Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Review

[nsane.forums]

EA gave Criterion Games control of an entry in the Need for Speed series and, while that may seem like heresy to Burnout fans, the gamble paid off. From the first race you'll notice that the cars feel heavy, fast, and mean. This is still an arcade-style racer, but it also requires precision and some lightning-quick reflexes. Once you add the weapons systems and the addictive online features... yeah, this is one worth picking up.

It's okay to wish for more Burnout in the future, and it's hard to complain when a team so respected creates something so satisfying.

Which side are you on?

The game offers one career path for the police, and another for the street racers and outlaws. You can switch between them at any time from the overhead map, allowing you to go between the different events whenever you'd like. You'll be chased by the police, you'll take part in races, you'll have to break through roadblocks that offer a single path to avoid crashes, and you'll have to choose when to throw those down. Playing on both sides of the fence keeps things fresh.

The game offers a wide variety of licensed cars, making the police seem ludicrously well-funded. Who cares? We're in a stylized Fast & Furious-style world where supercars are everywhere. This isn't a simulation, but the cars do require you to learn to corner appropriately, and to use boost at the right times to get ahead. This is the best kind of racer: one that looks like fantasy but feels real. It's like living in an action film.

Winning events gets you points, but you also level up by placing high in the standings, finding shortcuts, taking down cops with your spike strips and EMP blasts, and any number of other dangerous behaviors. Getting more points unlocks new cars, new abilities, and opens new events. The game does a wonderful job of testing your skills while offering frequent rewards. The ability to use things like EMP blasts and spike strips adds a level of fun to the game, without making it feel as fantasy-driven as Blur. The game strikes a good balance between instant enjoyment and a deeper strategy and mastery.

Your friends are here, and they're faster than you

Then there's the Autolog functionality. Autolog is the social networking hub that shares your times and scores with people on your friends list, with the ability to upload images you take during the race to share with others. You're shown your friends' times before each race, and once you best a time the game invites you to send them a message rubbing it in. If someone beats one of your times you get a message telling you so, allowing you to go back and try again. This sort of thing has been been tried before, but the integration works very well in practice here; it's woven so deeply into the game that it becomes part of the core experience. If you're not playing online, you're missing a lot of the fun.

The game will even suggest friends to add based on who your existing friends are competing against, and it will serve up a list of events where you can compete with your friends' times.

Hot Pursuit has unlocked a strong sense of competition from people already, as I'm getting instant messages bragging about high scores. People send me taunting messages about my lower times, and I can in turn write on their "wall" in the game when I best them. It's always on, and feels social even when you play the single-player game. This doesn't even take into account the online modes where you directly compete against others.

There is the standard race, a mode that pits one racer against one cop, and Hot Pursuit, an all-out war between the racers and the cops. The racers have to zoom through roadblocks, the cops have to avoid spike strips, and it's a blast. The whole thing feels slick and well-thought-out, a series of obvious ideas put together in a way that's superior to the social approach of most racing games.

This is a racing game that may sound like a mish-mash of past ideas, but they're all combined in a highly polished and enjoyable package. The social aspect of the gameplay is yet another selling point. This may not be a huge leap forward in the racing genre, but it does everything right, and it's hard to fault anyone for not reinventing the wheel.

Verdict: Buy Pirate/Download. :D

View: Original Article

[DKT27]

Edited the verdict. Buy Pirate/Download it. :D

Am downloading it right now. 52.3%. :frusty:

[tipo]

i would like to play it...but my PC config can`t handle it....:|

[DKT27]

It surely can. Believe me, I've played NFS games (in past) on a 5 year old PC. Just reduce the graphics and you are good to go. Make sure you have nuff RAM though (1-2GB).

[tipo]

i have 1gb of ram. but the graphics card..... :frusty: (nvidia geforce 4)...Stop laughing!

:pos:

[DKT27]

So what, I've played NFS games like Underground 2, Carbon, MW, ProStreet on ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (very similar to geforce 4 I heard) on P4 2.66 CPU and 1GB RAM.

I don't know how the latest games will work though. :unsure:

But I'm sure, ignore the system requirements, the game would be slow but it's not impossible. You wont have problems running it.

[shajt]

Game is allrigh' , been playing today for some time and it's nicely done :)

2bad about online features not working/cracked , but hey, free version is free version :D

[BBs]

So what, I've played NFS games like Underground 2, Carbon, MW, ProStreet on ATI Mobility Radeon 9000 (very similar to geforce 4 I heard) on P4 2.66 CPU and 1GB RAM.

I don't know how the latest games will work though. :unsure:

But I'm sure, ignore the system requirements, the game would be slow but it's not impossible. You wont have problems running it.

Stop kidding, the game won't even start with a geforce 4 :mellow:

I tested the old NFS shift with a geforce 5 and the game took over 30 minutes to start and it was unpossible to play even on lowest settings!

[DKT27]

Damn I wanna play the game. Bloody slow internet.

BTW, you played as cops or racers? I'm planning to play first as a racer and then play it again as a cop. :D

@BBs: Then the modern games don't work. :(

I told you, I enjoyed the U2, CB, MW, PS on my old computer.

[tipo]

hmmm...don`t know..we`ll see..only the future will tell what happen with that game and me..

:P

thanks for the encouragement!

[shajt]

@dkt27 , you play as racer (maybe later as a cop, don't know it yet) , started career and after 20ish races I'm wanted bad from cops :lol:

btw game is very smooth , loading time is very quick , no glitches , graphics awesome, sound and music very good as usual, in one word ... great ^_^

[DKT27]

Nice to hear that. :)

Is it easy? Well I completed Shift without any cheating (except money of course :P ) because it was quite easy. But I'll kill them if it's hard. :angry:

[shajt]

Well, first races are easy but it's getting harder and harder as you progress , but yeah , you could say it's easy.

Cops are getting stronger and stronger , they can be pain in d as$ , but normal races are cool.

[tysroby]

Hot Pursuit is fresh out of the box, and EA has already a trailer ready for their new game from the NFS series: SHIFT2 Unleashed

[oZ.]

NFS series: SHIT2 Unleashed

Shift 2 =p

[tysroby]

NFS series: SHIT2 Unleashed

Shift 2 =p

:)) sorry, correcting it now

[mara-]

My gtx460 handles this game pretty nice. All details are at maximum, although I experience rare slow-downs, but probably my CPU is to blame for that. nVidia are probably going to optimize graphic drivers for this game so it should be even better.

Cheers ;)

[Ehsan]

I'm going to play NFS for the first time :sneaky:

[RadioActive]

Edited the verdict. Buy Pirate/Download it. :D

Am downloading it right now. 52.3%. :frusty:

LMAO!

PS: GeForce 4 doesn't support DirectX 9, so it's likely it won't run anything :s