Previous review: The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time 3D
http://forum.blackintel.org/index.php/topic,1401.0.htmlWell, that was quite the wait for my next review! Not that you guys really care
Anyway, on to the topic at hand!
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit came out in 2010, and was developed by Criterion, known for their Burnout series (which I've never played). It was released on basically every mainstream platform at the time.
The game takes place in a fictional area in the United States called Seacrest County, something that many of the previous NFS games have done. Sadly, Seacrest County does not hold up to it's predecessors. While beautiful, it does lack unique features/landmarks and variety that previous entries had. And that's actually the best part about the Seacrest. All you have are really long roads and... really long roads. What happened to those crazy jumps we used to have, the maze of streets that were all connected, the golf courses from NFS: Most Wanted? The world doesn't even contain a city area, imagine driving in the countryside all the time... Seacrest County lacks the freedom we used to have in most NFS titles, and feels very linear.
The gameplay is fairly tight, and driving various cars at high speeds is a blast. You can play as a street racer or a cop, climbing up the ranks as you complete events, letting you unlock new cars and perks. In the career mode, you can select various events that include time trials, classic racing, and cop chases (either as a racer or a cop). However, there are few additions to the formula and steps back that I do not like.
1. Almost no car customization. You choose a car, and you choose the coat of paint (which is also very limited). You can't tune the cars performance to your liking.
2. Health bars. are another departure from the series (barring a few exceptions), something that almost ruins the game for me. While I don't mind having a car that can be wrecked, health in the game is handled very poorly. If you hit a racer or cop, a sizable health bar pops up over the vehicle for the remainder of the event, or until they get destroyed. Why aren't visual representations of damage enough, like in the other games? It's not enjoyable to see clutter like that on the road. This also ties into the issue of takedowns.
3. Takedowns. When you hit another vehicle, you deplete their health, and once you deplete said health, the camera follows the vehicle in slow motion as it crashes and takes away the focus from your own vehicle, which the game takes over for a few seconds. While sometimes fun, takedowns happen often, and it feels more like watching a movie than playing a game.
4. Crashing. Crashing in Hot Pursuit is horrible. You can crash several times during an event (complete with the overused slow motion), which sets you back a handful of seconds and takes off a bit of your health. When your health reaches zero you restart the event. The problem is, the other vehicles never seem to suffer as you do, unless you take them down yourself. If I slam into the side of a wall, I get set back several seconds, but if another vehicle does the exact same thing as I did, they keep going with almost no loss of speed. This is especially bad since almost anything you barely even touch will make you crash (besides hitting a vehicle, unless they hit you), while you watch the other racers and cops take beating after beating without flinching, unless you inflicted it yourself.
5. Watered down cop chases. I was hoping the police chasing me would be brutal and make me sweat, as did other NFS games, but they were lackluster in Hot Pursuit. While they do chase you in a race, once you cross the finish line, it's over. I remember in the previous entries when I had to make it to safety after an event, or my win wouldn't count. You can't be caught, only taken down, depleting your health. There's no fear of losing your car either, since you can choose any car for free for an event. The chases themselves are boring, as the cops are not aggressive, and too few. In Freeroam, (driving in Seacrest County while not doing an event), the cops won't even show up. Overall, every aspect of the cop chases were disappointing.
While NFS never focused on story very much, Hot Pursuit has none. You just do the events in career mode, which get progressively more challenging, but lack in variety, and it's only the same few at the end that hold your attention. Some story would have added some pacing at the very least.
The music doesn't play often, and the selections aren't that good overall.
While I enjoyed the first few hours of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, it fails to match it's predecessors and feels more like an arcade game and it get's boring rather quickly.
Score: 58%
I know I skipped out on some features and whatnot, but I really don't want to describe the entire game. My structure also needs a lot of work, but I'll get better at it as time goes on.
