After dozens of hours inside Need For Speed’s dangerously compelling Autolog mode, it’s become clear that Criterion has achieved something unimaginable – it has bested its entire Burnout series with its first effort under the Need For Speed banner.
Here are five reasons why…
1.Licensed cars
In all honestly, I didn’t think it would make a difference. Burnout always had lovely facsimiles of high-end supercars and did perfectly well with them. No difference, then, until that first time you hear the raw of the Bugatti Veyron, feels its weight in your hands and power at your fingertips. NFS Hot Pursuit’s handling model is far from realistic, but it’s weighty enough to satisfy those who want to feel the exhilaration of driving a car like that on real roads.
2.Autolog
We’ve seen similar things in Blur, but NFS Hot Pursuit’s Autolog changes the way racing games are played. Burnout Paradise tried something similar with Road Rules (leaderboards for each section of road), and clearly Criterion has just expanded on this and integrated with trademark slickness. Add in the fact that it recognises your rivals and also how to progress your career, and you have an ingenious tool.
3.Lag-free multiplayer
Burnout Paradise admittedly didn’t suffer much lag, but its actual wheel-to-wheel racing was hampered by the open world. Burnout Revenge was a superlative on-track battle, but lag often saw cars jumping about the course and collision detection leaving much to be desired. Hot Pursuit has none of these problems. Racing online is indistinguishable from competing alone, and even adds to your ‘bounty’ level, making it just as worthwhile as pursuing the single player career.
4.Atmosphere
Racing at night with storm clouds in the air, rain lashing down and lightning illuminating the road ahead – it’s quite something. Burnout as always done racing well, but never quite managed to capture the drama that Need For Speed has in spades. Burnout Paradise did add weather later on in its lifecycle, surely the spurring factor for Hot Pursuit’s fantastic meteorological melees.
5.The Zone
One of Burnout’s true achievements is the transcendental place it puts you in when you’re doing well. Time seems to slow down as your reactions quicken, and you can find yourself locked into an unblinking hypnosis as car and mind become one. But in Burnout, eventually, you’d crash. Need For Speed Hot Pursuit puts you in that same place, but by stripping back the traffic and giving the cars more heft, it’s more than feasible to finish races and events without ever crashing, constantly keeping you in that zone and flooding your brain with endorphins. It’s rare for a game to make you grin as you play it. In Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, it’s rare not to be beaming from ear to ear. Congratulations Criterion, you did it again.
Tags: Need for Speed Hot Pursuit
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