Finally — illegal street racing without all the pesky police, right in the comfort of your own living room!

“Need for Speed: Underground” plays like the video game version of “The Fast and the Furious,” but a too-long career mode and lack of different tracks, like the movie’s lack of acting talent or a cohesive plot, ultimately cause it to fall short of greatness.

“Underground” is a very cool game, for the most part. The controls have an arcade feel to them but work flawlessly and seem much better than in the similar “Midnight Club II” that was released last summer.

The game also uses real cars popular to the import scene such as the Toyota Supra, Honda Civic and Mitsubishi Eclipse. The coolest thing, however, is the level of control over your car’s look. You can change the style of virtually every part, including separate paint colors for the body, spoiler, brake calipers, rims and muffler tip. Everything else is just as customizable, from body kits to neons to vinyl stickers and decals of performance parts.

The graphics are also nice. While this game doesn’t have the huge polygon count of “Project Gotham Racing 2,” Electronic Arts has managed to capture the look and feel of “The Fast and the Furious,” including an impressive motion blur effect that helps create the feel that things are moving insanely fast.

The game itself is split into several distinct modes. In addition to the standard races, there are also drag races and drift races. Drag races, complete with a different control system, are about 30 seconds long and tend to focus more on shifting than normal races. Drift races are on a slick course, where the goal is to build up points by power sliding for as long as possible without hitting the walls.

Drag and drift races are fun as a change of pace, but the vast majority of your time is spent on regular circuit or sprint races. These races tend to involve racing against three computer opponents around tracks with multiple shortcuts and big jumps. The gameplay is outstanding, except for the slight annoyance of the “rubberband” artificial intelligence on the computer cars that will never allow them to fall too far behind — no matter how well you race.

While the gameplay in “Underground” is great, it is unfortunately undermined by the tracks. All of the races take place on essentially the big track with different sections opened up for each race. This means at about 50 races through the 111 career mode races, you have seen every possible track configuration. This leads to the second half of the game feeling like you are just racing in the same thing over and over and over again. All of the races also take place at night, which adds to the d‚j… vu effect.

The game remains bearable, since you continue to unlock new cars and upgrades and the driving remains fun, but if there had been even two separate cities, the game would have been far superior.

“Underground” is a game that is good, but could have easily been great. Had the developers created a few more tracks, this game would be a must-buy, but it is still a pretty good time. Knowing Electronic Art’s penchant for sequels and the commercial success of the game, there will inevitably be a follow-up which, with any luck, will address this game’s few issues.