14 DAY TRIAL // Matt Webster, who is a senior producer working at Criterion, has said that the area of driving space that players will be able to race on in the upcoming Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit will be four times bigger than the area included in the studio's previous racing title, the much acclaimed Burnout Paradise.
Webster talked about the game his team is working on with the official United Kingdom site of Electronic Arts and stated, “Put simply, it’s around four times bigger than Burnout Paradise, for cars to be able to usefully reach 260 miles an hour.”
He added, “So, well over 100 miles of tarmac road and 30-40 percent more off-road and shortcut areas. We’ve opened a lot of that space up for race and chase, as you are playing online versus human cops. At night time, you can just turn your lights off and hide behind a bush, something that isn’t really achievable with AI. When you include elevation changes, it’s a chunk of room. For anyone familiar with Burnout, it’s about four times larger.”
The new Need for Speed is set to take the series back to its roots, with the players being able to take on the role of either a high speed racer or a cop.
A full single player campaign is planned for both the career options and Criterion says that the cops will have a small advantage when it comes to stopping the racer but that both sides will have access to tricks like radar jamming and spike strips.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is set to arrive on the PlayStation 3 from Sony, the Xbox 360 from Microsoft and the PC on November 16 in the United States and the usual three days later on European markets.
A stripped down Nintendo Wii version of the game is also created by Exient.