2005 saw the release of one of the most beloved games in the NFS franchise, Most wanted. The game mixed street racing with an open world environment, police chases and street racing gangs. Unfortunately, it has been fairly downhill since then. The series has gone a bit off the rails with no real direction. While there has been some decent games, the street racing feeling has really gone missing. Most Wanted is EAs attempt to cash in on people's love for the original game, without really addressing what people loved about the original game and it's not massively successful. It does has some similarities with the original mixed with some parts of hot pursuit. Like most NFS games, the game handles well and the racing is pretty nice. It is the standard arcade style racing you would expect from the series and when you are actually in a normal race, it is pretty fun. The problem is that the game is bogged down by a lot of rubbish that you don't really want in the game. Now, I'm really not a fan of open world racing games. I think most of the time tracks are more suited for close contested racing battles. This one is no different, it looks great but doesn't really work in terms of racing. That's if you actually get into the racing. There is time wasted driving around the city, time spent avoiding the police and time spent on non-racing events. Another huge time waste is the long crash animations, every time you crash you get a shitty 5 second cut scene. It totally ruins the flow of the races. Overall, the game feels vapid. From its' lack of racing to its' horrible music, it's another case of NFS not really working out. The basic mechanics of the game work but all the silly extras just bring it down.

CSI Hard Evidence is the first of 3 CSI games on the console and it is actually quite well known. Mostly known for how easy it is to get achievement points (if you care about that), CSI HE should probably should be know for its horrible acting, graphics and facial animations, which are comical and a real highlight. So how does a game like this work? Well, it's surprisingly quite interesting and a bit of a unique experience. You play through 5 episodes of point and click detective style gameplay. You investigate crime-scenes, find evidence, process it in the lab, and question suspects. This gameplay style is certainly different, but it's not that great in practice. It's nearly impossible to miss clues and you can't really fail a mission, so the game basically plays itself. That being said, if treated as an interactive TV show, it is quite nice. The episodes are detailed, with interesting stories which feel like they were real TV episodes. There is some fun to be had in the lab, where analysing evidence is turned into small fun mini games like matching pictures. It's nothing special but it works. I'm sure there's a lot of people who hate this game but for me it was moderately enjoyable. It's not too long and doesn't overstay its welcome. The bitesize chunks were a nice break from other epic games and campaigns on the console. Worth picking up just to experience and see if you like it.

Another quite random NTSC release, Little League is a kid-friendly baseball game, not dissimilar to the Mario sports series. Based on the sport of baseball, LL is full of all the cute colourful graphics and chibi syle characters that you would expect from one of these kids sports ventures. Now, as far as sports games go, one issue I normally have with them is that if you are not into the sport, it can be very difficult to pick up and get the hang of. I suppose for most people, if you don't like sport X, you wont be interested in playing sport X games. With this in mind, LL is refreshing in the same way the Mario sports games can be. It does a great job at explaining baseball to a novice like me, and the tutorials make the game understandable. It's easy to pick up and play. The downside is that that's all I can really say in terms of positives. LL is an extremely shallow game with few redeeming features, which really should have been a cheap arcade title. There is a severe lack of features in the game, and while I am not expecting a detailed baseball game, I was looking forward to some cool powerups or mini games, like the Mario kart series. These were few and far between. There are barely any game modes and the gameplay itself seems almost random. Through my short time with the game, it didn't seem to make much difference how I played and I wasn't able to get much better as I practiced. My final complaint is the poor camera, which leaves it impossible to see the action at times. What is boils down to is this. LL is a cheap arcade game that never really should have got a full retail release. It may seem novel at first, but this shine wears off very quickly.