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Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit 2

The demo arrived yesterday. I gave it a fairly solid hammering last night, before work and again when I got home. At the moment the demo is my home away from “Mario Sunshine”. But is it the game that I’ve lusted after for so long. Well it is only a demo, so I can not really judge yet, but….

The demo features one track and the two Australian muscle cars (Both of which will be locked in the retail version until you achieve them). As the driver of the car your job is to cross the line in first position whilst outrunning the cops, which have a terrible bias and hatred of you in comparison to the dopey AI that you overtake after the secondd corner.

Those that have played the NFS games with police in them before this title will be accustomed to police that chase speeders on a first come first served basis. Many of us, I am sure, would allow the AI to creep ahead in the opening twists and turns in order for them to draw out the cops, so that you could speed off down the track without any threat until the next roadblock.

Well in this demo the cops are not like that. They start to go after the AI, then they see you. What they do after they see you is different depending on which police officer is chasing you. Listen carefully to who is radioing in. Some units are far more aggresive then others. Some units will call in the CHOPPER without even flinching. Now, having said that.. In previous games the chopper was an innocent little poly that flew seamlessly through pieces of scenery without crashing in previous games (Obvious BUG), whilst shining a light on you at night (Which came in handy for night driving when the front headlights were smashed in). This time the Helicopter and pilot, have gone to the same flight school as the chopper pilot in “Sunny Garcia Surfing” (plug PLUG), and drops bombs onto the road.

Although the thought of a chopper dropping bombs is scary, in practice it is not. You need to try pretty hard in order to hit the bombs, and it is fairly easy to push pursuing coppers into them.

Having said that, make sure you hit the bombs in order to see a nice little “Matrix inspired” effect which is a 360 deegree camera rotation around the car as it begins it’s explosive journey into the air.

Okay, so you have one the race, beaten all the cops ( My highest score was 3500), what do you do now? Well usually you watch the replay, mainly as an ego boost, but also to enjoy the way you have maneuvered your vehicle along the track, and out run the coppers. DAMMIT. The replay is from one angle. That angle is whatever angle you watched the race. I have to give this the thumbs down. This is not what I would expect from an NFS title and I hope that this only happens in the DEMO.

What other interesting things are in the demo. Well, on the car select screens, you are able to click on a description. At that point an american voice will tell you how great these Australian cars are.

The visual stakes in racing games are extremely high. I had read reviews panning this game for it’s shocking frame rate. After setting up the game before playing I was bracing myself. At the moment I’m running a 600mhz, 256ram, GF4. The first straight was fine and then it happened, I hit 5fps corner. It was the first turn in the game. I was so cheesed off. I found that the frame rate can be fixed fairly simply. Seems in my haste to get into the game I automatically clicked on the option for “REAR VIEW MIRROR”. This option gave my computer a severe canning, if you stay at the default options the games frame rate is fine.

How the framerate pans out on the GAMECUBE, well I’ll be able to tell you that next week. If the shipping date is right.

Also, noticed at NFSCHEATS that the GCN, XBOX and PC versions will have HSV and FORD pursuit cars, but the PS2 will not have those cars available.

  posted by Shane G · at 12:11 pm · filed under First Impressions