Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (PC) Review

This is an old review of mine for Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2. I wrote it about 2 or 3 years ago while I was still in school. I guess I should post it here. I know it's a pretty old game, but I still like it. I decided to leave this review untouched, please excuse my English back then. Haha... Anyway, here goes.

Pick a car that suits you best. Get in and put on your seat belt, and sit tight. Take a breath and start the engine. Get on the road and hit the gas. Once you hear the siren, you know that the real fun begins. Watch the road bumps and be cautious on tight corners. The chase may be tight, but once in a while you’ll notice that your car is acting up. Despite its graphical and technical problems, Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is a good pick if you decide to join in the chase. There are a lot of, say, cool things about it that easily overweight its problems.

Racing is fun, especially when you are on the lead.

Hot Pursuit 2, just like its prequel, is not just about the race, it’s also about the chase. You can’t stay a step ahead of the cops all the time, but as you race more, faster cars will be available for you to pick.  There are tens of cars featured in the game. All are real-life licensed cars manufactured by well known companies. Worry not, if you want a Lamborghini, a BMW, Mercedes, a McLaren or a Ferrari, you’ll get to drive them here. Every one of them is made to keep you amused of their speed while outrunning the law and getting away with it without a ticket. As stated before, besides getting away from the cops, you still have to pay an equivalent focus on the race. Players are never a loser in racing games, so don’t pull over and break that tradition.

Fortunately, you don’t necessarily have to be the champion in every race you take part in. It’s quite a relief that the game does not force you to win the first place in every race (unlike some of the future games in the series such as Need for Speed: Underground), except for the Knockout events in which the last racer of every lap is eliminated until only a couple of racers are left to compete for the first place. That said, the traditional racing rule applies exclusively here. At the end of each race, you have the option to play a replay video the race. This is quite useful as it helps you to see your mistake, or search for several shortcuts that you might have missed earlier during the race.

Fancy cars, but there’s no car customization available though.

There are two main campaigns, or in this case, championship modes, namely Hot Pursuit and World Championship. Both are laid out in a tree structure, so you have to pass a race to unlock more races. There are different events that you will be taking part in, such as the Tournament, Time Trial, Sprint and Be the Cop. Assuming that you have played a racing game before, the first three events are self-explanatory, while the last one puts you on the seat of a cop car. Here you do what the cops do; instead of completing a race, you are stopping one, or at least try giving the racers a pain on the butt. In the name of the law, you have the ability to call in backups such as roadblocks and air support. In addition, in the Delivery event, you are required to drive a car from point A to point B in a specific time limit, with the cops constantly on pursuit.

Although most races don’t require you to win the first place, you do need to complete the race in the top three places. Winning the third place rewards you a bronze medal, the second rewards you a silver medal and the first place a gold medal. As you can expect, the higher the value of the medal you win, the more the points you earn. These points are called NFS points, and you can spend them to unlock cars and tracks in the Single Challenge mode. The point system is obviously limited. You can only earn points by leading the lap, losing the cops and winning any of the top three places, each rewards certain amount of points. It kind of sucks that performing some really daring moves such as on-air, skids and slides and near-miss doesn’t reward you NFS points, which makes these awesome stunts like they don’t matter much.

Get out of my way, folks.

The racing is intense. As you make your way through the event trees, the prizes are more rewarding. This means that your opponents get more and more competitive. You will be able to drive faster cars, and the same goes with the other racers. They will race smarter such as taking shortcuts and alternate paths. Expect them to bump you on your rear every so often. Whether to greet them back or act cold, it is up to you. However, they also make the same mistakes that you do while on the road. They may skid on tight corners, crash straight onto trees and dividers, drive too fast until they miss the shortcuts and some simply choose to ignore the shortcuts. When you are the last, there is always a chance to climb back to more secured places. Bear in mind that the bots may make mistakes that you can take advantage of. It is great to see them collide with other straight ahead, so just make sure that you pass through instead of joining them.

If the competition is not enough for you, then there, as the name of the game implies, are the cops. They do what they are best at; chase you throughout the race and try to bust you. You always find yourself trying to ditch them. The cops force you to pull over, which is something that you won’t do. Of course, “pull over” here means “drive faster”, as this is what we’re supposed to do. This of course, pisses them off. Lose them more often and things will heat up. As you gain more “wanted stars”, the cops use every effort and support they have to stop you. You can listen to them chattering on the radio and informing each other what’s going on and what to do and uttering something like “He’s losing it!” or “This guy’s going to kill somebody!”.  Although repetitive, the chatters are informative because they help you to get aware of where the spike strips is placed or on which road the roadblock is held.

Inhales breathe) My job is to drive very fast far beyond the speed limit and look for anybody driving slower than me and turn my siren on and then chase them at top speed and intimidate them without concern of public safety so that these innocent and confused suspects will try to drive faster than me and break the speed limit and I will have the excuse to arrest them but they will never beat me because I’m the fastest on the street and already made the longest caption of all my reviews. (Inhales breathe).

The game features a wanted system which is similar to that of Grand Theft Auto games. The more stars you get, the more units are called in to give chase. There will be road blocks and every so often they will lay spike strips on the road. The latter method is fatal and puts an ultimate stop to your mad driving. Ignore the radio chatters and you will probably not survive the race, thanks to the spikes. When things get a lot hotter, the cops on the road call in the choppers to assist them. The cops on air may not be as aggressive as the ones on the road, but they pose a serious threat once they start dropping explosive barrels onto the ground in their attempt to stop your road rampage. The explosive barrels may sound unrealistic, but what can you expect, it’s an arcade-driven racing game. The cops must have run out of more suitable equipments.

As we are all aware of, arcade racing games are known to have their car physics fall under great exaggerations. Hot Pursuit 2 by no means is an exception. Your car bounces on the road like a rubber ball on a table in a boat on a rough sea in the middle of a storm, even if the road is flat. Sometimes it looks more like a rally race than a traditional street race. Worse, it could be more annoying when you are driving through off-road shortcuts and alternate paths. If you are not good enough, the shortcuts could stall you instead of cutting the distance for you. These are where the bouncing and bumping get meaner. Unfortunately, there is no way for you to determine how well the handling of your car is. In another word, it is hard to tell which cars have greater handling, since this is not included in their descriptions.

Explosive barrels?! Are sure you’re fighting in the name of the law?!

Unfortunately for us, PC gamers, the PC version of Hot Pursuit 2 was not developed as thoroughly as its console counterparts. Besides missing several mechanics featured in the console versions, our version also possesses a not-so-impressive graphic quality. The environment textures are washed out, which is hard to tolerate with for a game released in 2002. One example is the flame effects of the explosive barrels. The background effect isn’t impressive either. In several locations, it is easy to notice vertical lines on the background image that trigger the awkward feeling of racing through a miniscule location inside a gigantic cubic box.

Worse, I noticed there are minor bugs crawling somewhere beneath the system. Once, my tournament saved game was somehow reset and I had to start the tournament all over from scratch. However, this is nothing serious compared to the other saving error that I encountered shortly after.  Imagine my shock to find my MacLaren F1, which I unlocked with a gigantic amount of points before, got relocked. It seems as if I have never unlocked that most expensive car before. There is nothing more frustrating than facing the fact that all those points I have been working for have turned to ashes.

Despite its graphical and saving error, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is an engrossing game. It may not last long for some, I might add, but when it still does, it’s as inviting as a hot cake. Multiplayer is another reason to come back for more. If you own a console, it is advisable to purchase the console versions. For this installment of Need for Speed, PC-only gamers, however, have to swallow the bitter fact that they aren’t given the best slice of the cake like the ones their console cousins are enjoying at the moment.