Need for Speed World

The power-ups themselves, and specifically the way they cool down after use, are probably the closest the trappings of the traditional MMO get to NFSW - but their uses become more extravagant than the base-level nitrous 'go-faster-now!' ability. Emergency Evade, for example, helps when pursued by AI cops - blasting the cars in your immediate vicinity high up in the air, in a manner happily reminiscent of the spring attack in Carmageddon 2.

Traffic Magnet, meanwhile, makes the player in front irresistible to the cars and buses that were formerly tootling through their endless journey with few suicidal urges. Perfect Start and Extended Nos, meanwhile, are fairly self-explanatory - and due to be joined by many other race-enhancing factors come the time of the proposed summer release.

Where's EA's bucket of gold coming from in this venture then? Well, primarily through paid-for expansions as NFSW develops itself into new and exciting directions over what its creators hope will be a long and fruitful life. There will, however, be microtransactions sewn into the fabric of the game too - with your own hard-earned converted into a universal currency known as Boost. With this you can rent cars that are above your stature for a certain time, or you can stock up on power-ups without having to undergo the chore of earning cash through races. The actual process of Rep/XP-harvesting, however, will remain unaffected.

Quite whether NFSW is the pure seam of Need for Speed wonderment that EA hope it is remains up for debate. There's little doubt that it's an impressive construction, with some intelligent design work gently revving beneath the bonnet, but whether it nails the ethereal NFS vibe that's being touted is another matter.

NFSW is being touted as having 'the biggest scalability ever' - EA wants it to run on everything from a top-class rig to a toaster with an LED display - but when turned up to 11 the graphics lack the silky sheen that we've come to expect from modern driving games. What's more, when I think of pre-Shift and post-Underground Need for Speed games I habitually think of street racing, undercover cops, neon lights, women with pretty legs and music that I'm not cool enough to recognise.

In a former life these were all the reasons I criticised the franchise. Ultimately they're all unnecessary, but they're still worth mentioning in comparison to a world that (after a mere 20 minutes of play of early code, I hasten to add) does seem faintly airless and wipe-clean.