Need for Speed is no stranger to change. To its credit, Electronic Arts has shuffled and reshuffled the deck virtually every year since the 1994 debut of what would eventually become the world’s preeminent action-racing franchise. And it did so again in 2007’s Need For Speed: ProStreet, tossing out the underground ambience, the suicidal police chases, and the play-along storyline in favor of a quasi-simulation experience based on sanctioned events and a more subdued, authentic ride. Though we generally liked ProStreet, many critics and fans were harsher.

Given all that, it should come as no shock that the next NFS installment, Need For Speed: Undercover (due to drop this fall), will be a far different animal than its immediate predecessor. We recently had a chance to view an early version and even take a brief turn behind the wheel at EA’s Black Box studio in Vancouver, Canada, and we came away thinking this’ll be one highly stylized and very big game.

Undercover takes place in a free-roaming world dubbed the Tri-City Bay Area. Encircled by a monster freeway -- which, in itself, takes more than eight minutes to circumnavigate at absolute top speed and with all traffic removed -- Tri-City is a veritable web of fully drivable streets, avenues, laneways and assorted arteries. But this isn’t your typical videogame burg -- Tri-City incorporates several distinct geographical zones and driving experiences, plunking you into a series of canyons just as easily as a high alpine straight-shot or a downtown viaduct.

The style factor is huge throughout. Even at this early stage, the sections of road we drove felt smooth and stutter-free, and the visuals looked downright delicious. Our car was a gorgeously detailed -- yet somehow "glossier" -- replica of its real-life counterpart (Porsche, Mitsubishi, and BMW are the confirmed manufacturers thus far), and everything onscreen took advantage of what cinematographers refer to as "magic hour" lighting -- that soft and oh-so-complimentary glow that occurs naturally in the hour prior to dusk.

Of particular note is the car-damage model, which delivers more realistic crumples, bends, holes, and accordion-ism than ever before. Granted, vehicular performance isn’t affected by said damage, but perhaps that’s a good thing in a game that practically begs you to solve many of your problems by conducting your own personal destruction derby.

Yes, purposeful crashing is most definitely back in, as are oodles of threatening police cruisers. And let us not forget those rocket-equipped cop choppers. Only they’re not so stupid this time, at least in our brief experience. Nor are they working on the opposite side of the law. You see, you’re a good guy, too. You just happen to be -- as the title suggests -- undercover. And that can make for a lot of witting and unwitting enemies.

But arguably the game’s most stylish component is what surrounds its central mode. Not only does Undercover mark the return of a truly playable -- though linear -- storyline, it also signals a move away from cheesy CGI and to big-budget, live-action video. Indeed, EA took the project direct to Hollywood, where it dropped a bundle on a state-of-the-art production that includes acting talents such as current "it" girls Maggie Q (Live Free or Die Hard, Mission: Impossible III) and Christina Milian.

All that aside, NFS nuts may ultimately remember Undercover for its physics model, confidently named the "Heroic Driving Engine." Incorporating no less 400 parameters and adapted from a similar but less sophisticated version found in ProStreet, Black Box’s HDE can be tuned, in the development studio, to be as realistic or as fanciful as the design team wants it to be.

In Undercover, the HDE is most definitely tuned for action rather than the substantially more sedate ProStreet. Still, it doesn’t go so far as to be "arcade." Your car will have weight, feel like it contacts the road in all four corners, and generally shift about like the assemblage of parts that it is. Indeed, it’s the complexity of the HDE that makes such necessary maneuvers as bootleg turns -- and other, even more extreme vehicular gymnastics -- so darn rewarding.

In some ways a big step forward but also a journey back to the tried-and-true formula of past series high points, Need for Speed: Undercover will certainly be more of a thrill ride than ProStreet. Given its whole-world approach and closely woven storyline, it’ll also be more homogenous than its somewhat scattered predecessor. We’ll see if it all comes together on November 18.