Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit Launching In Europe Tomorrow, Already Up On Torrent Sites
One of the rides you'll get to drive in NFS : Hot Pursuit
Even if you’re a casual gamer, you’re probably familiar with Need for Speed, since it is the most representative title for racing games. The series, published by Electronic Arts and developed by several studios including EA Black Box has sold over 100 million copies so far. The latest title of the series, Need For Speed : Hot Pursuit made its debut in the US on November 16 and will reach European stores tomorrow. Despite the fact that it’s not yet available for purchase, naturally, several well-intended people have already uploaded it on torrent sites. Reportedly it can be found on Rapidshare as well.
It’s fast appearance and availability on such sites is quite easy to explain. Millions of users worldwide couldn’t wait to get themselves a copy of the game, through any means available to them. I’ll have to admit that I have some pretty pleasant memories involving Need for Speed. “Hot Pursuit” – the mode – first appeared in 1998 when it was introduced in Need for Speed III. The main deal was that the player got to either fill the shoes of a runaway, tying to outrun and keep safe from cops or the shoes of a cop, trying to arrest people who are speeding by. It’s been present in most titles released from that point on, including the immensely popular Most Wanted, which you might have gotten the chance to play in 2005.
Before I start talking about the latest Need for Speed, I’ll have to mention that I’m quite impressed with the way Need for Speed titles evolved throughout the years. Sure, some may not have received incredibly positive reviews, but they all brought something new. Some placed a lot of focus on car customization (aka pimping your ride with decals and funky stickers). Others, like Most Wanted, felt like the illegitimate child of NFS Underground and Grand Theft Auto by adding a Blacklist feature, where players would get to compete with 15 other racers (on the list) and beat them to unlock various rewards. As for the police, let’s just say that cars are everywhere in Most Wanted, and I guess that’s exactly the point of the game. Carbon, out in 2006, brought drift events back and shifted focus from chases with police to going against various crews in an area. A different way to make progress through the game was added. The map got separated in four distinct areas, each of which was divided in zones that you’d have to conquer. In Carbon the concept of a “wingman” was first introduced as were three categories for cars: tuners, muscles and exotics. NFS Prostreet and Undercover didn’t receive a lot of praise from players worldwide but in 2009 came Shift, which completely “shifted” the opinion we’d formed on Need for Speed. Shift focused more on legal real-life-like circuit racing and was considered a racing simulation game rather than an arcade racer like its predecessors. Some people loved it, other people admitted that it was the “arcade” part they were most fond of.
As for the most recent NFS : Hot Pursuit, on Wednesday publisher Electronic Arts announced that the demo for the game had already been downloaded 2 million times on consoles in the two weeks following release. Apparently that’s the highest number of downloads for any of the NFS games. The game is expected to sell 4.2 million units during this holiday quarter. If you ask me, people can’t wait to try it out because they were mildly disappointed by the last three or so NFS titles. In that period a lot of other racing games took the spotlight whereas NFS continued to be famous strictly because it had heritage. Hot Pursuit, however, promises to be different, and bring back that special something it had when it started out. The chances of that happening are great, partially because it was developed by Criterion Games (the UK studio who came up with the Burnout series).
Things have changed yet again. For the first time in years, there’s no complex storyline. No actors cutting you off when you really want to play, with a non-responsive keyboard and the inability to skip a cinematic. Criterion chose to go back in time, get the essence of Need for Speed and add it to this new title in the series. You won’t spend hours tuning your car. Rather, you’ll get to focus on racing, being chased by cops and escaping by making use of the various tools at your disposal.
“We’re extremely proud today to deliver the best racing game this holiday season. Based on the critical response, we see that fans will enjoy a return to the game’s roots of intense cops vs racers action, but now built around a highly competitive network for the ultimate in one-upmanship — Autolog,” says Craig Sullivan, Creative Director at Criterion Games. He added that he’s exceptionally curious to see how many new friendships this game will create, and how many it might break.
The main selling point of the game: hours of police chases in extremely expensive super cars. The driving isn’t realistic in a racing simulator kind of way, but that’s not what the game was going for anyway. The main purpose of it is to be as fun as it possibly can. Players can choose their role (either cops or racers). Both sides get some pretty good looking and fast rolling vehicles as well as tools to make it through the race. Cops can for instance set up roadblocks and call helis for assistance. The action takes place in Seacrest County, an area that’s pretty pleasing to the eye as well as the biggest open world ever to be included in a Need for Speed title.
So let’s first cover what you do as a racer, then. Racers will receive bounty as they progress, attempting to become the most wanted racers in Seacrest Country (in a NFS Most Wanted inspired kind of way). Gaining bounty will allow them to unlock better cars, more maps and some special Racer-exclusive weaponry to deploy against those nasty cops that keep chasing you around. Weapons and equipment include: Jammer for blocking all local SCPD communications, Spike strips, a dangerous electromagnetic weapon that launches a high static burst at any target and turbo for…you know, going as fast as the speed of light. There’s really no need to explain what you do as a cop. If you see a car and it’s going too fast, then your main goal is to chase it down until it stops. Cops also get bounty, as they bust speeders. More bounty means a player will progress up the police ladder and the results are as always, more events and faster cruisers. I’m not going to list the cars each of the two sides will get, though you’ll find a complete list if you go here. But yes, they cover everything between the NFS standard Mazda RX-8 to Bugatti Veyron.
In Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, a social networking element was included for the very first time. It’s called the Autolog and it’s mean to connect players with their friends. Each person’s performance will be tracked and the results will be compared. Autolog was also designed to deliver challenges based on what a certain player’s friends have been up to in the past period of time. Obviously, partaking in the same experiences gives two people a lot to talk about. Along with NFS : Hot Pursuit people will also receive an Online Pass which will give them access to multiplayer, two exclusive cars, the Lamborghini LP 550-2 Valentino Balboni and the Lamborghini LP 570-4 Superleggera and 10x the storage capacity at no additional cost. Apparently the content can be had simply by using the in-game registration code.
It’d be exceptionally easy to say that this is probably one of the best arcade racers of this year but each player will have to decide how appealing it really is. The game is available for Playstation 3, Wii, Xbox 360 or PC so it doesn’t really matter which of these you own, you’ll be able to try the game out anyway. Finally, for those of you that own an iPhone, the game is already available on the App Store and will work on the iPhone and iPod Touch. The principles of the game are just about the same, but as you’d expect, it’s been toned down to work on mobile. The mobile version was created by EA Mobile’s IronMonkey Studios. Throughout the game players will get to drive as a cop in up to 24 career events. 15 high performance cars are available as well as some pretty impressive scenery and roads to drive on. When not home buttoning your hours away and chasing cops, you might want to give the mobile version a try as well, it might be worth it.
With our US readers are probably busy with Hot Pursuit as we speak, European readers will have to hang on for one more day, assuming they haven’t already picked the title up on torrents (which hopefully they didn’t). Metrolic does not encourage any illegal download, therefore no download link has been provided in this article. We sincerely suggest you head to the stores and buy Hot Pursuit. This way, you’ll know for sure those people delivering the game are getting paid and they’ll continue to deliver new and spectacular titles in the future.
