Need for Speed Retrospective #16

At its core, Hot Pursuit is a simple game. There's no customization and the single player mode amounts to picking race events from a menu. The core loop of progressing and unlocking stuff is actually pretty satisfying and would have been even better had they stripped it down further still. The visuals they absolutely nailed here. Colours are popping and the weather effects are absolutely gushing.

All this could have been so cool if the game didn't sport the strangest handling in the series so far. Vehicles feel far too light and flimsy and get flung around by every little movement. And don't you dare touch the brake button for more than a nanosecond, as it will turn and twist you around for days. Speaking of which, every small mistake will have you watch a five second video of you failing and set you back so much that you'll basically have to reset the race. Makes for a frustrating experience and underlines the overall feeling of fragility.

Also why do I have to play as the cops? I hate cops.