- May 20, 2010
- 4,020
- 1
- 81
I've been a big fan of the Need For Speed games for years now. Starting back with the original Hot Pursuit back in the day. I went on to play High Stakes, Porsche Unleashed, Underground 1 & 2, Most Wanted, and even enjoyed Carbon and Prostreet to an extent. Then there was Shift 1 & 2 which while a departure from what the series was in the past were great games in their own way.
Finally I got to pick up HP 2010 in a recent Gamers Gate sale for $7.50. When I heard that this game was developed by Criterion I was a little concerned. Don't get me wrong I love Criterion. Burnout 3, 4, and Paradise are fantastic games, but I was still concerned with what they would do with the NFS franchise.
What they delivered was more of a "Burnout with real cars" than a true to form NFS game. That said the game is still fantastic fun. The physics of the game lean strongly towards the arcade side of things. Cars here definitely have more weight than they did in the Burnout game, and I am still debating whether or not that's a good thing. On one hand it makes the cars feel like real cars with some weight behind them. On the other it can make it difficult to make twitch reactions to avoid oncoming traffic, spike strips, etc. At they very least it differentiates it from the Burnout series in this way.
Now the cars. There is a good variety of cars here from the Mazda RX8 to the Pagani Zonda. You unlock high end exotics very early on in the game. Unfortunately the only thing which seems to differentiate the cars is their top speed. Overall all the cars feel samey and all seem to have the same handling characteristics. Still that didn't dampen the thrill of driving a hypercar into oncoming traffic at 400KPH. The game has a thrilling sense of speed which I have come to expect from Criterion. It's also worth noting this is one of the few racing games I am able to play in a 3rd person view. Very much because of the arcade handling.
Track wise the scenery is very nice, but the tracks themselves aren't all to memorable. They seem mostly to be a random collection of straights, banked turns, S curves, and hairpins. Most of the thrill in this game comes from outracing your opponents in dangerous high speed situations rather than memorizing and mastering the tracks like in the original Hot Pursuit/High Stakes.
Visually the game is great. As I mentioned nice scenery, and Seacrest county has a nice variety of locales. Most of the roads and assets will be whizzing by so quickly you wont even take notice, but they car models are very well done. This is a bit of a lazy PC port though. Graphical options are minimal, and it would have been nice to increase AA and AF levels more in game. It is perfectly functional though. No complaints about bugs or crashes.
It seems that they put a much greater emphasis on the races than the cop events, though I still wish they had broken them up into separate careers. There are several different event types. The ones I enjoyed the most were the head to head races, normal races, and hot pursuits. Hot pursuits in particular could get crazy with cops calling in roadblocks, firing EMPs, and laying down spike strips. All the while you are trying to counter this and maintain a podium finish. The difficulty really starts to ratchet up towards the end of the game when cops start deploying upgraded versions of their weapons. Crashing in this game is spectacular, and is made even more so because of the real car models (when compared to the made up rides of Burnout). Audio design is also great; I would highly recommend playing this game with the volume turned up to 11.
Overall I think this game is good fun. While it doesn't live up to my expectations from an NFS game, it does stand as a good title in its own right. I would recommend and arcade racer fan pick this up, especially when on sale.
8/10
Now back to earning some gold medals.
Finally I got to pick up HP 2010 in a recent Gamers Gate sale for $7.50. When I heard that this game was developed by Criterion I was a little concerned. Don't get me wrong I love Criterion. Burnout 3, 4, and Paradise are fantastic games, but I was still concerned with what they would do with the NFS franchise.
What they delivered was more of a "Burnout with real cars" than a true to form NFS game. That said the game is still fantastic fun. The physics of the game lean strongly towards the arcade side of things. Cars here definitely have more weight than they did in the Burnout game, and I am still debating whether or not that's a good thing. On one hand it makes the cars feel like real cars with some weight behind them. On the other it can make it difficult to make twitch reactions to avoid oncoming traffic, spike strips, etc. At they very least it differentiates it from the Burnout series in this way.
Now the cars. There is a good variety of cars here from the Mazda RX8 to the Pagani Zonda. You unlock high end exotics very early on in the game. Unfortunately the only thing which seems to differentiate the cars is their top speed. Overall all the cars feel samey and all seem to have the same handling characteristics. Still that didn't dampen the thrill of driving a hypercar into oncoming traffic at 400KPH. The game has a thrilling sense of speed which I have come to expect from Criterion. It's also worth noting this is one of the few racing games I am able to play in a 3rd person view. Very much because of the arcade handling.
Track wise the scenery is very nice, but the tracks themselves aren't all to memorable. They seem mostly to be a random collection of straights, banked turns, S curves, and hairpins. Most of the thrill in this game comes from outracing your opponents in dangerous high speed situations rather than memorizing and mastering the tracks like in the original Hot Pursuit/High Stakes.
Visually the game is great. As I mentioned nice scenery, and Seacrest county has a nice variety of locales. Most of the roads and assets will be whizzing by so quickly you wont even take notice, but they car models are very well done. This is a bit of a lazy PC port though. Graphical options are minimal, and it would have been nice to increase AA and AF levels more in game. It is perfectly functional though. No complaints about bugs or crashes.
It seems that they put a much greater emphasis on the races than the cop events, though I still wish they had broken them up into separate careers. There are several different event types. The ones I enjoyed the most were the head to head races, normal races, and hot pursuits. Hot pursuits in particular could get crazy with cops calling in roadblocks, firing EMPs, and laying down spike strips. All the while you are trying to counter this and maintain a podium finish. The difficulty really starts to ratchet up towards the end of the game when cops start deploying upgraded versions of their weapons. Crashing in this game is spectacular, and is made even more so because of the real car models (when compared to the made up rides of Burnout). Audio design is also great; I would highly recommend playing this game with the volume turned up to 11.
Overall I think this game is good fun. While it doesn't live up to my expectations from an NFS game, it does stand as a good title in its own right. I would recommend and arcade racer fan pick this up, especially when on sale.
8/10
Now back to earning some gold medals.
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