sauceless
Alright, as succinct and provoking as that word is, it's not actually enough to convey my frustrations with the game. Hot Pursuit (2010) is the point where I fell off the series as a teen. No particular reason, I just never ended up picking that one at the time. But it's often mentioned as the last good game in the series even to this day, as EA continues to churn out mid after mid even while working with some fun ideas. And yeah, there's some fun to be had here. The driving is as arcadey as it's ever been in the series, as Criterion seem to have taken the handling from the Burnout games wholesale, but there's still some nuance to reaching and maintaining top speed and steering is heavy enough to make avoiding crashes fairly difficult. The actual races with cops turn pretty fun as you get access to more abilities, and I'm sure it's a riot in multiplayer. The dynamic time and weather system is actually just race specific scripts, but they help the game to reach some great visual heights and leave a lasting impression.
The rubberbanding is definitely the worst I've ever seen in a racing game, but it seems to be by design as the developers wanted you to have a tense dynamic experience with every race. Sometimes it does seem like the AI is cheating you out of a win, but most of the time it leads to the feeling that there's always a competitor nearby. Someone is always ready to overtake you on the next sharp corner. So you drift around, M.I.A.'s Born Free banging out of the radio, engaging in a tug of war on a scenic serpantine route, and it feels like you're properly challenged. Everything clicks. The game fulfills the fantasy promised in the og Underground opening movie. You grab the lead on the last hairpin and nitro ahead on the straight to the finish line, clawing the win from the opponent's hands.
As you cross the finish line, you're met with a freeze frame and a deafening silence. There's no fanfare, no replay, no cool posing, nothing. Just silence as the game accepts your win, counts up your earned exp and informs you that you've unlocked a new car (happens pretty much after every race), showing it off in a nondescript warehouse, a model that you might never find any use for, as all the cars handle the same anyway, more or less like a heavy brick on wheels. You're booted back to the map menu, you select the next race over tense spy thriller music.
That's the issue, right there. For some reason Hot Pursuit's chosen aesthetic is a spy thriller. It exudes infinite money and excitement, but it's also cold and distant. Its idea of cool is Jared Leto trying to sound like Chino Moreno as police lights reflect on the asphalt every single time you open the title screen. It's presenting something as goofy as an elite anti-racing police squad dropping spike strips on public roads from a helicopter as a dead serious action movie set piece. And there's little character to be found elsewhere. The Seacrest County, where the races take place, seems well designed with memorable areas from a winding mess of a highway to a snowy mountain range to a desert-like environment with plenty of options to go off-road. But all of your interaction with it is locked to either the races themselves or the map screen from which you choose the races. You can enter the free roam mode, but there's nothing to do except drive around aimlessly. You can't even go to a specific spot because there's no map to orient yourself around.
And I feel like this is emblematic of the game as a whole. While you can certainly have fun in it, it itself doesn't know how to have fun. And for a game in this series this is a huge blow.
Alright, as succinct and provoking as that word is, it's not actually enough to convey my frustrations with the game. Hot Pursuit (2010) is the point where I fell off the series as a teen. No particular reason, I just never ended up picking that one at the time. But it's often mentioned as the last good game in the series even to this day, as EA continues to churn out mid after mid even while working with some fun ideas. And yeah, there's some fun to be had here. The driving is as arcadey as it's ever been in the series, as Criterion seem to have taken the handling from the Burnout games wholesale, but there's still some nuance to reaching and maintaining top speed and steering is heavy enough to make avoiding crashes fairly difficult. The actual races with cops turn pretty fun as you get access to more abilities, and I'm sure it's a riot in multiplayer. The dynamic time and weather system is actually just race specific scripts, but they help the game to reach some great visual heights and leave a lasting impression.
The rubberbanding is definitely the worst I've ever seen in a racing game, but it seems to be by design as the developers wanted you to have a tense dynamic experience with every race. Sometimes it does seem like the AI is cheating you out of a win, but most of the time it leads to the feeling that there's always a competitor nearby. Someone is always ready to overtake you on the next sharp corner. So you drift around, M.I.A.'s Born Free banging out of the radio, engaging in a tug of war on a scenic serpantine route, and it feels like you're properly challenged. Everything clicks. The game fulfills the fantasy promised in the og Underground opening movie. You grab the lead on the last hairpin and nitro ahead on the straight to the finish line, clawing the win from the opponent's hands.
As you cross the finish line, you're met with a freeze frame and a deafening silence. There's no fanfare, no replay, no cool posing, nothing. Just silence as the game accepts your win, counts up your earned exp and informs you that you've unlocked a new car (happens pretty much after every race), showing it off in a nondescript warehouse, a model that you might never find any use for, as all the cars handle the same anyway, more or less like a heavy brick on wheels. You're booted back to the map menu, you select the next race over tense spy thriller music.
That's the issue, right there. For some reason Hot Pursuit's chosen aesthetic is a spy thriller. It exudes infinite money and excitement, but it's also cold and distant. Its idea of cool is Jared Leto trying to sound like Chino Moreno as police lights reflect on the asphalt every single time you open the title screen. It's presenting something as goofy as an elite anti-racing police squad dropping spike strips on public roads from a helicopter as a dead serious action movie set piece. And there's little character to be found elsewhere. The Seacrest County, where the races take place, seems well designed with memorable areas from a winding mess of a highway to a snowy mountain range to a desert-like environment with plenty of options to go off-road. But all of your interaction with it is locked to either the races themselves or the map screen from which you choose the races. You can enter the free roam mode, but there's nothing to do except drive around aimlessly. You can't even go to a specific spot because there's no map to orient yourself around.
And I feel like this is emblematic of the game as a whole. While you can certainly have fun in it, it itself doesn't know how to have fun. And for a game in this series this is a huge blow.