Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 - Review - 4th of January 2003

System: Nintendo GameCube
Television System: PAL
Publisher: Electronic Arts 
Developer: EA Studios
Origin: U.S.
Players: 1-2
Genre: Racing
Memory Card: 7 blocks
Released
Japan: N/A
USA: 3rd of October 2002
Europe: 25th of October 2002


The sixth game in Electronic Arts's fast action packed series
where brute force and petty strategies are just as important 
as skill. Choose between many game modes and many real cars and
either be chased by the cops, be the cops or exclude the cops 
from your race.


Graphics 7/10
One of the most beautiful car games I've ever seen. The courses
are very realistic and detailed, the cars are well rendered and
here you find flashy effects like the sky reflecting on the car's
surfaces. The backgrounds are also very beautiful. Then why 7?
It doesn't seam to be only good... But we have one problem. The
framerate. It's extremely slow. It feels like the update of the screen
is jumping forward in a sadistically low speed. It's annoying but
I got used to it in a couple of game playing hours. But still it's
there and it's a big con because this game series is all about 
going fast and a lot of that speed is lost in this GameCube version.
The PS2 version is not supposed to suffer from this problem so
if you've got both consoles and you like the PS2 controller go
for that version instead.


Sound 7/10
The music is typical racing game music, here it's mostly white 
hip-hop wannabes and I find it indeed horrible. Why can't anyone
come up with some decent music for car racing games? Well someone
might like this music.

The sound effect are good and the car sounds are great so here
there are no complains.


Controls/Gameplay 7/10
We can start with the game modes. You can choose between Hot Pursuit,
Championship, Single Challenge and Quick Race. In Hot Pursuit and
Championship you shall complete lots of car challenges and the difference
between the modes is the presence of police officers. In Hot Pursuit
the opponents are much easier but cops are patrolling the streets and
if they see you they will go after you and they will use back-up,
road blocks and even bombing helicopters if they can't bust you and
your opponents. This is amusing, I've got to say it is. The challenges
can be everything from delivering a car in a certain time limit and 
knock out races to being the cops yourself and busting speeders along
the roads.

In Championship there are the same kinds of mission, but no cop and no
chance to be the cops naturally. So car delivering is exchanged to 
Time Trial. The challenge is the much faster opponents. The opponents
in Hot Pursuit mode are pretty slow and if you have no cop on your tail
easily overtaken. In Championship you must be driving well or you won't
get anything. It's a good thing both of these modes are available.
Because if you're tired of being chased in Hot Pursuit you can choose
Championship, if you're being bored of Championship you can choose 
Hot Pursuit. In both of these modes you collect money which you use to
unlock cars and tracks in Single Challenge.

In Single Challenge you can choose between almost everything you can do
in the two game modes above and a regular multy player mode. In Quick Race 
the game automatically chooses an unlocked car, an unlocked track and a
race begins directly. This set-up with game modes is very well done and 
it gives the player a perfect balance of playing. Just the addition with
a Quick Race is great . If you just feel like racing it's just a 
simple push away.

20+ cars are available and 20 more if you count the slightly better NFS
versions of every car. I think there are only American and European sports
cars so you can choose between (among many) Ferrari, Lamborghini, Porsche,
McLaren and even an Aston Martin. Don't be fooled by the 48 tracks
indicated on the back side of this game's box. There are in reality
only 12 which can be driven forward, backwards, forward mirrored and
backwards mirrored. This make 48 variations and I think that's confusing.
You have to learn the same course in four different way and that's really
annoying.

The controls are really simple, it's just to drive as fast as possible and
occasionally press the brake button. Not very deep and therefore not very 
hard to learn. But I guess the controls fit this kind of game. It's also
very unrealistic. You can for example take a pretty tight turn in around
180 kph and it works perfectly well to use your opponents as bumper in
corners.

This game or let's say this GameCube version contains lots of glitches 
and negligence from the programmers. The worst aspect is the slow framerate,
but there are also the annoying crashes. Sometimes when you drive up a wall
or get hit my bombing helicopters the car just wants to spin around in the
air or on the ground in a very slow manner. This can take 10-20 seconds 
sometimes and is frustrating. Sometimes when the car falls on the roof,
it can lie there a long time before the game decides to magically flip
the car over again. Another example is a scenario where you press a car
to a wall and it just as magically as the flip, shows up in the middle of 
the road. A minor con but nevertheless it gives an example the programmers
negligence is the fact that the top speed of the cars is shown in MPH even
if you've chosen KPH. OK, I won't dwell in this more, but the point is that
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit could have been a lot better.


Lasting appeal 8/10
For a racing title, there are lots of things to do. The unlocking system
will keep you playing because there are lots of tracks (or let's say versions
of track) and even more cars to unlock. The Championship and Hot Pursuit modes
contain lots of "missions" and the grade of difficulty rise in a decent speed.

But the controls aren't very deep, many will be frustrated on the many cons
of the game and may because of this don't play very long.


Total 7/10
Lots of action, much to do and many nice cars, but no depth in the control
and too many cons. In other words a typical American racing game.


© 2003 Christian "Twink" Wall