Has anyone noticed that fairhaven features a lot of trademark areas from Criterion's other games? Many times, I've come to areas of the city that directly reference some of the spots in Burnout Paradise and Hot Pursuit.

I thought this was quite interesting and made the game a bit better to me; since I'm so familiar with Paradise City, I'm able to identify many of the references very easily.

No, this game does not feature a Cat & Mouse multiplayer mode.

I'm also quite a fan of Cat & Mouse, though I haven't found it done better than in Dirt 3; Forza Horizon and PGR4 are runners up for me.

Your cars recieve a bit of cosmetic damage, but it isn't close to Burnout level or anything; similar to the amount of the limited damage in previous NFS titles.

You can encounter police in free roam and start a pursuit from there.

The controls are very similar to Hot Pursuit; if you didn't like them there, you most likely won't enjoy them here either.

You can upgrade performance to a degree, but they're more like arcade power-ups than street and race parts. You can't really tune much of anything if you mean stuff like adjusting camber and suspension dampening.

You don't need to run from the police; you can continue to mess around with them until they're at the highest stage and sending SWAT armored trucks at you.

Oh my...

The game isn't that good, but not for your terrible reasons.

The "complete car customization" started with Underground, but the Fast & Furious marketing craze of the time has died out; it isn't a staple of the series and certainly not what NFS is known for. Both Juiced 2 and Midnight Club feature a lot more of that vehicle dress up doll crap than NFS ever has. Some people actually like racing games for the racing aspect, imagine that; those of us typically don't care about seeing your gaudy creation online either.

A nice cockpit view takes up a good chunk of space on the RAM for something that gamers hardly even use, and would use much less in such an arcade game; it just doesn't fit in a game like this. If you don't see why it doesn't fit, try out Midnight Club LA while racing in cockpit cam, it isn't very fun from that viewpoint. Also, no, Criterion hasn't done any cockpit cams in any of their games, I don't know why you're thinking they have.

The Burnout series is great (except Legends on the DS and Burnout Crash); they're much more solid games than any of the recent terrible NFS titles. The Burnout series has also sold extremely well, so they haven't stopped the series because it "wasn't good", it's because EA gave Criterion NFS and they've been busy with that since.

I don't think Criterion can "ruin the franchise" when the NFS games have been garbage for years now. The series just needs to die, but EA keeps holding onto the title because they realize that it's well known and will sell regardless.

The physics in the Shift games are absolutely abysmal, unpredictable, bouncy, center-pivot garbage. I would hate to see wacky physics like that featured in any more racing games (though Project CARS may be good if they're making massive improvements like they claim).

I'll admit BlackBox made some major mistakes but purposely programming deadzones into there handling model wasn't one of the them. I played the run i didn't really experience dead zones the cars rears to tended to lag behind the front. I really don't know why criterian would have found it neccessary to add those 2010 HP or 2012 MW besides the reasons I've mentioned EA didn't hold a gun to there heads... there developement experience has never been based in reality so I'd image you could make car in burnout handle anyway you want and nobody cared, hyper slow, hyper fast, steering in crapterians "vision" a vehicles primary use is to be a weapon/drift vessel first and car 2nd considering that I'd assume they program whatever fictional vehicle they made to meet this criteria. I owned another one of there earliest games on the Sega Dreamcast it Was Called Suzuki Alstare Racing it was a motorbike game. I think it was there only attempt ever @ implementing a real life licenses into there game up until EA handed NFS over to them in 2010  so really I guess I'd half to take your word on your interpetation of the handling on BP and previous burnouts...Tviper7

EA made Slightly Mad Studios adjust the handling in their engine to give it a more "NFS" feel; now that they've parted from EA they're making a more proper sim (Project CARS). So I wouldn't put it past EA to dictate some features to Criterion, this is to be expected from any publisher that is giving an established title to a different studio.

Criterion has always put gameplay before reality, which made Burnout a really solid racer that was easily played competitively; Burnout is like the Unreal Tournament of the racing genre, which is what I loved about it, they offered a very romanticised view of vehicle handling. This game just falls flat because they attempted to add some of that NFS feel into a formula that they've already perfected (which I was worried that they would do to this after playing Hot Pursuit).

I do remember their motorbike game, though I played it as "Redline Racer" on the PC; didn't become a fan of their work until the first Burnout game though. I had fun with BLACK as well.

Why Criterion didn't just name this game Burnout Paradise 2?juhakava

Lookup a few Burnout fan sites on web, they will have info you seek about how to come to terms with crapterians horrible handling model someone posted a guide to drifting/ and being fast for hot pursuit 2010 but since it was on the old ea forums for HP2010 which have been removed from ea's website. I cant find it or I would link for you but it seperated the kinds of drifts and how to iniate them also way to attain the fastest times & proper nitrous usage. What your experiencing rightnow is criterion's delibrate steering deadzones, don't worry as u locate better cars it will get better but it won't entirely go away, this is a burnout game if they removed this key feature it would break the game by cutting down the amount crashing, wrecking, drifting and takedowns effectively making it utter bore to play for the uninitiated,  just like previous need for speeds including the originals and especially "undercover"

Tviper7

I don't think you've ever played a Burnout game. The clear distinction between grip and initiating drifts with a tap of the brake is certainly in the style of the Burnout series, but that wacky deadzone steering lag is a NFS trademark, and it's exactly what I don't like about this game either.

The Burnout games have always had very deep and precise driving mechanics, which were especially noticable if you were a high-level player; this game's handling, however, is rather diluted as they mixed in some NFS series mechanics that don't fit with the game and it ruins the experience (like with Hot Pursuit as well). If the handling was exactly like Burnout Paradise, it would be a much better game.

Either way, it's definitely Burnout with real cars, so buyer's remorse?SSS1989

If it was exactly like Burnout, I would be loving it. It certainly has that Burnout Paradise feel to it, but there are NFS handling nuances in there that dumb it down; the result is a rather watered-down Burnout Paradise handling model that loses the trademark competition level of precision that the Burnout games delivered on.

I did other than UDK. GameMaker, Novelty, but not Unity. I got a class remaining from the core which includes Unity, the rest are just writings. I think I knew you somewhere. IGN, right?

SSS1989

I'm not on IGN, and I don't use this name anywhere else.

Get into Unity as much as you can when you do it; but if you're really serious about this profession, try to find a programmer that is working on their own engine and do assets for them, outside of classes. Not everything is going to be as easy to use as the most popular game engines and editors, and those won't teach you nitty-gritty details of doing this kind of work.

I am close to getting into the industry and competing against EA later on. Gam32l1v3, you'll have a good day tomorrow and I'm giving you props to tell me how the graphics are like after I'm playing it on Origin. However, I'm not giving you the props about my age. You're a gamer, not a game designer.

Also, I did UDK levels of my own for game design classes. It wasn't easy, so they required UVWs to unwrap.SSS1989

I don't get the point of your off-topic comments like this; are you trying to flaunt credentials or something so your opinion is taken more seriously?

I've been making a living as a game artist for a few years now, so to me your post just reads like, "I used a very user-friendly editor to make game levels and did some simple busy work on UV layouts." If that is all they're having you do, you need to step it up big time and start learning a whole bunch on your own; this industry is far more competitive than that.

Also if you can, don't go to some scam school that rewards you with a "game design" degree; it's depressing to watch these people coming out of college that know so little and are totally unprepared to actually work at this.