Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005) was my favorite racing game as a child. Given my distaste for the genre (like traditional turn-based RPGs) due to a lack of interest in the core gameplay, I wondered how it would fare several years later (and on a new console, the Xbox 360 compared to the PS2 of my youth). I want to say it's held up as a splendid time as it was in the late '00s—which it has in many manners to be fair—but my opinions on the game have waned in the decade since I've last played. Simply put, the story is far more reserved than I recalled and the lack of new race types after the introduction of drag racing make for an overly long game. The live action FMVs with garish green screen and digital effects are wonderful if underutilized after the first 30 minutes of the game (I believe Carbon blends them in with a murder mystery to boot, so my feelings for that game might be about as high as Most Wanted if I ever revisit Carbon too). It's a shame everything past the introduction is relegated to audio clips until the final showdown with Razor (or Quentin Tarantino, who he repeatedly reminded me of). The rest of the game is a somewhat uneven split between racing and police pursuits—the latter and its infuriating length on the higher Heat levels lend to this imbalance—that begin to bore as they never manage to overcome the overuse of the same roads and sections of the world. There's something to be said about how fun everything is in the first few hours, yet when you drag it into a 15+ hour ordeal of little freshness, the result leaves a sour taste of waning ambitions. Most Wanted still remains my favorite of the genre (although I'm currently going through Burnout 3: Takedown at a slow pace and Criterion Games certainly have something amazing there) for everything it does right as a nice in-between of arcade and sim racing. Disappointment lies in what could be there if made today (without the shitty online stuff, I have never had any interest in online racing so Criterion's remake or Hot Pursuit had little impact).