Long Term Review: NFS Hot Pursuit

NFS Hot Pursuit by Criterion


My initial impressions were ones of amazement at the beauty of this racer. The whole game looked and seemed fabulous and I rated it very very highly.

For the first few hours it lived up to my hopes (as a Burnout nut) and I could not wait to get on the 360 to play it.
However after about 10 hours I started to notice the shortcomings. The rubberbanding is ridiculously bad, whereby you can be 5-10 seconds ahead of the car behind, not crash or miss a corner and yet within half a mile they are back ahead of you even though your car is faster on stats. The long long loading times between each race or restart are what starts the negativity though. I dont want to see a cut scene everytime I race thank you very much. Then there is the graphics which are beautiful in every respect but 1 and that is the almost invisible nature of the traffic. You will end up hitting the back of a dark car or van so many times that you will scream. Car handling is not that brilliant either long term.

The achs are all bar 2 grindable. 2 for 200gs need you to be an expert racer.

At the start I was so happy with this game I gave it 10 then I dropped it down. Now with the issues I would be pressed to give it 7

I worked out about the rubber banding and frustration levels after about 10 races.

This game is my least fave racer.

I LOVE racing games, but this is no NFS Shift or GRID

This is NFS Shit

Rubber banding was always present in the Burnout games too. No matter how well you raced that car you took down 2 miles ago was up your arris in less than a minute. Maybe it's something Criterion put in their games on purpose, to keep the tension up and you on your toes. I'm not a fan of it myself either, but came to accept it through many years playing Burnout's.
I know what you mean about the loading times, even when you hit "Press A to skip" you still wait what feels like an age before the racing kicks off.
The graphics certainly are gorgeous and I agree that the only downside is the slow traffic you invariably end up smacking up the backside as you never see them in time. I haven't done enough races to check yet, but, in Burnout, every bit of non racing traffic always turned up at the exact same spot during the race so you could almost plan when you needed to swap lanes. If it's the same with this game then it'll just take time to learn which lane to be in and when.
Not sure if I've put ten hours in yet, but I'm still enjoying immensely and doubt I'm even 25% into the game. I hope I've got plenty to go as that's one of the things I loved about the Burnout series, it'd take you ages to finally finish them off, giving you amazing longevity and hours and hours of fun.
I do seem to have trouble with some of the time trial-esque races but I'm sure once I've become more accustomed with how the cars handle and the courses they'll come in time. I know I eventually managed to get perfect in every event in Burnout Revenge and I'm not the most accomplished racer.

The only problem I can see with me is getting sidetracked by other games and forgetting about this, I've done that so many times the past few years it's embarrassing.

I have 1250/1250 in B Paradise and am just 1 ach off 1000 in Revenge

This is not a patch long term on either

It gives a great initial high but the fallout from that is you have a long drop back to the reality that its a grindy mess with extra bunches of annoyance.

The traffic in previous B/O games was at least visible even though it did prove a tough task. This game is so dark in places that you just have no chance to see something ahead

In fact I am gonna reduce my long term score now to 5.

I had better get the last few ach soon or this might end up scoring minus summat

I haven't had much trouble with the traffic most of the time. The last game like this I had was a burnout one for the original xbox and the traffic was just as much a pain in that.

Have to agree about the loading screen and the rubber banding is a pain in the ass too. Sometimes I found it more effective to stay behind the leader and then overtake him toward the end before he had a chance to fight back.

I'm down to the last racer event to gold now for my racer achievement but the AI keeps beating me in the last mile or two Though the worst challenges in the game have to have been the rapid response and time trials which I just didn't find fun. I can't wait to beat that last race as then I'll just have to rank up my cop and I'll be done and at least I'll have fun doing that

For the most part I've enjoyed the game but as said in most reviews they should have stuck more to the hot pursuits then other race types. Screw variety I want to smash stuff up