Need For Speed Hot Pursuit

My slightly lengthier review.

Before commenting on Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010), I must let you know how much I love Burnout Paradise. In my humble opinion, Burnout Paradise remains to be the best arcade racer of all time. So when it was announced in around 2009 that Criterion games were on the verge of taking charge of the next Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit game, I was extremely excited and anticipation was further heightened with all the rave reviews Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit received from respectable gaming sites dubbing it as a worthy successor to Burnout Paradise, which to me was some pretty darn high praise considering how much I loved that game.

That game had everything; a sense of speed, a variety of single player gaming modes, lots and lots of wrecked vehicles, a good soundtrack, an open world environment that was fun to explore, quality downloadable content (DLC) and an online gameplay that has yet to be matched by any racing game even up to now. Burnout Paradise was one of the first few games that I played on the PlayStation 3 and my skepticism towards the effectiveness and the necessity of online game play was literally wiped out with Burnout Paradise. Be it a co-operative or competitive online, that game was fun, immersive and the setting that gamers raced in, Paradise City, it felt alive and I always came back to it for more of Paradise City. That has to be only one of two games on the PlayStation 3 in which I have played for over 100 hours (the other being Uncharted 2).

Well anyway, I bought Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on release day and played it religiously over two days, clocking up 20 hours of gaming in 48 hours. With that much time spent on the game in two games, it had to be as good a game as Burnout Paradise right?Well, not really. The reason why I played so much in those two days was that I was not quite sure if I wanted to redeem my online code (which would significantly reduce the resale value of the game) so I used a tw0-day free trial to give the game a test run and I soon quickly realized that this was no Burnout Paradise at all. Among the three online modes (Race, Interceptor and Hot Pursuit), I do not really find much of the modes to be much fun at all. I find the one on one duels in Interceptor to be much favoring vigilantes (tip: turn opposite direction -> turbo -> jam police radar for quick win) and races are pretty much straight forward like every other racing game, leaves us with Hot Pursuit, which while the most fun of the three provides little variability in online gameplay unlike in Burnout Paradise.

One of the problems I have with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is that all cars have a health bars and the more forceful the collision, the more damage will be done to other cars until once the health bar depletes to ZERO, the car crashes which seems alright at first until you recall that in Burnout Paradise, you could ram into your opponents cars sideways for a takedown or drive them into the road for a variety of signature takedowns making the crashes appear much more sickening (in a good way!). The crashes here in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remind me much like the crashes in Split/Second, they look great at first in a variety of different sceneries and situations but at the end, they outstay their welcome and this ‘problem’ I have with the game occurs in both single-player and multi-player. Gamers will be pleased to hear that online play is very smooth and throughout the time I spent online, I did not suffer any lag or disconnects from the EA Server while trophy hunters will be happy to know that all of the online trophies can be obtained using the two day free trial with ease, providing little need to purchase the online codes if you are picking the game up on a rental.

In single player, there is an equally limited number of game modes that one can play with Hot Pursuit, Interceptor and a variety of time trials. In Hot Pursuit, gamers will have to takedown (or bust) a certain number of cars to gain gold medals while in Interceptor, it is a one-on-one duel with the AI cars, each AI car more challenging and faster than the last while time trials (or whatever they are called; Preview, Rapid Response or whatever they are called) requires gamers to beat the time limit with the stipulation that if the car takes damage, time penalties are added to your lap.

Critics have said that Criterion has taken the best out of Burnout Paradise and applied it to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I respectfully disagree. While Burnout Paradise excelled in making races feel fast and car crashes look awesome, its main strength was creating an open world environment that felt alive and worth exploring with shortcuts that actually helped gamers reduce lap times, billboards, gates, cliffs and fields for gamers to improve their air-time, drifts and fastest laps which would be recorded and compared among friends that would enhance online competition among friends. That was the beauty of Paradise City. Seacrest County has none of that that makes any of the open world worth exploring. Whether shortcuts help reduce lap times is debatable and nothing in Seacrest County is worth exploring at all which makes the FreeRoam feature pointless.

However, if there is one thing that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit does excel in, it is the revolutionary online social-networking feature called Autolog. Simply put, it is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s own Facebook for gamers. With Autolog, players will be able to take snapshots and then upload them on walls, post comments on walls, have your game progress recorded and tracked on walls, inform you if your friends have beaten your lap times in single-player races and last but not least, provide you with ‘Friends Recommendations’ where you can add friends-of-friends just like in Facebook. Simply put, Autolog has taken gaming competitiveness among online friends to a whole new level and credit to Criterion for providing gamers with this feature. Now, I feel that it is imperative that all games come up with such a feature!

If the overall tone of this review makes it feel that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a bad racer, it is not. I just do not think it is deserving of all the high scores it has received online from certain publications (provided in table below). The reason I took some time to write this review is that I hope that this review will provide a counter-argument to all the slightly undeserved high-praise it has received.

There is definitely fun to be had with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit but after a while, it gets a little tedious and it is not the best thing sliced bread as reviews have hinted with their reviews. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit gets a 7.5/10.
Click to expand...
 
It sounds like your main criticism of the game is that it is not Burnout: Paradise. No mention of the graphics, sound, wide variety of cars that are available, etc.

Rather unfair, IMO.
 
Lowest controller lag seen in a game so far.

we also benchmark controller response, pitting the new Need for Speed up against the 66ms input latency of Paradise. In all of our tests thus far, we've yet to find a 30Hz game able to beat the 100ms threshold, while the only 50ms response we've seen has come from the PS3 XMB.

The result? For the Xbox 360 version, we have a confirmed 83ms, meaning that despite halving the frame-rate, controller response is diminished by just one frame when compared to Burnout Paradise. Better still, for PC owners running the game at 60FPS, latency is cut down to just 50ms, making it the fastest pad response we've measured in any of the games we've looked at.
Click to expand...

Hot Pursuit cuts pad lag to new lows - Page 1 | DigitalFoundry | Eurogamer.net
 
Lance Uppercut said:
It sounds like your main criticism of the game is that it is not Burnout: Paradise. No mention of the graphics, sound, wide variety of cars that are available, etc.

Rather unfair, IMO.
Click to expand...

No, that's not my main criticism at all. My main criticism is that Criterion, with all their nous on what made Burnout Paradise's gameplay so good took little of that and transfered it to NFS. All the talk about large maps and all mean shit if there is nothing worth exploring in Seacrest County.

Also, if you want to read on how awesome it looks or sound, head on down to IGN. I am not a walking infomercial.
 
Clearly.

Before commenting on Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010), I must let you know how much I love Burnout Paradise. In my humble opinion, Burnout Paradise remains to be the best arcade racer of all time. So when it was announced in around 2009 that Criterion games were on the verge of taking charge of the next Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit game, I was extremely excited and anticipation was further heightened with all the rave reviews Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit received from respectable gaming sites dubbing it as a worthy successor to Burnout Paradise, which to me was some pretty darn high praise considering how much I loved that game.

That game had everything; a sense of speed, a variety of single player gaming modes, lots and lots of wrecked vehicles, a good soundtrack, an open world environment that was fun to explore, quality downloadable content (DLC) and an online gameplay that has yet to be matched by any racing game even up to now. Burnout Paradise was one of the first few games that I played on the PlayStation 3 and my skepticism towards the effectiveness and the necessity of online game play was literally wiped out with Burnout Paradise. Be it a co-operative or competitive online, that game was fun, immersive and the setting that gamers raced in, Paradise City it felt alive and I always came back to it for more of Paradise City. That has to be only one of two games on the PlayStation 3 in which I have played for over 100 hours (the other being Uncharted 2).

Well anyway, I bought Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on release day and played it religiously over two days, clocking up 20 hours of gaming in 48 hours. With that much time spent on the game in two games, it had to be as good a game as Burnout Paradise right?Well, not really. The reason why I played so much in those two days was that I was not quite sure if I wanted to redeem my online code (which would significantly reduce the resale value of the game) so I used a tw0-day free trial to give the game a test run and I soon quickly realized that this was no Burnout Paradise at all. Among the three online modes (Race, Interceptor and Hot Pursuit), I do not really find much of the modes to be much fun at all. I find the one on one duels in Interceptor to be much favoring vigilantes (tip: turn opposite direction -> turbo -> jam police radar for quick win) and races are pretty much straight forward like every other racing game, leaves us with Hot Pursuit, which while the most fun of the three provides little variability in online gameplay unlike in Burnout Paradise.

One of the problems I have with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is that all cars have a health bars and the more forceful the collision, the more damage will be done to other cars until once the health bar depletes to ZERO, the car crashes which seems alright at first until you recall that in Burnout Paradise, you could ram into your opponents cars sideways for a takedown or drive them into the road for a variety of signature takedowns making the crashes appear much more sickening (in a good way!). The crashes here in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remind me much like the crashes in Split/Second, they look great at first in a variety of different sceneries and situations but at the end, they outstay their welcome and this ‘problem’ I have with the game occurs in both single-player and multi-player. Gamers will be pleased to hear that online play is very smooth and throughout the time I spent online, I did not suffer any lag or disconnects from the EA Server while trophy hunters will be happy to know that all of the online trophies can be obtained using the two day free trial with ease, providing little need to purchase the online codes if you are picking the game up on a rental.

In single player, there is an equally limited number of game modes that one can play with Hot Pursuit, Interceptor and a variety of time trials. In Hot Pursuit, gamers will have to takedown (or bust) a certain number of cars to gain gold medals while in Interceptor, it is a one-on-one duel with the AI cars, each AI car more challenging and faster than the last while time trials (or whatever they are called; Preview, Rapid Response or whatever they are called) requires gamers to beat the time limit with the stipulation that if the car takes damage, time penalties are added to your lap.

Critics have said that Criterion has taken the best out of Burnout Paradise and applied it to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I respectfully disagree. While Burnout Paradise excelled in making races feel fast and car crashes look awesome, its main strength was creating an open world environment that felt alive and worth exploring with shortcuts that actually helped gamers reduce lap times, billboards, gates, cliffs and fields for gamers to improve their air-time, drifts and fastest laps which would be recorded and compared among friends that would enhance online competition among friends. That was the beauty of Paradise City. Seacrest County has none of that that makes any of the open world worth exploring. Whether shortcuts help reduce lap times is debatable and nothing in Seacrest County is worth exploring at all which makes the FreeRoam feature pointless.

However, if there is one thing that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit does excel in, it is the revolutionary online social-networking feature called Autolog. Simply put, it is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s own Facebook for gamers. With Autolog, players will be able to take snapshots and then upload them on walls, post comments on walls, have your game progress recorded and tracked on walls, inform you if your friends have beaten your lap times in single-player races and last but not least, provide you with ‘Friends Recommendations’ where you can add friends-of-friends just like in Facebook. Simply put, Autolog has taken gaming competitiveness among online friends to a whole new level and credit to Criterion for providing gamers with this feature. Now, I feel that it is imperative that all games come up with such a feature!

If the overall tone of this review makes it feel that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a bad racer, it is not. I just do not think it is deserving of all the high scores it has received online from certain publications (provided in table below). The reason I took some time to write this review is that I hope that this review will provide a counter-argument to all the slightly undeserved high-praise it has received.

There is definitely fun to be had with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit but after a while, it gets a little tedious and it is not the best thing sliced bread as reviews have hinted with their reviews. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit gets a 7.5/10.
Click to expand...

And, again, zero mention of graphics, sound, car variety, etc.
 
Lance said:
It sounds like your main criticism of the game is that it is not Burnout: Paradise. No mention of the graphics, sound, wide variety of cars that are available, etc.

Rather unfair, IMO.
Click to expand...

Hitchcocker said:
No, that's not my main criticism at all.
Click to expand...


Hitchcocker said:
Before commenting on Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010), I must let you know how much I love Burnout Paradise. In my humble opinion, Burnout Paradise remains to be the best arcade racer of all time. So when it was announced in around 2009 that Criterion games were on the verge of taking charge of the next Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit game, I was extremely excited and anticipation was further heightened with all the rave reviews Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit received from respectable gaming sites dubbing it as a worthy successor to Burnout Paradise, which to me was some pretty darn high praise considering how much I loved that game.

That game had everything; a sense of speed, a variety of single player gaming modes, lots and lots of wrecked vehicles, a good soundtrack, an open world environment that was fun to explore, quality downloadable content (DLC) and an online gameplay that has yet to be matched by any racing game even up to now. Burnout Paradise was one of the first few games that I played on the PlayStation 3 and my skepticism towards the effectiveness and the necessity of online game play was literally wiped out with Burnout Paradise. Be it a co-operative or competitive online, that game was fun, immersive and the setting that gamers raced in, Paradise City, it felt alive and I always came back to it for more of Paradise City. That has to be only one of two games on the PlayStation 3 in which I have played for over 100 hours (the other being Uncharted 2).

Well anyway, I bought Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit on release day and played it religiously over two days, clocking up 20 hours of gaming in 48 hours. With that much time spent on the game in two games, it had to be as good a game as Burnout Paradise right?Well, not really. The reason why I played so much in those two days was that I was not quite sure if I wanted to redeem my online code (which would significantly reduce the resale value of the game) so I used a tw0-day free trial to give the game a test run and I soon quickly realized that this was no Burnout Paradise at all. Among the three online modes (Race, Interceptor and Hot Pursuit), I do not really find much of the modes to be much fun at all. I find the one on one duels in Interceptor to be much favoring vigilantes (tip: turn opposite direction -> turbo -> jam police radar for quick win) and races are pretty much straight forward like every other racing game, leaves us with Hot Pursuit, which while the most fun of the three provides little variability in online gameplay unlike in Burnout Paradise.

One of the problems I have with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is that all cars have a health bars and the more forceful the collision, the more damage will be done to other cars until once the health bar depletes to ZERO, the car crashes which seems alright at first until you recall that in Burnout Paradise, you could ram into your opponents cars sideways for a takedown or drive them into the road for a variety of signature takedowns making the crashes appear much more sickening (in a good way!). The crashes here in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit remind me much like the crashes in Split/Second, they look great at first in a variety of different sceneries and situations but at the end, they outstay their welcome and this ‘problem’ I have with the game occurs in both single-player and multi-player. Gamers will be pleased to hear that online play is very smooth and throughout the time I spent online, I did not suffer any lag or disconnects from the EA Server while trophy hunters will be happy to know that all of the online trophies can be obtained using the two day free trial with ease, providing little need to purchase the online codes if you are picking the game up on a rental.

In single player, there is an equally limited number of game modes that one can play with Hot Pursuit, Interceptor and a variety of time trials. In Hot Pursuit, gamers will have to takedown (or bust) a certain number of cars to gain gold medals while in Interceptor, it is a one-on-one duel with the AI cars, each AI car more challenging and faster than the last while time trials (or whatever they are called; Preview, Rapid Response or whatever they are called) requires gamers to beat the time limit with the stipulation that if the car takes damage, time penalties are added to your lap.

Critics have said that Criterion has taken the best out of Burnout Paradise and applied it to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. I respectfully disagree. While Burnout Paradise excelled in making races feel fast and car crashes look awesome, its main strength was creating an open world environment that felt alive and worth exploring with shortcuts that actually helped gamers reduce lap times, billboards, gates, cliffs and fields for gamers to improve their air-time, drifts and fastest laps which would be recorded and compared among friends that would enhance online competition among friends. That was the beauty of Paradise City. Seacrest County has none of that that makes any of the open world worth exploring. Whether shortcuts help reduce lap times is debatable and nothing in Seacrest County is worth exploring at all which makes the FreeRoam feature pointless.

However, if there is one thing that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit does excel in, it is the revolutionary online social-networking feature called Autolog. Simply put, it is Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s own Facebook for gamers. With Autolog, players will be able to take snapshots and then upload them on walls, post comments on walls, have your game progress recorded and tracked on walls, inform you if your friends have beaten your lap times in single-player races and last but not least, provide you with ‘Friends Recommendations’ where you can add friends-of-friends just like in Facebook. Simply put, Autolog has taken gaming competitiveness among online friends to a whole new level and credit to Criterion for providing gamers with this feature. Now, I feel that it is imperative that all games come up with such a feature!

If the overall tone of this review makes it feel that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a bad racer, it is not. I just do not think it is deserving of all the high scores it has received online from certain publications (provided in table below). The reason I took some time to write this review is that I hope that this review will provide a counter-argument to all the slightly undeserved high-praise it has received.

There is definitely fun to be had with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit but after a while, it gets a little tedious and it is not the best thing sliced bread as reviews have hinted with their reviews. Need for Speed Hot Pursuit gets a 7.5/10.
Click to expand...

To be fair, you seem to be comparing it to Burnout as if it is a sequel. It is a need for speed game and should surely be compared to the need for speed prequels in my opinion.
 
Edited my post earlier. I also mentioned that the recent why I posted was because I wanted to provide a counter-argument to some of the points I feel weren't raised by other reviewers. I do concede that NFS looks and sound great although unmentioned in my post.
 
Hitchcocker said:
No, that's not my main criticism at all. My main criticism is that Criterion, with all their nous on what made Burnout Paradise's gameplay so good took little of that and transfered it to NFS. All the talk about large maps and all mean shit if there is nothing worth exploring in Seacrest County.
Click to expand...

Again, you are talking about exploring, etc. It is not supposed to be like that. If that is what you want, play Burnout: Paradise.

Also, if you want to read on how awesome it looks or sound, head on down to IGN. I am not a walking infomercial.
Click to expand...

Nor are you a competent reviewer.
 
bill.s.preston said:
To be fair, you seem to be comparing it to Burnout as if it is a sequel. It is a need for speed game and should surely be compared to the need for speed prequels in my opinion.
Click to expand...

Well, when the cover of the game reads "FROM THE CREATORS OF THE AWARD WINNING BURNOUT PARADISE" I do expect Criterion to transfer the gameplay aspects of Burnout onto this Need for Speed. Otherwise, why were they in charge of the game?

The reason why I mention Burnout so often is because I feel so much more could be done with this game and how little the game offers in terms of the variety of gaming modes available.

I have said it before and I will say it again, why on Earth is there a free roam mode when there is nothing worth exploring in Seacrest County?
 
By the way, I intend to buy Burnout: Paradise today because of your views on it. I hope I am not disappointed. ;)

Is The Ultimate Box worth it, or will the normal game suffice?
 
Hitchcocker said:
Well, when the cover of the game reads "FROM THE CREATORS OF THE AWARD WINNING BURNOUT PARADISE" I do expect Criterion to transfer the gameplay aspects of Burnout onto this Need for Speed. Otherwise, why were they in charge of the game?

The reason why I mention Burnout so often is because I feel so much more could be done with this game and how little the game offers in terms of the variety of gaming modes available.

I have said it before and I will say it again, why on Earth is there a free roam mode when there is nothing worth exploring in Seacrest County?
Click to expand...

I assume that when they mention previous achievements from developers on game covers, it's to assure gamers that a good development team is behind the game. Promotion campaigns do the same for films when they list the screenwriters and/or directors previous work. I don't expect all of the films to be clones of the previous ones though.

Anyway, despite the criticisms, you gave it a half decent score. I am looking froward to playing it tonight or tomorrow and I will post my opinions when I have defeated Lance's best times.
 
Lance Uppercut said:
By the way, I intend to buy Burnout: Paradise today because of your views on it. I hope I am not disappointed. ;)

Is The Ultimate Box worth it, or will the normal game suffice?
Click to expand...

I do concede I expected a spiritual sequel to Burnout with Need for Speed:Hot Pursuit. I, however, respectfully disagree on your views how a Need for Speed game should or should not be. I am surprised how you managed to turn a blind eye with a feature that has always been a mainstay in Need for Speed games that was absent in this game: car customization. More so when EA/Criterion boasted on the size of the maps and everything, only to make Seacrest County a fecking morgue! A major disappointment in my books that free-roam is so empty when Criterion were so good at it in Burnout.

As for Burnout, I'll go with the normal game. I am not a fan of party play DLCs but the main game and the free DLCs is still the best arcade racing experience I've ever had.
 
Take me down to the Paradise City where the grass is green and the girls are pretty............Oh won't you please take me hoooooooooooome!!!

Paradise City is great Lance. One of the games I wish I hadn't traded. Especially good fun online with a few of you doing the challenges etc...
 
bill.s.preston said:
I assume that when they mention previous achievements from developers on game covers, it's to assure gamers that a good development team is behind the game. Promotion campaigns do the same for films when they list the screenwriters and/or directors previous work. I don't expect all of the films to be clones of the previous ones though.

Anyway, despite the criticisms, you gave it a half decent score. I am looking froward to playing it tonight or tomorrow and I will post my opinions when I have defeated Lance's best times.
Click to expand...

It is a decent game. I just don't see it as a perfect game and I believe I have given numerous examples on what I feel the game lacked and how it could have been made better especially since Criterion were in charge.
 
Hitchcocker said:
It is a decent game. I just don't see it as a perfect game and I believe I have given numerous examples on what I feel the game lacked and how it could have been made better especially since Criterion were in charge.
Click to expand...

You should work for Edge magazine, because you're trying to compare apples and oranges. Why not compare it to Black whilst you are at it?
 
WeasteDevil said:
You should work for Edge magazine, because you're trying to compare apples and oranges. Why not compare it to Black whilst you are at it?
Click to expand...

Even without the comparisons, I still don't see NFS: HP as a 10/10 game or even a 9/10 game. Others do, I don't. Let's just leave it at that.
 
Hitchcocker said:
Even without the comparisons, I still don't see NFS: HP as a 10/10 game or even a 9/10 game. Others do, I don't. Let's just leave it at that.
Click to expand...

I don't see it as a 10/10 game either. I bet it gets a Metacritic score higher than GT5 does. I like the way that you look at games in a way, I hate the scale they use nowadays where 5 is poor and 10 is excellent, they might as well just use a five star system. A good quality game should hit around a 7 in my book, anything higher should be reserved for the best of the very best. You know what modern reviewers as like though - they'll take something and start ripping it to bits over silly little things, yet go and give every COD game a 9 or a 10 for doing nothing more than remoulding the same old shit year on year on year on year.
 
WeasteDevil said:
I don't see it as a 10/10 game either. I bet it gets a Metacritic score higher than GT5 does. I like the way that you look at games in a way, I hate the scale they use nowadays where 5 is poor and 10 is excellent, they might as well just use a five star system. A good quality game should hit around a 7 in my book, anything higher should be reserved for the best of the very best. You know what modern reviewers as like though - they'll take something and start ripping it to bits over silly little things, yet go and give every COD game a 9 or a 10 for doing nothing more than remoulding the same old shit year on year on year on year.
Click to expand...

It's a bit like ratings in football to be fair where 6 is average and in the middle, anything above is decent, above 8 it's very good, and beneath 6 it's rather poor.
 
How much DLC is available for Burnout: Paradise? I realise that it is an older release.
 
WeasteDevil said:
So why have a 10 point scale in the first place?
Click to expand...

Well, it probably looks cooler than a five-star system that it really is, I don't have a problem with it because it's been that way for a while and if they somehow switched to making it more of a proper 1 to 10 scale, it'd get silly with games like GT5 having lower scores than NFS:Shift.
 
So, Bill, have you bested me yet? I haven't had a chance to check.
 
Hitchcocker, there is a mistake in your review.

I'll see if you can find it yourself :)
 
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