I love this game!!!
Predictably, I fell in love with the game! And now, after almost a decade, I still play it from time to time (yes, even with amazing racing games from the likes of your far superior PS2s and PS3s and Xboxes!
The graphics of the game seemed pretty good (back then, for PS1 standards), and the cars handled superbly too, although they didn’t fly off the road and summersault a hundred times like they did in NFS 2. The line of exotic cars available for selection made it a dream to drive (as the cars were so damn expensive in real life)! That’s right, as most of us could probably only dream of driving these amazing machines, we could then settle for the next best thing to curb our Need For Speed, i.e. by playing Hot Pursuit! With cars like Jaguars, Ferraris, Lamborghinis, BMW and even Mercedes……..seriously, these cars were the REAL DEAL!
Deploying a few racing modes at its disposal, my favourite was always the knockout competition mode, where you start off with 8 cars, and with each race the number of cars gets lesser and lesser, which was in a way interesting because until the very last race where it’s down to the last 2 cars, it was never about who’s first, but who’s last!
The circuits in my opinion were so beautifully designed. There were less then 10 circuits available, but this number could easily be doubled as you could race the same track in a ‘mirrored’ mode, and on top of that, you still had the option of racing that very same circuit either day or night, and with either rain or clear weather, a set up which I sadly say has never returned in any subsequent Need For Speed game (PS1 or the subsequent generation console versions). The biggest draw of the game, of course, was the inclusion of cops when racing. It was funny to hear them yelling at you to stop, and if provoked, they’d go so far as to throw in a spike strip on the road just to stop you!
However, the thing that I felt was the most memorable about this game and that had the most impact (on me, at least), had to be the music! EA gave us the option of toggling between a ‘rock’ option and a ‘techno’ option, and I always felt that you could never go wrong with techno in a racing game! Till today, after nearly a decade, I dare say that I’ve yet to play a game with amazing music as great or as awesome as NFS 3. Speeding through the canyons of Rockroad Ridge, or cruising through the tunnels of the futuristic city of Atlantica with the amazing music in full force was definitely an experience I’ll never forget, and never will! Even with the 2 genre options mentioned above, the game was more in favour of the techno option, as this is clearly the case even from the main menu (which had amazing trance-techno beats as you chose your cars). And speaking of cars, the game provides some cool car stats that you can access at the car selection menu, backed by an awesome techno track. Even watching the credits can be music to your ears! Wow!
Sad to say, the subsequent Need For Speed games, High Stakes, Porsche Unleashed, and even the ones on the PS2, never felt as good as NFS Hot Pursuit. EA did come out with a sequel with Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (you can check out my review on that), which indeed was a truly awesome game, and one that I thought was the best of the series. However, compared to its predecessor, I still felt that the humble NFS Hot Pursuit on the PS1 still had more to offer.
The only down side to the game is the 2 player mode, where the background music is totally non existent (probably due to lack of memory). Nevertheless, NFS Hot Pursuit for me has been the best racing I have ever played, and I do wish the series would return to its roots of making a racer with an exotic line of cars, or in other words, another Hot Pursuit sequel!