you, Luka!
I beat the game with a near stock looking r34 if I could remember correctly. But honestly in 2004 it didn’t even matter because it looked cool during this time period, nowadays it’s just way over the top
You're a bit wrong on the design of the map in NFSU vs NFSU2, they are both built as one single world with race maps drawn on the streets (except for special events like drift and URL), and the only difference is that U1 doesn't allow you to drive around randomly outside of races. But as far as design goes, they are done in the same way, and the only difference is that normally you don't have time to stop and stare into something in U1, because you're always in a race, while in U2 you can do that.
It's quite possible that they wanted U1 to also be open world and just didn't have time to finish that part, so they scrapped it, but the world was built for it.
from my experience with no-clipping, the map in the original is far from an "open world"
sure, some roads are connected but even if you had the freedom to run anywhere, 90% of it leads nowhere, mostly ending in a few feet after the barriers
and it's also nowhere near the size of UG2!
"They couldn't send a EA Employee to your House and rate your car" this one got me😅
hmmm. never heard of this one. gonna give it a try!
Not very well known game lol
U2 had some very good tuning too.
If you don't like the oversteer, you can tune it down a notch or two.
I talked about it in other comment, but I wish I had more time to spend with that! The tuning seems to be pretty awesome!
@@BlooTeg I only learnt to appreciate it when playing on hard, because it gets pretty difficult beating the AI without a tuned car.
This reminds me it's been a while since I've played this game. Going to have to change that.
At the time I had one car for racing and one car for style points
Well I can tell ya from my perspective that it is still a nice playable game even the grafics are awsome but you really need to get clear about with what car you want as your perfect car and you have to win every outrun race for all the special performance parts 😉 I played it this year again on the PS2 and it still hooked me again
You finally did it!
Finally! And even more to come!
imo Need for speed carbon is so underrated i love that game
I Remenber Playing This Game When I Was Young…
It Was An Shame I Could Not Fully Finish It Because I Could Not Unlock The Final Area…
God what I'd give to get this game on my pc. Had so much fun with it back on Ps2
It's abandonware! Easy to find, sadly not in any stores though
From the Underground 1 - Underground 2 - Most Wanted - Carbon "quadrilogy", this is the only one I couldn't finish, and I started it twice! There were SO MANY F*CKING RACES, I finished a batch on the next to last map bit unlocked and it just wouldn't give it to me, and then who knows how many more batches to finish the game.
THE LAST GOOD NFS WAS NFS HEAT 😢
Soooooooooooooo true
This game is special. The cars, the customization, the city, the race variety, the soundtrack, looking for hidden shops, challenging NPCs to street races, etc. etc. The star rating system is really the only thing I don't like.
It even came with a demo for Burnout 3, which I remember playing over and over because I never got the full game.
THis game was my first racing game as a kid and I loved it. It took me forever to even get to the final area but The soundtrack influenced me heavily. It and Midnight Club LA both have such banger STs. I still kick it to them to this day and often play them while playing other games, they're just that good. The gameplay was fun and I honestly prefer this to a lot of modern handling physics, though it is a bit annoyingly slidey at times. I loved having SUVs but I wish a couple trucks could've been added too. And with how you can pimp em out, it makes me sad when I see them in modern games with 3 options total and nothing interesting. Sure it's entirely a product of its time and has been heavily outdated, but it's charming, unique, and honest about itself, even if it's cheesy and derpy and gets annoying sometimes. You don't really get the same vibes from modern racers.
The only flaw of that game was the pacing in the later stages
To be honest star system of customization could be made better by calculating rating based on the parts that you own and install once and after that you are free to put any part of your liking without removing this system but adjusting a little so that i becomes more better instead of removing it like some mods do , i think that mod would be good if it implemented this...
To this day I can drive around NFSU2 without the mini map on. Best NFS after High Stakes.
I do think it’s important to continually consider how games are aging, as a game that was considered a masterpiece on the SNES, might mean almost nothing to someone who grew up knowing the might of an Xbox, simply due to how much better game design got. Honestly, I think NFS Undergound 1 really hasn’t aged great, the gameplay loop is really meh, but Underground 2 is still pretty fun, if a little too grindy. Hasn’t aged perfectly but I’d say it’s still fun today
I just finished this game in last month one of the best nfs games ever made in EA era.
Awesome video and the most annoying thing for me was this : (The most annoying thing in the game need for speed underground 2 was to upgrade the mechanical part of the car for all types of races: sprint, drag, drift, circuit, outrun, and other types of races) even i upgrade about from 1 to 4 or 5 cars in career game
Can we all take a moment to appreciate that this was an awesome racing game and it even had a demo to another awesome racing game(burnout 3) built into it
hell yeah.
I beat this game using PCSX2 last month and I mostly enjoyed the campaign. However, the points I didn't like were covered in this video. Like, I should be able to beat the entire game without visually modding my car. In Most Wanted and Carbon, it served a purpose in reducing the heat level of your car but its optional. Also, some of the magazine events are annoying where the star icon appears on one part of the map but the actual photoshoot is waaay across in another area. As for grinding for cars, I don't remember needing to do that bc the sponsorships in the game let you pick a free car from the lot.
Also, a fully upgraded Corolla is apparently the best car iin the game lol.
This game is my favorite NFS. And it does not even have an online multiplayer system like modern games.
these days you can play UG2 on LAN with friends! Still fun!
The colours on the roadsigns are allocated to different neighbourhoods. Shops have nothing to do with that
damn it.