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If there's any developer ready to give brand new console hardware a fair shake, it's Criterion Games. From Burnout Paradise to its celebrated reinventions of the Need for Speed series, the studio has an impeccable record turning in tightly matched games on 360 and PS3 platforms alike, with no-one left wanting. With the hotly anticipated Wii U version of Need for Speed: Most Wanted it aims to go one better. By no means a straight port, the boat is being pushed out much further this time with its suite of unique GamePad features, improved PC-grade textures courtesy of the console's 1GB of RAM, and a greatly revamped approach to its night-time lighting. So can this new edition truly be taken as the definitive version? In our original Face-Off feature, it was inevitably the PC version that offered the greatest number of perks in resolution, shadow quality, reflection mapping and object draw distance. However, the two console versions held up to the Guildford studio's long-held standards for parity, with only an occasional lead in frame-rate on Sony's platform dividing the two in the final tally. One immediate benefit of waiting an extra five months for the Wii U version is the inclusion of the first 'Unlimited Speed' DLC pack as standard, plus any basic engine refinements that had been applied to these initial releases.
Alas, these optimisations aren't all included on the disc, and booting the game still demands a sizable 156MB patch install to bring the version up to 1.1.0. With everything set up though, we pit the visual quality of this release against the PC, 360 and PS3 versions with the head-to-head video below - plus our quad-format comparison gallery. Due to the dynamic nature of the game's day-night cycle, it is worth noting that there are minor differences in shadow positions at various points.
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