Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Developed by Criterion, the same team behind Burnout Paradise, you can definitely feel a lot of Burnout DNA in this Need for Speed entry. Sadly, since it's published by EA, do not expect to get the full game, you'll have to plonk down a further £45 on the PSN for that privilege. And since the game is now almost 8 years old you can expect online play to be dead. Trust me, this is one Platinum trophy that you won't be winning.

As either Cop or Criminal Racer you take to the roads in the fictional Seacrest County and all of its varied wilderness on various missions including simple time trials, races, duels, takedown missions, utterly infuriating rapid responses, interceptors and, obviously, hot pursuits in which you must obliterate all other rivals. The game can frequently be very exciting and is very addictive but it is bogged down by lengthy crash cut-scenes, long load times, an overload of visual information bombardment between missions, and cars that handle simply terribly. The aforementioned rapid response missions are a nightmare as for every strike on any object the counter will add 2 seconds to your already tight time limit. Once you slam into the guard rail you'll never get control of your car back and you'll just be slamming from side to side across the road. You'll never beat the mission.

Also, unlike Burnout Paradise, the XBM option is not available, meaning you cannot play your own tunes during the game and must stick to the licenced soundtrack. It's decent, but it's nowhere near as innovating and visionary as the soundtrack to Need for Speed: Shift 2 Unleashed. Though, overall, it's a much better game than Need for Speed: The Run.

I managed to unlock just 37% of the trophies. Any higher would require online play and purchase of the DLC. It gave me a few days of fun, but I'll never go back to this.

I still remember the day going to GameStop with my friend after school and buying the physical disc for this around the time it came out back in 2010. Probably one of the best multiplayer experiences ever to be had around that time period. Looking back at this now, I never realized how much this game was ahead of its time, especially when it came to innovation and multiplayer involvement.

Hot Pursuit 2010 tries to be a remake or "reboot" of what was already seen in the classic NFS era such as NFS3, High Stakes or Hot Pursuit 2, however, it shows that they only understood its basic concepts from a surface level . It's just that you only have to play the game for an hour to realize that something is wrong with it. First, let's talk about handling. Oh my god, they screwed up the handling of the series. Remember all the angry fans of brake to drift in modern NFS? Well, this is the first to introduce it. The problem with the brake to drift never for me had to do with the challenge or anything like that, but god... it's so stiff and awkard to drift, plus all the cars are similar in stats that in the end it doesn't make sense. While I had no problem if they reutilized the handling of games like MW or Carbon, for a game so based on the classic NFS (or at least what the developers intended) one would expect a more similar handling, a more free and lightweighty like NFS3 or High Stakes. One in which there is complete control over the car and it feels super tight to drive, with an interior view, with customization of tracks, free races, real information about the cars, an accessible and beautiful simulator in other words. None of that is present here or present in a very minor way. I think what people fails to see about the NFS franchise is that it was never meant to be arcadey to begin with it. The first NFS games included Hot Pursuit were basically Gran Turismo on the open road in a nutshell, but nowadays is more like generic mobile game on the couch. This is what happens when you give a developer like Criterion (who are responsible for the Burnout series) the opportunity to make NFS games. I think NFS Hot Pursuit 2 was also responsible for this but even that game tried more. Instead of trying to make a game that really respects what the classic NFS did and try to improve it, Criterion just wanted to replace it with their vision. Starting with this game now the series doesnt differentiate in any way with the Asphalt series.

The graphics? Yeah....they're not that good. On one hand, the car models are impressive for the time, but the environments have low textures, at least on PS3. In fact I think there are times when Hot Pursuit 2 on PS2 still looks better, and the music is super forgettable. Do you remember the super epic techno and rock songs by Rom Di Prisco? All that goes to the garbage, with generic themes. The gameplay itself doesn't work either, there are only sprint races or time trials, nothing more, no tournaments, no circuits, no split screen, nothing, and in each race you are given a number of "weapons", but these are fixed per track. Along that I don't even remember the names of the track and this makes each race feel more like a mission. There is also an open world mode in the game, but this has to be the most USELESS open world in the history of video games, I will not lie if I say that many games of the PS1 era have a more interactive open world, and on top of that the game doesn't lend itself to this, since as I said nothing can be customized, neither weather or anything and without an interior view or the ability to see the map or spawn wherever you want, it simply ends up being nonsense!

As I said, Criterion seemed to want to make an NFS up to the classics, but it's as if they had only read in community forums the good things they had without having tried them, in addition to having that excessive vision of wanting to replace it with their style. . Don't get me wrong, it's WAY better than MW 2012 for the simple fact that... well... the brake to drift works better here, the car is more resistant and therefore the crash cam is not as annoying and... The car progression system is not broken as hell, but the truth is that it is a super disappointment, and things like loading times and constant interruptions in the race only take away the little desire that one has to play. People can say what they want about the classic NFS, but that doesn't change the fact that 1998 Hot Pursuit is fundamentally better to play.

After playing many unrealistic games where a supercar skids off the bend of a road at 40 mph (YES Forza!) this game is a breath of fresh air and plays fantastic!

EA strikes again. When I first saw the price for Need For Speed "Remastered" edition I chuckled and moved on, however this game has since came to EA Play and Xbox Gamepass so I had to check it out.

I remember playing this game (the original) back in the day and was pretty disappointed in its lack of pretty much anything, and the remaster is exactly the same. Simply put this is the exact original game with a lick of paint in terms of slightly improved graphics.

When it comes to gameplay it's one of the worst in the Need For Speed series with supersonic speeds, laughable "drifting" and boring Nitrous effects. The controls as always are basic and work well but most of cars steering mechanics are a cross between complete arcade with sudden and unexpected tankiness right when you need to avoid a car or stop from hitting into a barrier. There is no customisation at all, you pick a paint color for that specific race on a car that you don't own, only have unlocked and then you move on to another race and do the same again. However the worst part about this game is the events. There's absolutely no variety in races. You basically get two. One is a race. One is a time trial. That's it. They throw in a few special abilities in certain races like EMP, Spike strips, Turbo etc but why not have these as purchasable upgrades to your car and have some sort of progression ? The time trials are rage inducing routes that insist that you don't crash into any wall/barrier or you receive a steep time penalty, the "preview events" allow you to try out fancier cars than you already own but that's it, it's the same time trial. I HATE the idea of the time trials/no crash mode here as this is a Need For Speed game, not grand Turismo. It's frustrating as the cornering/drifting in Hot Pursuit is simply not good. Races are races, come first and you get a gold, simple but it can be fun.

Essentially when you play this game you chose the cop events or the racer events and hop from one event to the other selecting the car furthest to the right as it's the fastest, win it and then click on another event. Very boring and definitely not a game you could play for a long period of time in my opinion. Instead I suggest you use this is a go between game when you want something to put on for 20-30 minutes and do a few quick races before bouncing on to something much better.

Now it's sounds like I totally hate this game but I don't. The variety in cars is quite nice, lots of lambos, Jaguars, Audi's, all the way down to Nissans and mazda's, and they all look very good. Some of the races get your heart rate up as you're locked in a dead heat with another racer and have that last spike strip left to deploy or that last turbo use. The time trials are annoying but can be exciting at the end as you've got 5 seconds left with nothing but a long straight ahead, can you make it and grab the gold, that's the one exciting part here. Tracks are well varied and offer some nice weather effects. It's not all bad, buts it's far from good.

Overall this is one of the poorest Need For Speed games in the series, it has zero story, zero customisation, lack of diversity in events and no progression. I do not recommend you buy this, but if you have Gamepass or EA Play it's a decent game for jumping on, playing a race or two each day and then moving on to another game.