NFS: Hot Pursuit Burns Up The Gaming Horizon

The opening game of EA’s widely praised conference yesterday was the impressive looking Need For Speed Hot Pursuit.  With Criterion in the driving seat, quality is assured and the series looks to have been placed in the right hands.

With the wild success of the Burnout franchise behind them, Criterion were clearly an ideal choice to breathe new life into NFS and the trailers and gameplay on show at E3 yesterday were little short of stunning.

Hot Pursuit promises to drag the series back to its roots with a host of exotic cars, breathtaking locations and, of course, tarmac scorching racing.  Career mode now offers the choice to play as the good guys or bad guys, with some tasty looking cop cars on offer for those who prefer to stay on the right side of the law.  Either way, you’ll be playing a roaring game of cat and mouse, either chasing or being chased through traffic, round hairpin country roads, or through roadblocks to unlock new cars and booty.

The pace is breakneck, with a sense of speed that looks to be exhilarating as the player has to avoid the law, or else bring down the racing perp.  In a move which may concern some, there are a number of power-ups available…however, these aren’t the over the top fireballs or lightning bolts of games such as Blur or Mario Kart..they are subtle additions, offering radar jammers or even an EMP pulse which reverse the controls of another car, causing some spectacular looking crashes…but from the makers of Burnout…what else would the crashes be?

Career mode can only take you so far though and when the AI simply isn’t enough, there is always Autolog – a system which allows players to share pictures and challenges, comparing them to their friends in a way that, from the little that was shown, seems similar to both Blur and Burnout.

Criterion have the perfect pedigree to make Need For Speed Hot Pursuit a winner and with much we still don’t know to be revealed on the run up to the November release, our  money is on a hit.  Suddenly we don’t feel so bad about not having a sequel to Burnout Paradise anymore…at least not yet.

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