As most gamers who play racing games know, the last 7 years have been rather turbulent for the NFS series. The NFS “Underground” series put the franchise on a high, then, along came “Most Wanted” which pushed the franchise even higher, and since then, it’s gone downhill with “Carbon”, “Pro Street”, and “Undercover” with only “Shift” bringing some respect back into a failing franchise… EA knew they had to do something, so what did they do..? They decided to go back to what NFS was all about (Cops and Racers) and oh yes, they brought Criterion (of Burnout fame) so has it worked..? Let’s take a look.
The graphics in NFS: Hot Pursuit look pretty good, although it’s hard to admire the scenery when your buzzing past at 180mph, but lest we forget, Criterion are the masters at making things look great even at that speed! The cars look gorgeous, the tracks are well laid out with plenty of shortcuts on most tracks (even though some of them are intended NOT to be shortcuts, so you’ll need to be careful) and the crash replays are also well done, with your car taking damage based on how beat up it is. All in all its what you’d expect from a racing game
Sound in any racer shouldn’t be too difficult to do, and NFS is no exception, the cars sound superb and as they do in real life which people come to expect so that’s not a surprise. The sounds during the race are pretty good; you can hear a screeching noise when you scrape down the side of a rival car. Not sure what could be improved so it’s a thumbs up for me
Gameplay wise, I think this is the most fun since Most Wanted…The core of the gameplay centres around the career mode, where you be a Cop or a Racer but it’s not as simple as that. If you are a racer, the events are Duel (1 v 1, cops), Time trial (no cops), Race (no cops), Gauntlet (you vs. cops) and then Hot Pursuit where it’s you and the racers vs the cops…You have 4 weapons at your disposal that you gradually unlock – Spike Strip, EMP, Jammer and Turbo. As you progress through the Racer events you get upgrades to the weapons (spike strips become wider and longer, and eventually drop 2 in 1 go etc.) The cops are brutally difficult to shake off and in some of the later challenges, it can feel like the most frustrating thing in the world, but it’s not something that puts you off the game. The Cop mode features Interceptor (You trying to bust the racers), Rapid Response (Like racer time trial but any collisions cost you 2 seconds each onto your time) and Hard target (The racers have “wingmen” you need to get past before you can go for the main targets). Career also features autolog that is banded about as a “Facebook” addition to the game where any time you set on a track, is uploaded to autolog where friends can take on your time and try to beat it. It makes a good addition I feel.. The online mode is cops vs racers, and can be any combination… 7 cops, 1 racer, or even 1 cop 7 racers… the choice is yours!
Here is a short video explaining autolog:
Every year come October you can guarantee 2 things… Shops will start putting out all their Christmas stock, including some of them breaking out all the Christmas CD’s that end up driving everyone insane, and the latest war of attrition between Fifa and Pro Evolution Soccer will start up again, reviving the age old debate of which is better… In this review, I will talk about the usual (graphics, sound, game modes etc.) and I will wax lyrical about my likes/dislikes… So where to begin…. Let’s start with the graphics
You get the sense of feeling that you are looking at Fifa 2010 as there doesn’t seem to be much of a difference, so although it looks all nice and shiny, there haven’t been any REAL innovations graphically for the last couple of years. This doesn’t mean it doesn’t look good because boy it does, and it gives you what you know and expect from an EA sports game. You can instantly recognise a lot of your favourites, like Rooney, Drogba & Ronaldo. My dad even thought he was watching a live game on TV he thought they looked that realistic which is high praise indeed from someone who has no interest in gaming so it just goes to show that EA have the graphics bang on but I wish there was something…. more… but I can’t quite put my finger on what.
Again like the graphics the sound could well have been lifted straight from Fifa 2010 but having said that, there isn’t really much they can improve on so I’ll let them off on this occasion. You have the usual commentary team of Andy Gray & Martin Tyler (which is probably what made my dad think it was on TV…) and they do a good job of keeping up with the action but they do sometimes start rambling on about stories, and when you have an attempt on goal during the story, they don’t even acknowledge it. but that’s a minor issue and not game breaking. There is a new feature this year though, and that is the ability to customise the music and chants you hear. This enables you to make changes to what music your team comes out onto the pitch to, and if you have music stored on your hard drive, you can use these (I would be tempted for a laugh, to get my team coming out to the song “Gay Bar”) and you can customise the chants too. I’ve not had a chance to delve too deep into this but it is a nice little feature.
The gameplay has changed from Fifa 2010, in terms of the new “Personality plus” system which basically displays a players unique emotions on the field and some great and unique shooting, dribbling and passing skills. This feature works only for the stars players of course, because they couldn’t have done that for thousands of anonymous players. Ronaldo/Messi have great ball control, Scholes will be good at long passes etc. It makes things like passing/shooting/tackling much more interesting as you suddenly think “Hang on, xxxx isn’t that good shooting from distance in real life, so I’ll try to pass it”. Also, the AI now joins in, during celebrations which make things a bit more realistic. Simple things like that please me! The following video is from the Fifa team, showing you what personality plus is all about.
