Hot Pursuit Preview – E3 2010
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The opening announcement of EA’s press conference the day before E3 was for Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Having moved the development of the franchise from Black Box to Criterion, makers of latest Burnout Paradise, sparked much interest from the fans. Burnout Paradise was a fun title, and with Hot Pursuit, the developer aims to reboot the classic franchise, starting with a familiar title. The original Hot Pursuit was one of the major cornerstones of Need for Speed, and the new version looks to repeat that success. During E3, we had a chance to view a private presentation of the game, as well as give it a spin on the show floor.
Criterion games have stated that their goal is to reinvent the game for a connected generation. The aim is for anyone to pick up the controller and have fun within 10 seconds – a bold expectation, but also an intriguing one. The live demo being shown ran on PS3, as the development team commented on the game. Hot Pursuit will include many community features so that players always feel connected, even when not playing together online. There is the NFS Feed, a tool similar to the Facebook activity wall, where players can see the newest and best scores from their friends and rivals, as well as other general messages.
Another integral part of the game is the Autolog system. All of your gameplay will be recorded, then automatically published on the Feed and compared to all your friends. Everyone will instantly know that you hold the best score or fastest time on a track in single player, and will be able to easily jump right into their own game and try to beat your time. Autolog Recommends is a tool that will dynamically make gameplay suggestions each time you play or one of your friends accomplishes something. You can play in any event type, single or multiplayer – the Autolog will track everything and automatically create challenges for your friends, and more. Because it is all done automatically, it is like playing multiplayer – without actually requiring everyone to be online at the same time.
For the first time in the game, players will be able to take part in a full career mode as both racers and cops, online and off. The careers are separate, so you can make progress in one without being dependent on your progress in the other. There is an XP system that lets players unlock various new tracks and cars, and it is based on bounty collected in the game. Continuing on the social trend, the game allows players to use the official website and add friends from other platforms, so Xbox and PC players can compare scores with PS3 players via the website – there is no cross platform play or NFS feed, however. Online play features up to 8 players, with any combination of racers and cops allowed.
Finally getting down to some core gameplay, the first thing to notice is the game looks great. Running on what we presume is an updated Burnout Paradise engine, the cars look fantastic and the environments are varied. The game is finally back to the great outdoors, so expect to see a lot of open maps full of vegetation and civilian traffic. Once the race starts, the racers must escape the police by losing visual contact and then attempting to hide. The goal for the cops is to take the racers down with enough damage – no longer are you required to box in the enemy driver, making the cops’ job much more reasonable. Each racer has a health meter, and as the race wears on the damage on the cars becomes more visible, though it doesn’t seem to affect the gameplay.
Both racers and cops have four different special abilities at their disposal. For example, the cops have the ability to deploy roadblocks, call in aerial support, and set up spike strips. Racers meanwhile can use a jammer to break the cop’s navigation and abilities system, use a decoy on the minimap, and boost using overdrive. There are more abilities promised, such as upgradable aerial support. Cops can call in a helicopter that prevents the player from hiding even if they lose line of sight with the police, and later models can follow the racer into tunnels to continue the chase. The abilities recharge during the race, and the longer the race, the more bounty is earned – the bigger the payout for those who can escape, and bigger prize for the cops if they catch them.
After the presentation, we had a chance to get our hands on the game. Playing as a racer, the car handled well, with a predominantly arcade style of driving physics. That’s not a complaint by any means, as the original game was a fun and easy race title, and with Burnout the developer already has a proven track record of making very fun and easy to control titles. Using the various abilities to escape the human opponent was very entertaining, and since the world is open, making hard corners or even driving the opposite way makes for great fun. After escaping successfully by losing our pursuers, we had a go at the cop side of things. The gameplay for the cops is definitely more strategic – rather than desperately using up abilities as soon as possible and hope to escape, the cops must carefully string their driving and abilities together to make a successful catch or destroy the opponent’s car.
After watching the live demo and then trying the game, it is clear that Criterion are ready to return the franchise to its glory. Slick visuals combined with still simple yet refined and ultimately fun gameplay, Hot Pursuit looks to be a real contender for this holiday season. With the game ready to ship this November for PC, 360 and PS3, the development is nearly complete. And if what we saw was close to the final product, then there is a ton to look forward to, for both fans and general racing enthusiasts alike.