I have reviewed many games, but I don’t think I’ve ever written a review for a mobile game. With how much fun Need For Speed: Most Wanted is for consoles, I couldn’t pass it up when I saw it on sale for Android. Here are my thoughts on the mobile version of Criterion’s epic racer.

On my Galaxy S3, the game is absolutely gorgeous. Even though it is completely different from the open-world gameplay of the console versions, the mobile adaption of Most Wanted holds its own due to the graphics and playability. To put it simply, this title has visuals that rival some console games; and it’s on a cell phone.

If you can ever get past the stunning display of colors and motion presented to you while playing, you’ll begin to notice that everything runs as smooth as it looks. Despite everything going on at once (and there’s a lot), the game never hiccupped on my GS3. Part of that is due to the power of the phone, but most of it has to do with the impressive level of optimization that was given to this project. It really feels like a full game, and I’m not regretting my purchase.

The interface is amazing for this game. Never have I seen a mobile title so well developed for, well, mobile. Everything is meant for touchscreens, buttons are not hard to hit, and graphics are slickly-designed within the layout. Menu design is absolutely one of the best things about NFS: MW.

Though there are so many things to like about the game, there are a couple problems that keep it from being my most-played mobile title. For starters, there is no progress synchronization across all of your devices. I like to play this on both my tablet and my phone, and especially since EA’s Origin service syncs all my stats, friends and other things, it very much surprised me that my save progress was not uploaded to the cloud as well. As a result, my progress on my phone is not the same as on my tablet. This is a feature that would be very cool to include in future mobile games with campaigns as long as this one.

Another issue I found is that the touch steering is absolutely useless. Tilt steering has always been my preference anyway, but when I thought I would give touch steering a try, I instantly regretted it. The problem is that even though you can change the sensitivity, it is entirely too sensitive even on the lowest setting. If I moved my thumb a millimeter, my car would do a u-turn and smash into a wall (the destruction effects are cool though). Because of this, one half of the control scheme is useless and feels like a waste. Luckily enough I prefer tilt steering, but I’ll bet this ruined the game for people who like the alternative.

As I said, I don’t regret my purchase of the mobile version of last year’s biggest racer. I’m sure support for this app ceased long ago, so I don’t expect any updates to fix the issues I stated. They aren’t game-breaking, however, which is why I keep coming back for more.

NFS: Most Wanted for Mobile gets a 4.5/5.