Undeniably the best in the series!
Can you just feel the adrenaline rush from that moment? No, it’s not a scene from the latest Jerry Bruckheimer movie. It’s the latest offering from EA’s Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2!
For those unfamiliar with the need for speed franchise, they’re a bunch of amazing racing games usually featuring exotic cars to race with on some of the most exotic tracks around the world. In 1998, they came up with Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit, wherein you race your car and get chased by cops. It was undoubtedly one of the best racing games, and arguably the best in the series! So it was about time they came up with a sequel.
Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 offers basically 2 race modes, ‘world racing’ and ‘hot pursuit’ i.e. the former has you racing without cops and the latter with cops!
‘World racing’ is basically your normal racing which pits you against 7 other racers. You get to toggle the level traffic and there are 3 levels – light, medium or heavy. But the most fun is of course, ‘hot pursuit’ mode
In ‘hot pursuit’ mode, you race against 3 other vehicles in either a 2, 4 or 8 lap race. As you race, you get the attention of police squad cars that’ll probably take you half heartedly at first. They’ll try to slow you down by pushing you off the road. However, push them to their limits and that’s when the fun really begins!
It’s that moment when the cops will call for back up. A great thing is that you’re privileged with a cop radio, so you get to hear in on them communicate with each other and listen in on what they have planned for you. For instance, you’ll hear them say that you’re a real pain (not literally), and will first call for a road block to try and stop you (ok, literally).
At first, the road blocks are a poor excuse for road blocks. They’ll just have a car and a cone to block you, but you can easily swerve around them (or in some rare instances, jump over them – depending on where the road block is)! As the race gets heated up, the cops will call in more back-ups, and you’re faced with more cops, and more heavily enforced road blocks. But that’s still the tip of the iceberg.
When they feel that the road blocks are not slowing you down, even a little, that’s when the fun really begins! Now, they’ll incorporate spike strips into their road blocks, and even call in a police helicopter that drops explosive barrels all over the road to stop you! Get hit by a spike strip and you’re busted (you get a warning). Get busted 3 times, and you get arrested, meaning race over and bye-bye sweet ride. Of course, the thrill is to avoid this from happening, and there are a few ways to do so.
The cop radio equipped in your car is one of the things that allows you to stay one step ahead of the cops. It alerts you on what the cops may have waiting for you around the next corner. Also, when you race, there’s a radar which shows a picture the track you’re racing on, and if there’s a road block up ahead, it gets ‘marked’ on the radar-track.
Apart from that, on the top of your screen is a bar which quickly fills up when you’re approaching a cop car or road block. The other available option is something of a ‘fore-see’ camera angle. Pressing one of the shoulder buttons on the D-pad causes your car to literally catch fire, and zoom a few hundred meters ahead so as to allow you to see what you’re up against, and then quickly retreat to where you were driving! It’s an amazing camera option, and one you just have to see to believe!
Speaking of camera options, pressing another shoulder button gives you a ‘Matrix-style’ view of the action, in that the screen freezes and rotates 360 degrees around the car, giving it a movie like atmosphere of the on going action! The matrix camera is simply fun to have, especially when going over jumps or cop cars. The game also automatically incorporates this matrix camera angle whenever you crash into a squad car that’s part of a road block or whenever you get hit by an explosive barrel that’s dropped by a helicopter.
Alternatively, if you’re bored of being chased by cops, you could get into a cop car and do some chasing of your own! Yup, you can chase a speeding car and then appreciate how hard it is. Of course, you could always call for back up of your own, like setting up a road block or even calling that big, nasty helicopter to assist you!
Visual wise, NFS:HP2 has some of the coolest graphics to grace a racing game! The cars look fantastic, and the locations are as real as they come! Pick from a variety of exotic cars from the likes of Ferrari, Dodge, Mercedes, BMW, Lamborghini, Porsche and plenty more! They all look and feel awesome, and you can’t help but feel hurt everytime you crash your car into something because the effects look so real! Yup, you start out prim and perfect, but kiss the back of someone’s car and you’ll shatter first a headlight, then the other, then you’ll shatter the windscreen, and if (pray that you don’t) you get hit by an explosive, your car will look like it was in a train wreck, all banged up and rattling and gushing out black smoke! Of course, that’s as bad as it’ll go, but it’ll still hurt!
Another thing is that the gorgeous cars here also extend to cop cars! That’s right, there are mustangs, BMWs and even Lamborghini cop cars to race with and against!
The tracks are beautifully designed, and allows you the option to toggle the weather settings, be it sunrise or sunset, clear or overcast. You also get to race the track backwards, all of which adds to great replay value. But where the tracks really stand out is that fact that they have multiple paths thrown here and there for you to use, and not just confine you to a strict course. The tracks have a few short (or sometimes long) cuts here and there, and most of the time, hidden! Look around when you’re admiring the locales, because behind that bush or structure could be a hidden route that goes through a mining pit, a cave, a tunnel, a beachfront, a dense forest, an alley or even into someone’s ranch!
Like previous NFS games, one of the things that I felt made it stand out was its amazing soundtrack. Like its predecessors, this game allows you to choose between its ‘rock’ and ‘techno’ tracklist. If you don’t like it, switch it off. The tracks are great, and suit the game very well!
Apart from that, the game also has a series of missions for you to compete in, and this is again divided into ‘world racing’ and ‘hot pursuit’. Each mission is different, pitting you against all kinds of challenges and thus rewarding you with unlockable racing courses or cars!
All in all, this is undeniable the best NFS game to date! Even if you’ve never played NFS, it should appeal to anyone who’s ever dreamed of owning an expensive car and pushing it to its limits!