Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (2010) Xbox360

The Game Room
1

Just downloaded the demo last night, and let me just say this is a FUN arcade racer, it’s no Forza sim-style racer, in fact, it’s much closer to the Burnout series (it should be, as it’s a Criterion game), it’s basically Burnout with licensed cars, and you can play as either Cop or Racer

The really cool thing about NFSHP ‘10 is that the Cops finally have access to high-end supercars, if you’re racing along in your KonegseggegegegegegegeegÜbercar (little Top Gear joke there :wink: )thinking you’re gonna’ get away from the cops, just wait until you see a Bugatti Veyron in Police livery give chase, definite “pucker factor” there

The gameplay is simple, a town out on the West Coast has some prime racing roads and the cops are getting tired of all the scofflaws, so they put together a high-speed-enforcement detail, with some hot supercars with blue/red flashers and sirens, and bring the racing challenge to the racers (read that as they ram the racers cars until they crash/stop running)

Unlike most racing games, there is realistic damage modeling here, beyond the cosmetic paint scrapes, body panels get dented, bumpers hang loose, cars can simply crumple with a hard enough hit

the two races in the demo are one for the “racer” (a multiplayer-only event, you need to have Freinds that have played the demo to access this), or the “Cop” event, in the Cop event, you’re charged with shutting down an impromptu street race between a bunch of poseurboy racers

Your choice of LawGiver vehicle is the classic Ford Police Interceptor, a big, heavy duty BEAST of a car, capable of dealing out crushing blows, but with a little “floaty”, imprecise handling at speed, or a Nissan 370Z, a fast, agile race-ready filly, able to hang with many supercars, but lacking sheer mass…

there are two different strategies here in the Cop game, if you’re driving the Police Interceptor, it’s best to use the vehicle’s mass to ram your opponents, to crush them like tin cans, and push them off the road…

There’s nothing quite so satisfying as lining up behind some little Poseurboy in a cosmetically abused Honda Civic, Mitsu Evo or some other small car, punching your nitrous, SLAMMING into the back of their car and watching the back of the car just crumple, and the damage bar drop into the orange or red, typically you can take out Poseurboy’s little toy car in one to two well placed hits

with the Z, you have to finesse it a bit more, get in front of Poseurboy and drop a spike strip, or grind them into the guardrails, ramming is far less effective with the Z, but the handling is light years better

you can also call in roadblocks, and even EMP pulses in later levels (not in the demo)

I’m not really an arcade-style racer fan, but I LOVE the Burnout series, and this game doesn’t stray too far from the Burnout formula, being able to be the law and take down scofflaws with the lights flashing and sirens wailing adds a great deal of fun to the game

okay, time to go bust some more poseurs, time to break out the Police Interceptor and CRUSH 'EM!

2

Speaking as a long time fan of the series, you just can’t go wrong with the NFS franchise. Even the shitty entries are still more fun than any other driving games.

Does this one have drift courses? I got hooked on those with NFS Carbon.

3

I don’t like the NFS games except for the police chase ones. Most Wanted is underrated and had some really fun police chases, so I’m cautiously optimistic about this game. I’m kinda dissapointed it’s done by Criterion - that’s a little too cartoony for my taste generally. I don’t want a sim racer, but I don’t want something over the top goofy in this case.

Most Wanted lack a multiplayer component and this game fixes that. If the chases are as fun as most wanted, and you can do them in multiplayer, I’m in. Hopefully this is $20 or less by Christmas on a steam sale because I have a hard time buying a game for $40 or $50 anymore when I usually get 5-10 of them for that price.

4

I’ll check out the demo as soon as I upgrade my PS3 hard drive. I loved the original Hot Pursuit.

5

The review seem to be positiveso far. I linked the PS3 reviews because it had the most listed. All platforms are in the 87-90 range currently.

I’m hoping there might be a discount during the black friday sale on steam, but given it’s two weeks after release it seems unlikely, especially for an EA game. Maybe a 33-50% off Christmas sale. Gotta see if I can get the dirt 2 crew to grab the game with me so we can have full SDMB games.

6

From reading the reviews, it sounds like there won’t be a regular open world police chase mode like in most wanted, where you’d get cops on your tail and setting up road blocks and you could go anywhere to invade them. Rather, it sounds like there are a lot of races where cops try to smash you to death before you finish it.

That’s dissapointing - the open world pursuit mode in Most Wanted is some of the most fun you can have racing.

It also seems like it’s too on the arcadeish side for my taste. But all the reviews seem to agree that it’s a lot of fun, so I guess I’ll check out some footage.

7

Anyone get it yet? Is there any open world pursuit mode like I mentioned above? The videos only show what seems to be pursuit mode on a fixed route… I haven’t seen any point where the drivers had their choice of where to go.

And for that matter… is there much driving skill involved in this game? I realize it’s arcadey and I’m ok with that, but it seems like 90% of the footage features long, flat, straight highways and even when there is a turn, you can just punch the accelerator 100%, slam it fully in the direction of the turn, and you’ll never lose control of the car. Is there actual skilled driving involved or do you just hold down the accelerator to the max the whole time and flick the thumbsticks to the max in either direction?

That said, it still looks pretty fun, just not great like it could be.

EA is having some sort of spat with Steam which means EA games get delayed releases on there or sometimes not at all, which is just annoying. I prefer to collect all my games on steam - but more importantly, steam is the most likely service to sell this game at $30 or under within a month or two. I haven’t paid $50 for a game in a good while…

8

I picked it up for PS3 when it came out last week. So far, I’m having a blast.

As a longtime fan of both NFS and the Burnout series, this is a good hybrid of both. It’s less simmish than classic Need for Speeds, but it’s not quite as arcadey as Burnout. You can finish a race by pinballing down the track, or making impossibly long drifts, but a skilled driver who takes the line will come out on top every time. The cars seem much more substantial than they did in Burnout.

The tracks are much more like the original Hot Pursuit and Hot Pursuit II, being point-to-point runs instead of an open environment. The tracks are all extremely varied and fun to drive, ranging from open highway to very treacherous, winding mountain roads with lots of elevation changes. The weather effects are really nice to look at but don’t seem to affect handling all that much that I’ve noticed. The graphics as a whole are gorgeous, and the game has a really good sense of speed.

As for the pursuits themselves, it’s a lot more fanciful than HP1 or 2, though thank goodness they got rid of those ridiculous chopper-dropped barrels and replaced them with spike strips. The cops and racers both have spikes as well, and also have a sci-fi EMP burst that can temporarily disable a target in front. Cops can call in roadblocks and the aforementioned chopper, while the racers have a jammer and a one time super turbo to help them get out of trouble.

So realism obviously wasn’t what they were going for, but in an online race split 4v4, it’s a damn exciting game to play. Even though this is a pure arcade racer, it does reward skillful driving, and working with a cooperative group is a blast, though the racers seem a little more likely to take out their fellow runners in order to take first, as opposed to the cops who benefit more from team work.

It’s a very smart move for a “team” win to count more than individual achievement though. You might get 2000 “bounty” for taking first or getting the most busts, but everyone on the team gets 5000 bounty if their side wins. This encourages team play and helps prevent rage quitting since even if you are doing badly since even if you aren’t going to make it to the end you can harass the opposition long enough for your allies to score a victory, for which you are then rewarded.

The single player “campaigns” are fun and varied, but are really just there to get you online. I’m actually one that prefers the single player games but Hot Pursuit, like Left 4 Dead, was designed so well for multiplayer my friends and I can’t seem to get enough of it.

Two big thumbs up from me!

9

Victory!

10

Oh its coming to Steam. I thought you meant they were adding split screen.