NFS Hot Pursuit is a great nifty arcade racer with alot of little nusances that weigh it down a lot.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.
First for the positives:
+ The game has a great sense of speed and acceleration, which makes racing down the highway at 400 kph actually really thrilling and adrenaline pumping.
+ The car selection is great with many of the most iconic vehicles of the late 2000s and early 2010s.
+The AI is actually pretty decent and poses an actual challenge, if you are not perfectly driving.
For the negatives:
- The handling of the cars feels a bit imprecise, which is especially highlighted when you are trying to get through a road block which has a small opening, that is almost impossible to navigate through, due to the floaty handling.
- The progression in this game is quite strange for me, as you are constantly unlocking new vehicles but alot of the time these are just duplicates as many of the cars have a normal and a convertable version. Also after completing every event in the game the final unlock, the Gumpert Apollo, (which I really looked forward to) was still miles away from actually being unlocked, therefore I never got to drive it outside of the preview events.
- The general feel of the menus and UI is horribly sluggish. On top of that you have long loading times (even with a PCIe 4 SSD) and unskippable cutscenes for every race (you can tell the game to skip the cutscene but most of the time it will play most of the cutscene anyway). All of that feels like it wastes your time not doing what you actually want, which is racing.
- This last point may seem like a small issue but it is really not and is probably alone respobsible for why I give this a 3,5 instead of a higher rating: The Crash Cam. If you haven't played the game, let me explain what the crash cam is: It is a slow motion camera that takes away controls from you racing to look at an opponent "wreck" after every succesful action. And if I say every succesful action I literally mean EVERY single one. You hit someone with an EMP, you hit someone with a spike strip, you hit someone heavily with your car, you wreck somebody. You might think that is a rare or special occurence but in the end this will happen to you about 15 times in a 5 minute race. I get what they were going for, I know the crash cam from Burnout, they want you to enjoy the carnage that you caused when you sent an opponent into the wall and gaze upon its bend metal wreckage. BUT this does not work at all in the context of this video game, as first of all, all of these cars are licensed, which means they are not allowed to have any sort of damage model at all except for scratches and bumpers hanging off and second of all, they even use this when you use your EMP, where all that is happening is, that the opponent is lightly swaying to the side, which is like the least interesting slow motion "crash" footage I have ever seen. And you know what is the best thing about all of this, if the constant interruption of your driving with boring slow mo footage wasn't enough? Half of the time you will immediatly crash into either a wall or a traffic car afterwards, killing all of your momentum, which actually makes it a better strategy to not use your power ups in a race. And all of this could have been circumvented when they made this Remaster, where they could have just acknowledged that it was a shitty feature in the original and could have made it at least optional.
The last part developed into kind of a little rant into this little part of this game but it made me so frustrated and dampened my experience with the game heavily which is otherwise a fun arcade racer.
Who would I recommend this to? If you are looking for an old school arcade race in the style, that they are not making anymore, this is still a solid pick.