We are living in a world of Hollywood remakes and reboots, and video game remasters as well. Criterion and Stellar Entertainment have come down the pipe with a remaster of a remake in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. With newly updated graphics, good soundtracks, and tried and true racing systems, you will find yourself falling in love with this title all over again, at least I did. We will go over this and more below.
It has been a very long time since I played anything having to do with Need for Speed. So when I was allowed to take a look at the newest rendition of Hot Pursuit I immediately jumped on it. The first thing I realized when I started playing it was that I never actually played the remake, and had played Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit last for this title. The maps and graphics at the time were as good as they could be for a PlayStation One title. Graphically, NFS: HP hits on all cylinders. I have enjoyed going through Seacrest County again. The hills, the mountains, and everything in between have been good to see. One item that stood out to me while I was streaming was the background details. I was talking with my chat and then saw a huge waterfall flowing over a cliff and I stopped and just admired it while driving by. The level of detail on the mountains, trees, and other landmarks is highly enjoyable. At 4K/60FPS or better, it feels like the team took a lot of time to make sure everything worked properly and quickly. I was very happy about this.
Cross-platform multiplayer and autolog features are new within NFS: HP. What this means for everyone is the ability to play between PC, PlayStation, and Xbox systems. Racing against other players and your friends is a great way to be competitive and to try to improve your skills. Autolog has been around for a while. It lets you see what kinds of activities your friends have been attempting and what their scores and times are. I have used this to beat my friend’s best times on most of the maps to push our rivalry to its fullest. Don’t worry about the multiplayer because it gets synced up so there shouldn’t be any problems with connections.
While there isn’t a story mode per se, you are given two modes to play in a single-player campaign. The first is as a regular racer running down the countryside of Seacrest County, and the second is as a Seacrest County Police officer. In single-player you have to gain bounty points to level up. As you increase your bounty level there will be newer, faster cars to enjoy. Similar to the racer’s side, the police department will also receive upgraded cruisers that allow you to drive fast enough to catch these premium imports and tuners. With these great vehicles comes a need to get past whatever comes your way. That is why there are weapons that can be equipped to your vehicles as the levels provide. Weapons like EMPs and spike strips are essential when escaping from the police and other racers. I have enjoyed both sides of the story but some of the police missions are a bit harder to achieve than the racer missions.
If it is content that you are looking for then get ready for this. All of the main DLC has been added to the remaster at launch. This includes an extra six hours of gameplay and over thirty challenges to take part in. There is also a multitude of achievements, different car colors, and even some new photo-gallery modes to have fun with as well. Taking snapshots of your races while you are driving can be fun, especially when you share images with friends.
Control is key. I played this right after doing my review for WRC 9 and found the controls to be completely different. In WRC 9 everything is very loose and hard to control, in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit the controls are hard and a little easier to control. With your handbrake, you can make simple corrections while rounding corners and ever start drifting to make the corners easier to handle. Sometimes I like to hit the nitrous as I am finishing a corner to help straighten myself out. Controlling your car in a tight turn can be easy until that random car or van shows up out of nowhere and you wreck gloriously. You want to drive against traffic for more points as you turn into oncoming traffic. Near-misses will give you extra bounty points to help you level up, but wrecking will cost you time that you may not want to lose so be careful.
Note: Our copy was reviewed on Origin Launcher with a code provided by PR.
