I apologise, Black Box.

Before I start on all that jazz, here's my question to you guys; did you ever play a game, absolutely hate it and start bandwagoning with other haters, only to play it a few years later and realise that it really wasn't that bad, or maybe even better than you thought?

I was wrong. I was so wrong. I know people will disagree with me, but hear me out.

I used to loathe Need for Speed: Undercover. Like, more than ProStreet. I considered it a direct violation of everything good in previous NFS instalments. I got it Day One on Xbox 360, having been hyped for months. At the time, the end result was...disillusioning.

Back then I played the game and I thought that it was horrible. The controls were awful, the police were liking moving brick walls and their VO was dull and uninteresting, the cars boring, the graphics were horrid, the bloom was too bright, the cutscenes didn't have the same campy FMV feel as Most Wanted, multiplayer was hacked to death, AutoSculpt sucked...blah blah blah. I stopped playing after finishing the game, and began to dump shit everywhere, on every online site I was associated with describing how bad the game was. I really, REALLY hated it.

Years went by. More terrible NFS games came out. I generally forgot the pain of Undercover and moved on. Until a recent Steam sale. I couldn't hold myself back. I had to try it again. I dunno if it was wishful thinking, just wanting to make sure my "NFS" category on Steam wasn't only Non-Steam Games, or just because I thought it would make a pretty good LP of a shitty game, but I bought it for $5.

(Because of my busy schedule) I'm 7 hours in, and this is the most fun I've had since Most Wanted.

It's NOWHERE near as bad as I thought. I'd go to say that...hell, it might just be one of my most favourite NFS titles ever. And the Steam version isn't even fully patched.

Sure, the bloom is still high, the cutscenes are unskippable, resolution has to be changed in the registry, and some of the AI can be a bit of "The Computer is a Cheating Bastard", but mother of goodness, when I start the game up, I can just forget about real life and get lost in that desire to win...it's refreshing verse the plethora of bad NFS games and other racing simulators which are too serious...I can't even get into GRID or the like because their controls are just horrifying to get used to.