Having watched with quiet mirth as the other guys have had to review the slew of Xbox to 360 'ports', I guess it was only a matter of time before karma caught up with me. So, mustering as much equanimity as possible, I have gone back through Need for Speed: Most Wanted on the 360 and I have to say that it's a damn fun game.

Being a huge fan of Hot Pursuit, and remembering the many carefree teenage hours I spent leading the cops on merry chases in that game, I was very pleased to see the series stray a little from its Underground direction and back to the intense police chases and shout-out-loud moments that Hot Pursuit delivered so well.

The story of Most Wanted takes place in Rockport, a city where illegal car culture pisses in the direction of pithy things like laws and moral justice. You are, in true unimaginative style, the new kid on the block, who is immediately seized upon by both the cops and the most notorious illegal racing syndicate in Rockport. Led by Razor, this gang waylays you and through some engine tinkering and bad acting Razor manages to score the pink slip to your beautiful ride. Left car-less, your only friend is a chick called Mia, who helps you out by hooking you into the SMS culture of illegal street racing and ensures that you're on your way to getting your ride back and exacting some cutting revenge on Razor.

Having played the Xbox version of this game, I must admit that it felt somewhat of a chore to go back through the game – but if you haven't played it yet the 360 version is definitely the one to get. Graphically and aurally, it laps the other versions quite easily. There are some truly beautiful driving moments to be had during the game, from the rain reflecting off the road or the sun breaking through the trees as you round a corner through to the pure grunting sound of your ride screaming through a tunnel and screeching around sweeping corners.

The entire game takes as its premise the cat-and-mouse games played between street racers and the police. Despite displaying a dubious moral theme, other than your quest to get your car back, the game is a fast and furious piece of entertainment that requires quite a lot of play to get the most out of. Part of the reason for this is the way that the career mode is structured. Basically, in order to be able to challenge Razor and win the pink slip to your own car back, you need to prove your worthiness by challenging fifteen drivers on the 'Blacklist'. Now, before you think that only fifteen challenges means that the game is short think again. In order to progress through the Blacklist you need to complete sub-challenges, which are divided into Race, Milestone (pursuit) and Bounty events.

Each Blacklist opponent requires you to complete a certain number of each in order to challenge him/her. So, for example, you may need to complete three Race events, four Milestone events and have a total Bounty of $200 000. Your Bounty accumulates during the whole game, so that aspect usually gets taken care of whilst racing. Milestone events almost always involve police chases but in cool ways. You may need to get into a pursuit for a certain amount of time or dodge five road blocks or tag a particular number of police cars. A lot of the time, if you get into a long and involved pursuit, you'll get all the required milestones in one chase.

Races are similarly varied and include Sprint (point A to B the fastest), Circuit, Tollbooth (get extra time going through tollbooths) and Speedtrap (the fastest speed at certain points accumulate and win you the race). The other type of race is Drag, which is fun at first but is really quite useless. During a drag, you only control gear changes and what lane you're in. It can get quite frustrating on some of the harder drag races as stupid cars pull out in front of you in exactly the same place all the time.

Perhaps the coolest thing about Most Wanted is that all of the races take place in the world map, sort of like Midnight Club, and consequently it's possible for the police to start pursuits mid-race. This feels random enough and it's a great thrill to have the cops come in and mix things up a little. Sometimes this may even work to your advantage as the cops tie up your opponents and allow you to zip past them.

The police all talk and chatter whilst chasing you and I found this to be extremely accurate and context-specific. After just ramming a car, you may hear the cop say something like, "He's just rammed a civilian, right in front of me. I'm gonna back off and give him some room." If you manage to escape them, you'll hear them vocalise their dismay and call in for a search of the area. In order to lose the cops, you'll have to pull of some pretty daring moves.

Scattered throughout the world are things called Pursuit Breakers, which basically fall under the category of 'crap that falls down to stop the cops from chasing you'. My particular favourite is the large donut that blocks the road in a nice wink to the cops' favoured culinary treat. Once you lose the cops, which is shown on a meter at the bottom of the screen, there is a cool down period where you're still being chased and if you're spotted the chase resumes. To speed up this process, several hiding spots will show up on your map where you can go to lay low and end the chase.

It's perhaps a little unrealistic that Pursuit Breakers reset over time but hot damn you'll need them, especially if your heat level gets beyond three or four. As a chase continues for a long time, the cops get much more aggressive, using ramming and boxing techniques, as well as increasing to SUVs and even calling in a police chopper (which you'll need to evade by ducking underneath structures). I know that Dom mentioned this in his review of the Xbox version, and I agree – it can be damn frustrating to lose a long chase. I'm talking a good half hour of heart-in-your-mouth chasing that ends with you swearing your head off because the cops managed to box you in or you didn't dodge that spike strip. Many times I actually decided to end the chase after five minutes or so but ended up in an epic chase across town that lasted forever. All of my uses of nitrous and the Speedbreaker (basically a car version of bullet time) did not help me and I ended up in the cold arms of the law, a broken and disheartened man, kind of like every Friday night...

This leads me to my other major gripe about the game: the achievements. Having passed the Xbox version, and amassing all the millions in bounty required to finally challenge Razor, I am disappointed that the achievements are so explicitly linked to the career mode: one achievement per Blacklist member beaten. Given that there is also a Challenge Series to the game, with more than 60 challenges for you to complete, I am left wondering why some cool things like, for instance, getting five million bounty or completing the Challenge Series weren't given due weight in the achievements – I mean where's the 'completed a half-hour pursuit' achievement? I spent a good fifteen hours on the game and only scored half the achievements, which is in no way indicative of how many challenges I've completed or how many pursuits I've outlasted.

As mentioned above, the races in the game are quite varied and the choice to complete these in either free-roam mode or by accessing them directly from your safe house is quite good. I opted to free roam for a bit, as the races and milestones themselves exist in the game world. As you elicit pursuits and the like you'll find yourself moving up the Blacklist almost automatically. There are some awesome cars to unlock and you can customise them in terms of engine upgrades and visual tweaks – both aspects are not actually very deep but are serviceable.

Races are extremely close affairs, owing in large part to the extremely elastic AI of your opponents. In some ways this is just ridiculous. For example, at one stage in a race I was almost fifteen seconds ahead because my opponent had spun out on a corner. As I was watching the map, the damn bastard practically flew along the intervening distance between us until he caught up. Other times, I've spun out and easily caught up to the rest of the pack. I can understand the thrill of a close race but at times it did seem a bit excessive. Perhaps it would have been better to employ a reactive difficulty like in Midnight Club 3.

As a whole, however, Need for Speed: Most Wanted comes across as extremely polished and very fun. The decision to focus on police pursuits was a good one and it's good to see the series come back out into the daylight after the neon environments of the previous games. Online multiplayer still lacks a pursuit mode which would, in my opinion, rock harder than Ben Afleck's balls, but I suppose you can't have everything. As it is, Need for Speed: Most Wanted is an extremely fun and addictive arcade racer that will have you speeding through checkpoints and outsmarting the cops in no time.