Probably the first NFS game I would actually consider playable.
They've finally fixed the handling. Handbrake won't send your car spinning anymore, but the collision model is still horrendous, so hitting your opponent will. There is this weird auto-correction thing going on, where every time you turn a little, your car returns to the forward direction, but that doesn't affect the gameplay much.
Visually I found the game kinda boring, there's only a couple of pretty-looking tracks. And the PC version strangely looks like an emulated PS1 version. Even on the max settings there is pop-in and that weird deformation of textures and models that you usually see in PS1 games. The music was pretty decent, but kinda forgettable.
I like how much customization you have in almost every aspect of the game. You can tweak your car's stats and handling, radically change the HUD, select the class of the cars in the race and even alter some of the track's settings. There is now an option for precipitation, and the night mode actually feels like night now, although there are still little to no streetlights, making the more urban areas look like ghost-towns. In fact I kinda hated the night-mode, it's like driving in near-complete darkness.
The one thing that prevented me from enjoying this game the most was the absolutely insane difficulty. I could not beat the first track in the tournament even on the beginner setting. The only way I was able to start winning was by playing the Single Race mode and selecting a Class A car for myself and Class C cars for opponents. But even then you gotta make little to no mistakes, as the game is unforgiving.
I would say its sequel, Hot Pursuit 2, is an improvement in pretty much every way, rendering the original obsolete. There is literally nothing here that HP2 doesn't do better.
They've finally fixed the handling. Handbrake won't send your car spinning anymore, but the collision model is still horrendous, so hitting your opponent will. There is this weird auto-correction thing going on, where every time you turn a little, your car returns to the forward direction, but that doesn't affect the gameplay much.
Visually I found the game kinda boring, there's only a couple of pretty-looking tracks. And the PC version strangely looks like an emulated PS1 version. Even on the max settings there is pop-in and that weird deformation of textures and models that you usually see in PS1 games. The music was pretty decent, but kinda forgettable.
I like how much customization you have in almost every aspect of the game. You can tweak your car's stats and handling, radically change the HUD, select the class of the cars in the race and even alter some of the track's settings. There is now an option for precipitation, and the night mode actually feels like night now, although there are still little to no streetlights, making the more urban areas look like ghost-towns. In fact I kinda hated the night-mode, it's like driving in near-complete darkness.
The one thing that prevented me from enjoying this game the most was the absolutely insane difficulty. I could not beat the first track in the tournament even on the beginner setting. The only way I was able to start winning was by playing the Single Race mode and selecting a Class A car for myself and Class C cars for opponents. But even then you gotta make little to no mistakes, as the game is unforgiving.
I would say its sequel, Hot Pursuit 2, is an improvement in pretty much every way, rendering the original obsolete. There is literally nothing here that HP2 doesn't do better.