Having loved Need For Speed Shift and Burnout Paradise, I was excited to see what Criterion would do with the Need For Speed franchise. Having first seen Hot Pursuit at E3 I thought it looked amazing, and, here we are, near its release and a chance to try it out. You can play as either a cop or a racer; as a cop you must destroy all of the racers, and as a racer you race, obviously.
The game looks very similar to Need For Speed Shift, except the tracks you drive are now the open road, rather than actual race tracks – it’s rather pretty. Acceleration, braking and drifting all feel similar too, the major difference in the driving is the handling. I didn’t notice at first, but after a few races the cars seemed very heavy and hard to get round tight bends, but after a few more races you get used to it and can control the car bit better. Different cars have different advantages and disadvantages. If you’re a cop, the faster cars do less damage but you can go faster, and the bigger cars are slow but dish out lots of damage.
Autolog is a new feature which acts as a feed of all your friends and informs you when a friend beats your fastest time in an event, and also allows you to jump straight into that event to try and beat your friend. It’s all very smooth and easy to use. Overall the demo is very good and promises great things for the full game, with fun, simple gameplay and extra incentive to replay races and beat your friends.
mynameisblair (75)
wick15 (17)
toutski (14)
Daywalker (13)
gazzagb (12)