Techno Minded : December 2011

Cheat Codes

Enter one of the following codes at the main menu to activate the corresponding cheat function:

Result	Cheat Code
Burger King Challenge	burgerking
Castrol Ford GT	castrol

Easy money

Find an easy race such as a drag or something short that you can win quickly. Win the race and get the money. Go back to the safe house and start the race again. Win the race to get the same amount of money again. Repeat this process as much as desired. This is quite useful when you need that extra bit of power to defeat a Blacklist Rival, but don't have the money for a better car or parts.

Defeat one of the opponents on the blacklist. You will get two marks to use on several different things. Do not use them on the Uniques early in the game. Instead, use them on the middle or the left "Random" choices. They should usually come out to either a large cash bonus or the opponent's pink slip.

Easy upgrades

Before you can do anything, you must win the Burger King Challenge. Once you win it, you will unlock all unique parts (also called Junkman parts). Get any car and put all the parts on it except performance. Once you have your car the way you desire, go to the performance shop. Max out your car, then put the Junkman parts on. Max out your car again. Then put on the Junkman parts again. Your car should be fully upgraded now.

Easy bounty

Get some cops to chase you, then go to the bus stop. Get on top of the buses and make sure that the front of the car is at the edge of the last bus so that the cops can see you and do not lose you. Keep looking behind you, because the cops will sometimes find a way on top of the buses. When they do get on the buses, just reverse as soon as you see them coming and push them off. Only one cop car will come on top of the bus. Do this for as long as desired. When you want to lose them, just reverse, park in the middle of the buses, and wait until your Cool Down bar fills. The cops will also drive crazy and crash into themselves, giving you extra bounty and bring up your rap sheet rankings on police vehicles immobilized and police vehicles involved.

Getting the most money when selling your car

When you sell a car, you will only get half of its list value; however, there is a trick that works well for Pinkslips that you have won and no longer want. Take your car to the shop, then go to the parts area. Go into the body kit, spoiler, hood, rims, and roof air areas and set everything to stock. When you check out, you will see anywhere from $1,000 to $18,000, depending on what Pinkslip car you are stripping. Do not try this with performance parts. The shop will charge you money for downgrading. Once you have stripped your car of all accessories, leave and go to your safe house. Sell the car, and you will have made a lot of money on the side. Do this every time you intend to sell any car.

Quick start

Get a perfect launch on your tachometer when launching from the start line to get a boost. When the needle turns blue drop the clutch and hold on.

Nitrous and grip

Hitting nitrous torques the chassis back, giving the rear tires immensely more weight under the new acceleration. The end effect is that you will go straight. If your tail is sliding out or you are about to spin out of control, hit your nitrous to get straighten out. This is a great trick in combination with Speedbreaker. With the correct timing, you can take most corners at any speed.

Nitrous boosting

It is critical when you get past Blacklist Member #6 to use your nitrous wisely and strategically. Instead of just holding Nitrous in desperation to get ahead, press and release it when the tachometer is about to shift to the next gear. Upon the next gear shift, continue pressing Nitrous until the next upcoming gear shift. This is a great way to cut time off your race.

Avoid and remove strikes

After getting busted and taking a strike, turn off the system the next time you get pulled over. Resume the game and those strikes will be removed.

Avoiding police

Go to the bus terminal with any Heat Level. Normally you would go left or right to take the jump or drive up the middle to take the shortcut. Instead of using the ramps to jump, stop at the apex of the ramp, then turn and drive in the middle of the walkway. Stop there and wait. The cops will not come up the ramp after you if you are in the middle of the walkway. No matter what the Heat Level, the cops will not get you and they will eventually drive away.

When completing a race, if the police radio in the car you are driving and you do not want to run from them, press Down and choose another race. Alternately, you may also jump to your safe house (must be done before you are seen or the pursuit begins). If not, you must drive to it yourself in Cool Down mode. To jump to the safe house, pause the game and press Right until seen. Additionally, upon reaching level 4 (Most Wanted) there will be a lot of police chasing you. At this level, cops are excellent at boxing you in. If you cannot move forward, use reverse for a couple of seconds to get away from the block; spin your car around and get out of there.

The best way to escape the police is to evade long enough to get into Cool Down mode, then find a hiding spot. By sticking to the cities you will find lots of Cool Down spots to sit and hide your car until the heat is off. This is also a good way to avoid helicopters which appear if your reach level 4 on your map. Another good method is to run into the triangles on your map, which mark places where you can ram into shops and other roadside items to disable the cops. Highways are good places to get blockades and strike strips which are challenges for milestones. Additionally, never respawn your car in a pursuit, as the police will always catch you.

An easy way to get away from cops at high wanted levels is to find the baseball field. Look on the map for a small triangle towards the top left. Use highways in a circle around the field to achieve your missions. Once you have gained enough bounty, city damage, roadblocks, etc., drive through an entrance to the baseball field, hitting the pursuit breaker on the way in. Make sure that you slow down some before hitting the breaker so that it does not send you through the other side of the field. Once you make it in the field, stay there and wait out the Cool Down period. The cops should be off of you and will not be able to find you. This works almost all the time to get rid of the cops. Just driving through random blockers rarely works when you are at wanted levels 4 and 5.

Levels of police action

The various levels of police action are as follows:

Heat Level 1: Marked patrol cars and cruisers. They mostly chase and try to run you off the road. If you have a quick car, they are not hard to get away from.

Heat Level 2: Unmarked patrol cars and cruisers, roadblocks. The police mainly try to ram you off the road and setup roadblocks. Avoid roadblocks by doing an emergency brake lock U-turn or go through them. You can get through by ramming the cars on either end of the roadblock or by going through a weak point like the sawhorse or a gap between the cars. Use Speedbreaker to see the weak point in the roadblocks and use nitrous to ram straight through. Some road blocks will not extend all the way across the road -- you can go through where they have not placed a car.

Heat Level 3: Marked GTO (Monaro) police cars, marked 4WDs (Rhinos), rolling road blocks, roadblocks. These are quicker and you need to use objects to knock down in front of them to disable them. Lead the chase with these vehicles through the cities to use knock down points (for example, the giant donut sign, etc.) to disable the vehicles and end the chase. Then, find somewhere to hide when you hit Cool Down mode. "Rhinos" will ram you from the front. Listen for the call over the police radio. You can usually see these coming on your map or on the road ahead. Depending on which car you have, you can get away with ramming them head on. Otherwise, just use Speedbreaker again to change lanes before they ram you.

Heat Level 4: Unmarked GTO (Monaro) police cars, helicopters, spike strips. The unmarked GTOs (Monaros) usually chase in packs and are very hard to avoid. They will try to box you in by surrounding the car from the front and back and slamming the brakes to take away any room you have to escape. Avoid this by staying ahead and using the same tactics used in level 3. For the helicopters, use tunnels and underground parking lots to escape from them. When they spot you, they can radio the police to your location. Spike strips are set up usually on main roads and highways. You can see them on the map when you see only one vehicle over to left of the road not driving (i.e., pulled over). Aim for the police car and use nitrous to ram it and get away. If you hit the spike strip you will get caught.

Heat Level 5: You will not reach this level until you are at Blacklist #3. When you reach this level, all the best and toughest police come out. The helicopters get more aggressive, there are more spikes, and more belts are called in on you. You must also deal with "cross" cop Corvettes. Cross and his team will apprehend you at all cost. Like in level 4, the unmarked GTO cars will surround and box you in and hit the brakes. Corvettes will also try to use rolling road blocks. If you reach level 5, make sure you are in your fastest vehicle. You will need the nitrous.

Higher Heat levels

You start Campaign mode only being able to achieve Heat levels 1 and 2 (City Police). By defeating certain Blacklist Rivals, you can then achieve the higher Heat levels:

Heat level 3 (State Police): Defeat the Blacklist Rival #13.

Heat level 4 (Undercover State Troopers): Defeat the Blacklist Rival #9.

Heat level 5 (Federal Authorities): Defeat the Blacklist Rival #5.

Heat level 6 (Cross' Street Racin' Unit): Defeat the Blacklist Rival #1 (final level only).

After you beat the Rockport's Most Wanted level, Heat level 5 will then consist of both the Federal Authorities and Cross' Street Racin' Unit.

Regaining control

When approaching a corner at a high speed, quickly assess whether or not you can get through it cleanly as fast as possible and without touching the inside or outside barriers. If you start drifting (or worse, careening out of control) toward a barrier, turn on your Speedbreaker in order to regain control via increased handling and traction. During this period of slowed time, straighten out your car and put it back into an ideal racing line. Once you are straight and driving in the correct direction, quickly turn off Speedbreaker and hit the Nitrous hard to rip out of the remainder of the corner.

Better car performance

After upgrading your car with engines, suspension, brakes, etc., pause the game and go to "Performance Tuning". For better handling for the Lamborghini, Porsche, Corvette, and Viper, set the "Height" of you car to "-1". If you need more gripping power either take the "Height" to "-2" or set the "Aerodynamics" to "+1". If you go overboard with the performance tuning options (anything past "+3" or "-3"), the car will actually handle worse.

Recommended car

The best start car to use until you get the Eclipse is the Cobalt SS. When you win blacklist races, try for the three "?" markers. You can get cash or the pink slip car. If you get their car, go to the safe house and sell it. You can get good money by doing this, and get unique upgrades after you start getting into the visuals (after you switch from the Cobalt). After you defeat Ming and get get his Lamborghini, it should make progressing further in the game easier. When you get his Lamborghini, go to the tuner shop and add in any upgrades needed for performance.

After beating Blacklist #8, you will have a choice to buy the Lotus Elise. At this point you should have enough money to buy it. If not, you may want sell to get enough money. Once you have the money, buy that car. It is great at road handling, and is very fast once you have maxed out its performance. Note: The stock top speed and handling do not look high at first.

Car upgrade test

If you are unsure which car is the best to use when upgraded, you can upgrade all the cars that are unlocked for free in the main menu. Go to "My Cars", select a car that is available, and upgrade it with the parts that are available. By doing this, you will not waste all your money in Career mode.

Blacklist cars

If you win the Pinkslips to a Blacklist car, you may want to use the Blacklist car as your own and make the necessary upgrades to performance, as most of the upgrades will have been already made by the Blacklist owner. You usually do not need to spend too much money to increase the performance, handling, etc. Sometimes these cars will have upgrades that have not been unlocked yet, but most of these are usually visual. Only do this if the vehicle you have won has better attributes than the one you are currently driving in its standard mode. You can check this out in the car shop. It is a good idea to keep about three to five nice quick cars in your safehouse.

Blacklist milestones

Blacklist milestones are things you need to do to rack up your bounty so you can challenge the next person on the Blacklist. Check these out so you know what you need to do to increase your points. Once the milestones are completed, you must work on increasing the points. The best way to do this is to cause as much major damage as possible by taking out police cars, traffic, and crashing through shops (for example, the donut shop and other places you will notice in the later levels). Try to rack up as much bounty and escape before your status has reached level 4. If your status is already level 4, then choose a different car for awhile until the status goes down before returning to your preferred car. Once your status hits level 4, it is harder to get into Cool Down mode to find somewhere to hide. Avoid getting caught, as you will lose the bounty you have racked up during the chase.

Blacklist cars

Defeat the indicated Blacklist Rival to win the corresponding car:

Aston Martin DB9: Blacklist Rival #7

Audi A3 3.2 Quattro: Blacklist Rival #15

Audi A4 3.2 FSI Quattro: Blacklist Rival #14