Let's be clear on one thing: Need for speed have been running for so long, and lots of players played every single game of the long running franchise, it had its glory times and it had its bumpy times, but no one can deny that NFS series printed something special in every racer's heart.
The pursuit thing really started with the need for speed III Hot pursuit and that was a really successful game. After that the franchise saw lots of changes especially in 2002 when Black Box took over to develop the franchise that transforms from track racing to open world racing and then with simulation in NFS Shift.
When Criterion announced that it is working on a new need for speed game called back then "Need for speed: Criterion Project" lots of the franchise fans went crazy! Why?
well the most important reason is that Criterion Games did not know how to fail! With the Burnout series being so successful.
Need for speed Hot Pursuit is the new gem from Criterion games, if you are familiar with the burnout series especially Burnout Paradise, you will feel like home when playing the game.
The first thing expected from the game is to go back to the NFS roots (you can tell from the name: Hot Pursuit), but did it succeed in that?
What we can say is that the game succeeded in a way (big way) to take the game to its original roots by adding some fresh and innovative features that will make the game more successful and fun
Criterion and EA introduced the new Autolog, we can easily describe autolog as being the "Facebook" of games
where you can join games easily, communicate with your friends, submit pictures and choose challenges.
The gameplay feels good, and all the cars feels responsive, the game accepts large numbers of wheels and gamepads to make the game even for fun, but if you are expecting a game that handles like Forza or like Grand Turismo, you are looking in the wrong direction. The game is intended to be an arcade racer, so it means that when you hit a break at 200 mph (306 Km) entering a corner, the game just drifts, enter a corner and exits smoothly.
the gameplay reminds us a bit of Burnout paradise, especially with the Nitrous meter, where you have to fill it by driving recklessly, like driving ongoing traffic, doing a near miss, etc...
The career is long, and you have two careers to complete, one as a racer, and the other as a cop. The races are varied, fun and challenging in the two careers, and let's be honest and clear, Hot Pursuit is one of the most challenging games in the need for speed franchise, where you really have to make a great effort to win a race, but sometimes winning in some events will feel a bit frustrating, but that what will make you glued to your seat and maybe sometimes will make you use the "F" word a lot!
a free run where you can choose races and interact with racers could have been a great addition to the game, but instead you can only use free roam to just relax and explore the vast area, that could be a bit handy to get familiarized to the shortcuts and even to the racing tracks
The graphics looks awesome, and the great blur effect adds a great atmosphere to the game, the area looks great with all the greens around you, a beach, even snow when you go to the mountains area, the night and day cycle reminds us again of the burnout series, but unfortunately the game suffers of some fps issues on the PC version, but that won't let any racing fan not to fully enjoy the game. you can't forget the traffic cars, and this time the traffic cars are licensed, so don't be surprised if you did hit a car and it turned out to be a Ford mini van or maybe an Audi A4.
The cars engine sounds convincing and feels real, the cars introduction at the main menu is a great way to introduce the great variety of cars available in the game.
another addition that was missing is the customization, this could have been an amazing addition to the game, and could have been make it the perfect racing game.
Finally, if you are into arcade and fun racing game, Need for speed: Hot Pursuit is the game for you, where you don't have to worry about the car's handling, the car's tuning, you just need to be fast to avoid cups, to catch racers, or even to simply win races, but if you are into Forza or GT, just wait for Shift 2
After nearly three decades of NFS games, here's a list of the best Need For Speed titles that have ever been released in the past years, ranked by The Nerd Stash.
Paul writes - "EA know a good thing when they see it, and for multiple years November was Need for Speed month. In a break from the usual routine, I'm going to be looking back at two games here, released in 2005 and 2010 respectively. The earlier game is Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which has the distinction of being one of the very best in the franchise. The second game comes from 2010, and is Need for Speed Hot Pursuit; which I'll talk about just as the Remastered version of the game has hit the stores."
I completely adore this game! In fact its probably my favorite racing game. I recently dusted off my xbox 360 to play Most Wanted 2005. Still a great game, though I do not remember there being such horrible performance. Like massive frame-pacing issues. screen tearing, latency. If any game ever truly needed to be remastered, it this one for sure!
A pulled retailer page previously listed a November release date.
No NFS released since Hot Pursuit (2010) has came close. The Ghost Games NFS games were just dreadful (to me they were anyway, 2015 was okay I suppose). Would love to replay this and I hope it has an update for next-gen as well.
I loved Most Wanted as well (on PS3, I think it released in 2012). After that, it has gone downhill, but the latest games are slowly coming back up. I loved NFS Heat, but it needs to get better before it comes back to same level as NFS Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted.
Then again, NFS Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted were likely better because they were from Criterion (in fact, those were the last 2 games from criterion in nfs series).
I would be excited but NFS is basically dead in the water at this point, a shell of its former self.
Arcade racers never seem to get the attention they deserve. Photo-realistic games like GT tend to get a ton of attention, which would be fine, except that good arcade racers never get noticed.
they should because Arcade racers are fun and not too serious as the simulator racer
Super fun game! Everyone should give it a run :)
The Fun factor should be a 10
and i disagree with the "The Free roaming is not that good" i actually enjoyed the free roam a lot.
good review overall :)
burnout 1,2 and 3 they were perfect and never got boring which is something hot pursuit did very quickly