Undercover is the 12th installment in the Need For Speed franchise. In terms of gameplay, it attempts to follow the open-world, story-driven installments that came before, such as Underground 2, Most Wanted (2005), and Carbon.

The core gameplay of Undercover is unsatisfying. Cars barely have a sense of weight, and you can make tight, 180 degree turns at more than 200 kmph without even applying the brakes. There is a decent selection of cars, but some grinding is required to purchase the cars and their upgrades. Races in an area tend to be repetitive because the track sections are reused. The police events are too simplistic and offer no challenge, even at higher heat levels.

The interface of the game is also rather awkward. Events are launched from the map, which takes away any motivation for free roaming. Cars are classified into tiers, but they're displayed in the store as one big list and sorted by geography (which is irrelevant to the game). The mini-map is essential when playing through some events, but it has poor visibility and shows very limited information.

Visually, Undercover is a mess. Saturated colors, a yellowish tint, and ridiculous levels of bloom combine in a way that's simply unpleasant to look at. It's possible to use mods to disable all of this (as I did), but that exposes the underlying textures of the world - which look pretty bad on their own.

There's an overarching story here about going undercover as a wheelman, but it's nothing remarkable. All the drama in the story does not translate over to the gameplay. If you fail a job, you simply get a pop-up screen from where you can restart that event. This approach removes any kind of stakes from the player's side, and the story falls flat as a result.

In summary, Undercover feels like a fumbled opportunity. There's some fun to be had in driving a high-speed sports car around a big map, but that's about it. Personally, the only thing I could really appreciate from this game were the 'master' racing events, since they offered some of the tense, white-knuckle moments I expect from a racing game.