Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 - IGN (original) (raw)

The best games are those that not only present a challenge to the mind and reflexes, but also speak to the need for escapist fantasy in entertainment. Fantasy, of course, comes in all forms, both highly exaggerated and relatively mundane -- sure, there are magical worlds full of elves and dwarves and medieval villages that for whatever reason don't smell awful, but there are also more basic, familiar, down-to-earth fantasies that a game can satisfy. Take, for example, driving. There is not a single human who has been pulled over by a cop and failed to contemplate, at least for a split second, the prospect of putting the hammer down and taking off.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 delivers that fantasy in unadulterated form, and several other fine fantasies besides. After all, attempting to elude the cops in your 1989 Honda Civic DX is not much of a fantasy. Attempting to elude the cops in a red Ferrari 550 Barchetta, top down, is pretty good as fantasies go. Hot Pursuit 2 is mightily impressive simply as a collection of exotic cars -- never have this many sweet rides been packed into a single game.

Gran Turismo 3 remains the best-looking racer on PS2 by a substantial margin (a margin we're starting to doubt any game will be able to make up), but Need For Speed's engine drives it well enough that it can focus on what it does best: fast, competitive, exciting arcade racing. And you'll definitely want to play it on PS2, since this version has plenty of features that the competition lacks.

Really Cool Cars

Skip down to the next heading if you want to read about the game, rather than watch the author wretchedly geek out. Now, I like cars, as you can tell if you've read some of my other racing reviews. I pick up Emap's CAR magazine off the newsstand every month, I can dope out the difference between BMW 3-series with a little effort, and I'll happily share my opinion on the Subaru Impreza's headlights or the front-end design on the Enzo Ferrari (respectively, I like them, and I don't like it). I like cars an awful lot.

If you like cars, you'll probably get a kick out of the simple fantasy factor in Hot Pursuit 2's car lineup. EA has to have shelled out a positively unearthly amount of money for the licenses in this game. The Ferrari 550, 360, and F50; Porsche's 911, Boxster, and Carrera GT; Lotus; BMW; Mercedes; American representatives from Corvette and Ford; Aston Martins; [insert keen car here]. Even the McLaren F1 is in attendance, both the original and Le Mans editions. They are of course not simulated with Gran Turismo's exacting precision, but it's cool to simply be given the impression of driving the world's greatest sports cars.

Gameplay

Now, on to the relatively important bit. Hot Pursuit 2 is a sequel in spirit to Need For Speed III, three installments back, which was the first game in the series to make high-speed chases its central gameplay element. It's generally considered Need For Speed's high-water mark, as subsequent games diluted their focus in comparison. In a larger sense, one could view it as the last hurrah for a long tradition of arcade racing, as it appeared at the very same time as Gran Turismo's rise to prominence, when simulation racing hit the mainstream with the news that driving a Honda Civic could in fact be an exciting experience.

The creators of Hot Pursuit 2 are having none of that, of course. In fact, the biggest knock against this game you could come up with as far as its basic design is that it presents, more or less, the straight Hot Pursuit experience. There are more tracks, more challenges, improved graphics, and so on, but the game still handles in the same way. On the other hand, this gameplay model was manifestly not broken, and the extra trappings around it make the sequel a worthwhile effort.

There are two basic game modes available -- racing and chasing -- split up into different sub-modes. Both the competitive race and Hot Pursuit modes are focused on an array of 30 different challenges, arranged into an expanding and contracting tree. Each challenge unlocks some kind of reward, like a new car or track for the other game modes, as well as another challenge or two on the tree. The way the tree is arranged, it immediately expands into several different options, and then contracts down once you're further into the championship, making the final challenges more difficult to attack. The variety of choices makes for a nicely non-linear progression, though -- you can race straight to a particular challenge if you really want that reward, or gradually go through and unlock every item in sequence.

The different challenges range from solo time-trials to competitive race series. Most of the competitive races and chases are in "knockout" format, where the racer in last place gets kicked out after every lap until only one racer is left standing. This is nicely integrated with the goal structure, because if there are multiple challenges to unlock on the tree, you can still occasionally unlock one or two with a second- or third-place finish. The challenges can often take a significant investment of time (like the lengthy race series in SSX), so it's good that the rewards aren't an all-or-nothing proposition. Some features are also unlocked by acquiring Hot Pursuit points, which are awarded for particularly impressive feats of driving or stunt action. Thus, even a losing effort may net enough points to unlock a new car or track.

Rewards or no, Hot Pursuit 2 also captures the pure fun of driving as well as any of the best arcade racers. The handling is simple enough to grasp quickly, but there's a modicum of variation between cars to represent the effects of wheelbase, drivetrain, weight, power, and other factors. The Lotus Elise is very quick and nimble, if a little squirelly in a collision thanks to its light weight, while something like a Mercedes CL55 has appropriately whale-like driving mechanics. The top-notch supercars are of course blazing fast, and the sense of speed is excellent in any of the three view modes (one first-person and two third-person). The regular race mode provides decent competition, and only a small amount of the old yo-yo AI that plagued the PlayStation Need For Speed games, but the real thrills are found in the Hot Pursuit mode. For those of you who missed the first Hot Pursuit, it's simple -- the cops try to stop you, while you keep going. The police will try and run you off the road, set up road blocks, lay down spike strips, and even send in an attack helicopter equipped with bombs, missiles, and tire-slashing caltrops.

The opponent AI is basic, but effective. The cops have a decent array of aggressive driving techniques, and they'll work together if they manage to meet each other on the road, sandwiching their prey in between two patrol cars or using one to cut the target off and the other to shove it onto the shoulder. Once the chopper comes out, the challenge level gets downright vicious -- you'd better have superior driving skills if you want to avoid a bust at that point. Three busts end the race, although even one can knock enough time off the clock to lose the race for you.

What I found most impressive about the design of the Pursuit mode is that the police don't play favorites. In a race with three or four competitors, everyone will receive an equal amount of hassling from the cops, and it's very common for AI racers to be taken out by the police. In fact, it could be argued that there's some merit to a "turtling" strategy in the earlier stages of a knockout race, holding back so the patrol cars focus their attentions on the leading racers. Let them get pulled over, and there's a window of opportunity to leap ahead while the cops are otherwise occupied.

The other key strategic element in any racing mode is mastering the many shortcuts that honeycomb each track. There are forks in the road of every track, used to create different courses by blocking off one route or another, but aside from all that, there are hidden paths not shown on the map, which cut through frontage roads and tunnels to shave seconds off a solo time or provide a few lengths on the opposition in a knockout race. The track design is very well-done, including some small shortcuts that are easy to find as well as longer, better-hidden shortcuts, and it's fairly integrated with the AI, so the CPU-controlled racers can't be completely dominated by a human player that knows all the secret routes. The AI racers can follow them too.

Hot Pursuit 2 has multiplayer options in either mode, including regular split-screen races and the competitive "Be The Cop" mode. There, one player is the speeder while the other is a pursuing patrol car. The goal is to bust the speeder within the time limit (or escape, if you're the speeder), using a limited supply of roadblocks and helicopter attacks, as well as plain old dirty driving. The same game is available as a single-player experience, against AI speeders, but it's more fun to crash into your friends, although lining things up obviously demands more precision of the cop player.

Graphics

This is, again, not quite Gran Turismo. Hot Pursuit 2's visual assets are its expansive environments and its sense of speed, which help make up for things like aliasing and a lower general level of detail. The backgrounds have a nice sense of scale, including some impressive constructions like seaside villages and desert truck stops, and the textures are very crisp when they're not turning into a blur as you race past.

The quality of the modeling and lighting on the cars is substantially better than what you'll see in the Xbox and Gamecube versions -- actually, more or less everything is better than the other platform versions, so look forward to a future Head-to-Head feature for all the details. There are some particularly cool lighting effects on the car bodies as you drive through trees or a windowed tunnel, and the sun and shadow alternately play across it. Inside, each car has realistic interior modeling visible through the windows. The dash features seem accurate, even if there's no proper in-car view, and the drivers sit in the proper spots, whether it's on the right side of a British car or smack in the middle of the McLaren. One special effect that may inspire mixed opinions is a camera cutaway that the game performs when you catch enough air. While the car is flying, the camera does a 180 slow-motion pan around it, adding a motion blur filter for extra effect. It's a bit like the Matrix-knockoff effect that was in the early versions of SSX Tricky, and wound up canned due to overwhelmingly negative press reaction, but in Hot Pursuit's case it's not that bad. You aren't attempting to do anything in the air here, as you were in SSX, so it doesn't break up your rhythm so much.

The game's other two Matrix-on-demand effects, mapped to the lower shoulder buttons, are actually rather useful once you get past their apparent silliness. One, a pause and 360 pan around the car, is helpful for checking out what's close behind you, while the other, a pause and zoom ahead on the track, can reveal the precise location of shortcuts and roadblocks up ahead. So yes, they look ridiculous, but you might want to try them and see what assistance they might provide.

It's long been an article of faith that heavy car damage modeling is forbidden when you're using licensed cars, but Hot Pursuit 2 gives the lie to that notion. After my first race with the Ferrari 360, I was reminded of the lines spoken by that kid on the dirtbike in The Rock. Every car can be damaged, including scratched paint, smashed windows, bent bumpers, crumpled body panels, and steam rising from broken radiators. This doesn't affect performance -- the only damage that can actually stop you is slashed tires -- but it's certainly a cool cosmetic effect, and another element of the whole test-drive fantasy. In this world, not only can you afford to drive all these cars, you can afford to drive them as if you didn't care how much they cost.

The framerate can become a sticking point amidst all this, but only in crowded situations. Four competing cars on screen in an area with a lot of background architecture, like the burning section of the National Forest track, will see some pretty significant slowdown. However, the game runs smoothly for the majority of the time, and periods of slowdown pass quickly enough. Hot Pursuit 2 always maintains an excellent sense of speed, regardless of view mode, including some subtle camera movements to heighten the perception of Going Really Fast.

Sound

Need For Speed is tracked with a fairly basic selection of licensed tunes, focused on the theme of guitar-driven rock. The variations are "slightly more techno," "slightly less techno," "slightly more hip-hop," and "slightly less hip-hop." It does include a playlist editor to tweak things to your liking, however, and I very much appreciate the inclusion of instrumental versions of all the tracks. I know some players prefer there be no lyrics in their game music, so this is a nice concession to that camp. In my particular case, I'm pleased that I can kill the lyrics in the game's one Rush song -- Geddy Lee is an excellent bass player, but I've never been so fond of his voice.

Judging licensed music always comes down to matters of taste like that. What this game could unquestionably use, however, is meatier, more realistic engine noises. There's some differentiation between the cars, but even in the first-person view mode, the sound of the engine is never a palpable presence. The Lotus Elise, for example, is as quiet and well-behaved as a low-end Civic -- I've ridden in a real Elise, and its engine is so loud there's no point in turning on the stereo. Sitting with a V8 behind your head in a Ferrari 360 ought to provide a real impact, rather than middling accompaniment.

The best element of the game's sound design is definitely the CB chatter, delivering the communications between the Hot Pursuit mode's police opposition to your ears via a radio scanner. Listening in adds to the atmosphere of the game while also providing intelligence to plan future strategy -- if you keep your ears open, you'll hear where the cops are setting up spike strips and roadblocks, and get an impression of the general level of opposition. There's a lot of variation to what they have to say, including several different basic cop identities: the uptight rookie, the Roscoe P. Coltrane yahoo, and so on. Best of all, of course, is the epitaph delivered by a cop that you managed to force into a disabling crash -- "54 to County, I'm gonna need a tow."

Verdict

Certainly an antisocial sort of attitude, but that's what fictional entertainment is for, to provide an outlet for those kinds of fantasies. Hot Pursuit 2 has its finger right on the pulse of what makes an arcade racer fun. The controls are simple enough to grasp, but the driving challenges presented require real skill to complete, and it has an excellent reward structure to keep the player motivated through all of those challenges.

Myself, I'm still desperate to get at that McLaren F1, so if you will please excuse me now...