In striving for a cinematic experience, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit frustratingly leaves functionality in the dust.
Firstly, some background: the game's Career mode allows you to play as either a cop or a racer, and you accumulate bounty through races, time trials, hot pursuits, rapid response events, and interceptor events. The more bounty you accumulate, the more cars you unlock and the higher your rank as either a cop or a racer, depending on what events you play, goes up. This keeps happening until you reach level 20 as either a cop or a racer. Hit 20 as a cop, and you become an Ultimate Enforcer; hit 20 as a racer, and you become Most Wanted.
Hot Pursuit does get some things right. For starters, the equipment both racers and cops get to use during pursuit sequences is quite rad; from mobile spike strips to EMP cannons, there's some really interesting stuff to use strategically in pursuits, and it keeps the player on their toes no matter what side of the law they might be on. Perhaps a bigger deal is the vehicle roster, though; in true Need for Speed fashion, there's hardly a tuner in sight, and the few that are there (Nissan GTR, Mazda RX8, Mitsubishi Lancer) are in their original forms. The real selling point are the crazy number of exotics available, though. Ferraris, Lamborghinis, McLarens, Bugattis, the gang is all here, and there's most likely a cop car variant of your favorite exotic car (Lamborghini Reventon cop car? Yes, please!).
Not only that, but it looks and sounds great. Racing games aren't really known for their original score, but Hot Pursuit's score is truly good listening and helps set the mood for a tense chase. The licensed soundtrack is pretty good, too, with highlights coming from New Politics and 30 Seconds to Mars as well as some great hip-hop and electronica tunes. And the graphics are some kind of awesome. The cars look absolutely drool-inducing, especially the exotic cars that look as though they're doing 100 MPH when at a standstill. The environments you race around are quite beautiful, as well, with good environmental effects; racing in a thunderstorm is quite the spectacle to behold.
You would think that, despite all of this, the game plays wonderfully, correct? The Autolog feature stands out as being great. When it comes to Autolog, think Facebook/Twitter meets online multiplayer racing; that's about what it entails. Blur did something similar, and it works just as well with Hot Pursuit as it did there. The online works well enough, too, with only sporadic bouts of lag. The downside there is that the EA Online Pass is in full effect, meaning rental copy players are left in the cold unless they want to buy one directly through the online marketplace.
This is where the good things end, for nothing can save the game from just playing poorly. The handling of all of these cars is either loose, twitchy, or loose and twitchy, which already starts sounding a death knell for the game. Even all-wheel drive cars like the Porsche Targa S or the Subaru Impreza suffer from some sort of handling defect. It's also, at times, impossible to get to top speed in some vehicles where it should be a bit easier than normal; I barely reached 210 MPH in a McLaren F1, and that was with nitrous active as I was going downhill. The aforementioned Career Mode plays like a chore, and it doesn't take much before boredom from playing the same gametypes over and over with no actual humans playing alongside you starts sinking in. The cop time trials are even more frustrating; hit any wall, any traffic car, even if it is for a split-second, and you incur time penalties, which may prevent drivers from getting coveted gold medals. AI enemies are not helping, either, as they oftentimes are a little too difficult even for someone just starting out in the game. One more little thing: the cool abilities mentioned above are all mapped to the D-pad, making activating them awkward at times.
It does not help that the camera is as much of a hassle as it was in earlier 3D Sonic games. The outside chase camera is situated just above the roof of the car, as far as height in-game is concerned, meaning that it's oftentimes difficult to determine if there's a vehicle ahead of you, even if you're not in the oncoming lane. The bumper and hood cameras aren't much help, either; in fact, the bumper cam feels like it's glued to the ground. The cinematic camera angles the game sometimes incurs are even worse offenses. Hit someone with an EMP, for example, and you'll get one of these cinematic angles...and oftentimes end up in front of your target car, which is absolutely not where you want to be in a pursuit in this game.
There are so many things that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit does wrong that it's hard for me to recommend this game. After all of the hype and advertising surrounding the game, it felt decidedly flat thanks to overall poor mechanics. There is a fine line that developers need to walk between being cinematic and being functional, and Hot Pursuit leans way too far into cinematic territory. It forgets that it is, at its very core, a racing game, and without the racing, there isn't much left.