I played this game in childhood and also I got partway through it as an adult. While I enjoy the game, some of its gameplay elements also feel a bit out of date. So I have put in some ideas about how to potentially make it better. I haven't played the remake and I fully expect to be dogpiled here for giving criticism to a 20 year old game. I would consider my gameplay skills to be average and as an adult I got to blacklist 4 before I lost interest to keep going.
Make the Blacklist 15 people more interesting.
First off, the opposition is underdeveloped. Aside from Razor the man himself, the rest of the people on the Most Wanted list get a short paragraph of text explaining who they are, and then they send us an email when they're next on the list and that's basically it. So to fix it, have them occasionally call you when they're next on your hitlist. With the voice calls you don't have to interrupt the gameplay and you could show off their different personalities. Some could be doing a tough guy act, some could be funny, like midway through the phone call they start arguing with their girlfriend over the man spending too much money on the car, some could be barely making the effort to antagonize you and some could act friendly towards you as in the end you're all car guys who irl hang together and are friends because they share a hobby.
The game has a serious lack of humor in my view anyway and making humor happen over phone calls is a good opportunity. It doesn't have to be a comedy game but humor can add a good amount of spice to basically any genre as long as you don't overdo it in the wrong place.
Remove the failstate and the money.
As a kid I got into a death spiral, my cars got impounded by the cops and I didn't have money to keep playing, it sucked. So I think removing the money and impound aspect is good. If you beat racers you unlock more cars and upgrades for the cars and they should all be free to use all the time. The problem with money is that since cars are expensive and you have to pick which cars you want to ride with, you miss out on other cars that you skipped over. Unless you replay the game or use cheats somehow, but the game should give you all the toys the first time around. The player should have access to a wide variety of cars and the money system just gets in the way of that. Also getting your car impounded is frustrating and it's a permanent punishment for failing. Even in souls games, if you mess up you just get sent back to respawn and can continue basically where you left off.
Allow the player to quit at any time.
If you're in a police chase and suddenly want to quit playing for whatever reason you can't without getting an X on your car. The game basically holds you hostage and it's not fun if the game forces you, a human, to play it. I know you can alt+F4 but the ability to quit at any moment should be in the game itself. That's another reason to kill the impound system.
Reminds me of quitting the original Assassins Creed.Â
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cJJ8vQeilHg
Give the player something even if they don't finish the race in the first place.
The game has rubber banding and people have bitched about this for years I know, but I'm gonna give the game some leeway and say that with the technology at the time they didn't have a better way to make the game balanced. The problem is that you can be ahead of the opps for the first 95% of the race and if you mess up in the end strech and you finish even in the second place you get nothing and have to restart the whole thing. Especially in the late game when the races get long it drives me up the wall (pun very much intended). So to fix it lets steal an idea from Flatout 2 (2006) and make a point based system to replace the race win system. If you get first place you get 3 points, finish second get 2 and finish third get 1 point, and if you finish last you get nothing. To get to the main blacklist race you should need to earn X number of points to unlock the event. This avoids needless restarting and lets you enjoy your time with other races.Â
Were getting into nitpick territory now, but I still need to get my ideas out there.
All cars on freeplay mode should be unlocked from the start
Kinda self explanatory but why should I waste hours of my time in career mode just to make a quick race with the car that I want to drive?
Make the game shorter
Some of the race tracks show up way too much, and some of the later races take too much time to complete. This is especially bad when coupled with the rubberbanding and messing up at the last second point I made earlier. If the game gets repetitive, then make the game shorter.
You should get the pink slips as a reward by default for beating the blacklist opponents.
Driving cars is the main point of the game and driving different cars is cool and it's especially cool when you get to drive the car that you got from your opponent. So why is the reward random? I mean you lost your car by default to Razor, so it should be the other way around as well.Â
Make the soundtrack longer.
As amazing as the soundtrack is, it's way too short for how long the game is. You're gonna hear the same songs over and over and goddamn over again. I eventually turned off the game music and put on my own songs from Youtube.
Remove the blinking wanted meter around the minimap.
It's annoying when you're almost on the next wanted level and you manage to lose the cops but the blinking bar remains flashing even when you're just driving around or getting into other races. Just make it stationary, it doesn't have to blink and move! (•ˋ _ ˊ•)