14 DAY TRIAL // Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is the new driving game from Criterion and Electronic Arts, the one which is supposed to bring back the sense of danger and excitement the series lacked for a few years.
Below I'll find out if the first hour of gaming is enough to get me interested in speeder and enforcer racing games.
12:44. Do I really need to see a promotional video for Need for Speed Shift 2 Unleashed before actually experiencing the current Hot Pursuit?
I can understand marketing but this might be a step too far.
13:01. I only needed to restart the first of the police missions about four times in order to go under the one minute mark for a Gold reward, clocking in a time of just 20 seconds for the suspect takedown.
With the Autolog engaged and a lot of friends playing I can easily see Hot Pursuit becoming the sort of game where a lot of the earlier races will be forever used to clock in better and better times in an effort from some gamers to show off their skills.
13:02. Trouble is for all those attempts I had to sit through the same bit of boring cutscene even after I told the game I wanted to skip it.
13:15. The second cop based mission only took me two tries to complete, with the main lesson learned is that a complete disregard for safety and a lot of hits in the back can take out any troublesome racer.
13:26. It seems to be easier being an outlaw and the music selection is more interesting.
13:33. The first Ocean Bay event is really, really hard as the road twists and turns and it seems that the only way to go up to gold is to learn and then use all the shortcuts, with a lot of crashes involved in the actual learning process.
13:43. One thing I am not going to like in the new Hot Pursuit is the apparent high number of missions which require no damage to the car.
I hated the idea as far back as NFS: Porsche and it really makes little sense when it comes to actual chases and police cars.