As part of the 52 games in a year thing, I decided that one of the games that I should sit down and play through was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010). I've had to game for forever and every time I play it I fall in love with it all over again.
This game is fucking ace and was exactly where the series should have gone. I love almost everything about it.
DRIVING FEELS GOOD
Driving in this game is an absolute blast. Cars have enough weight to make them feel believable and different from one another, but are still easy to fling around a corner going 100+ MPH. This is a combination of the easy to drift cars in Burnout Paradise and something like Grid. Pulling off near misses and driving in oncoming traffic are rewarded with boosts to your nitrous that you can use to throw yourself around Seacrest County even faster with. There are multiple types of events that come into play througout your time with the game as well, including your standard fare time trails and races but also expands into cops vs. racers style events and...
MODERN, CIVILIZED CAR COMBAT OF THE FUTURE TODAY
In events that have a combination of racers and police, after an introductory period you're given a handful of tools to deal damage the other other side of things. Spike strips and EMPs to dish out some damage and a huge boost of speed to get out of a dangerous situation, gain some extra ground or ram into an opponent. You've also got a jammer to block EMPs and on the police side of things a button to deploy a road block in place of the speed boost. Of course, you can always resort to medieval warfare and drive your hunk of metal into the opponents hunk of metal, but cars in this game have weight to them. Hitting them won't result in a plastic model car getting flung at a wall at 1,304MPH like in Burnout. Instead, you gotta make sure you've got the angle on someone or have enough speed to punt them out of existence.
SEACREST COUNTY IS A PLACE I WANT TO GO FOR REAL TO DRIVE INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE EXOTIC CARS I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD FOR REAL IN REAL LIFE
The look, the variety, the scale, the time cycles. I love Seacrest, I want to go there for real. Don't tell me to go to California and drive, I've done that and it's not the same.
Roads are wide, locations are varied enough, taking you to slightly snowy mountains, the coast, coastal farm lands and giant interstate like roads. I'm not sure what the actual scale is in comparison to some of the larger open world racing games are today, but I don't think anything compares to how the scale feels in this game. It's hard to describe, but if you've played this before, you know what I mean.
THE MUSIC WAS MODERATELY BANGIN'
There's a good variety of music here. This was in the turn of the 10s, so there's some bright, upbeat electronic mixed in with something you'd expect out of a Burnout soundtrack. It's missing out on some rap and metal infused electronic music of Underground and Most Wanted days, but the overall brighter feeling of the soundtrack fits very well with the setting.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
I feel like you probably could have taken this game, given it a proper open world and online components to mix in with that for next gen systems and you'd have had the perfect future for Need for Speed. Going back and playing this really makes the more modern entries of Need for Speed pale in comparison. I think Need for Speed (2015) was a good attempt to recreate the feeling of the Underground games, but I feel like there's so much more here and more that could have been done with extra entries in the Hot Pursuit line. High Stakes has always been my favorite, but this is a close second I believe and if I wanted one to get a "sequel" I'd likely go with this one.
Did y'all ever play this? If so, what did you think at the time? Does going back and playing it still good? I love this game and I want to hear what people think of it almost 10 years later.
This game is fucking ace and was exactly where the series should have gone. I love almost everything about it.
DRIVING FEELS GOOD
Driving in this game is an absolute blast. Cars have enough weight to make them feel believable and different from one another, but are still easy to fling around a corner going 100+ MPH. This is a combination of the easy to drift cars in Burnout Paradise and something like Grid. Pulling off near misses and driving in oncoming traffic are rewarded with boosts to your nitrous that you can use to throw yourself around Seacrest County even faster with. There are multiple types of events that come into play througout your time with the game as well, including your standard fare time trails and races but also expands into cops vs. racers style events and...
MODERN, CIVILIZED CAR COMBAT OF THE FUTURE TODAY
In events that have a combination of racers and police, after an introductory period you're given a handful of tools to deal damage the other other side of things. Spike strips and EMPs to dish out some damage and a huge boost of speed to get out of a dangerous situation, gain some extra ground or ram into an opponent. You've also got a jammer to block EMPs and on the police side of things a button to deploy a road block in place of the speed boost. Of course, you can always resort to medieval warfare and drive your hunk of metal into the opponents hunk of metal, but cars in this game have weight to them. Hitting them won't result in a plastic model car getting flung at a wall at 1,304MPH like in Burnout. Instead, you gotta make sure you've got the angle on someone or have enough speed to punt them out of existence.
SEACREST COUNTY IS A PLACE I WANT TO GO FOR REAL TO DRIVE INCREDIBLY EXPENSIVE EXOTIC CARS I'LL NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD FOR REAL IN REAL LIFE
The look, the variety, the scale, the time cycles. I love Seacrest, I want to go there for real. Don't tell me to go to California and drive, I've done that and it's not the same.
Roads are wide, locations are varied enough, taking you to slightly snowy mountains, the coast, coastal farm lands and giant interstate like roads. I'm not sure what the actual scale is in comparison to some of the larger open world racing games are today, but I don't think anything compares to how the scale feels in this game. It's hard to describe, but if you've played this before, you know what I mean.
THE MUSIC WAS MODERATELY BANGIN'
There's a good variety of music here. This was in the turn of the 10s, so there's some bright, upbeat electronic mixed in with something you'd expect out of a Burnout soundtrack. It's missing out on some rap and metal infused electronic music of Underground and Most Wanted days, but the overall brighter feeling of the soundtrack fits very well with the setting.
WHAT COULD HAVE BEEN
I feel like you probably could have taken this game, given it a proper open world and online components to mix in with that for next gen systems and you'd have had the perfect future for Need for Speed. Going back and playing this really makes the more modern entries of Need for Speed pale in comparison. I think Need for Speed (2015) was a good attempt to recreate the feeling of the Underground games, but I feel like there's so much more here and more that could have been done with extra entries in the Hot Pursuit line. High Stakes has always been my favorite, but this is a close second I believe and if I wanted one to get a "sequel" I'd likely go with this one.
Did y'all ever play this? If so, what did you think at the time? Does going back and playing it still good? I love this game and I want to hear what people think of it almost 10 years later.
