Burnout team does NFS3 retrospective. It's great, It's beautiful, it's wicked fast, but it has it's flaws.
The World Map may bring back memories, but the roster of Cars available is not a throwback. There are Plenty of present day's fastest road cars available to use and virtually EVERY car that's in this has a Police equivalent which you can also drive in Free Roam. The Cars are listed in 5 categories each a bit faster. There are a few roadster/spyder exclusives in the civilian racer cars, and a few bulkier exclusives in the police cars. This is, again, a throwback to NFS3 (before Underground) so no customization. You can only paint your car from a (sometimes undesirable) selection of factory paint schemes, and cops just have the one paint they start with. I would have at least liked a custom color option with a color slider, having no options at all is more like a step backward a little too close to NFS3's roots. Not that I'm sad you can't put gaudy vinyls all over your car, but a few (like the Viper) have ugly stripes in mismatched colors which I'd rather just not have at all.
As for the races, AI Racers tend to speed away from you until the end of the race when they just randomly mess-up or slow down enough for you to pass them. Once you get the lead you'll have to hold it because you'll have very little buffer room between you and the AI. As the game progresses the AI make fewer mistakes, and quite often simply speeds ahead of you when your at full speed plus nitro. This has been the difficulty formula for a while in NFS games. As with previous NFS games you get extra boost for being daring but not reckless (i.e. for Near Misses, Incoming Lane, Slip-streaming, and Taking Shortcuts).
When playing as a Cop, your job is to shut the race down by any means necessary. Think of it as you are a terminator and the racers are the targets, take them all OUT. I found the Police side to be a little more fun than the Racer side, just because you don't have to worry about Winning the race, you just need to make sure nobody crosses the finish line, Very Burnout style. It is a little weird though that all the tricks available to the police are also available to racers, meaning Racers also have spike strips and EMPs. That evens it out for multiplayer purposes, but it's just weird to be a cop and get spike-stripped by the suspect your pursuing.
Of a few things I was disappointed with, One was to have to put this on the ever-expanding list of present-day games with no split-screen multi-player. I'm sorry not everyone I know has a PS3 AND this game, but they shouldn't need to when they're in the same room with me!
Another, the Music is...well not to my tastes, and gets old really quick. I did miss Rom di Prisco's music from the original Hot Pursuit, SO I added it using PS3 custom soundtracks. Ah, Aquila 303 in it's rightful place again…
[Note: to change from "Game Soundtrack" you must have a Playlist of music files which are ON your PS3 HDD (not off a PC or Ipod). Again, that's a Playlist not just folders of music. I had trouble with this until earlier this month so just as a heads-up]
When Driving, the Physics are very arcadey when compared to Gran Turismo, but this is meant to just be drifty super fast fun, not simulation. It's NOT about tuning or customizing, like everything else today. I think the gameplay can be really fun once you get the drifting down, the only problem I have had with free-roam so far is I REALLY wish I could turn traffic off! so often a van, which is usually a color that blends in with what's behind it, randomly appears in my driftline and screws me up. I also get REALLY tired of the EPIC crashes!
"Yes Yes I know I slammed into a van, but there's still a race going on, EverySecondCounts RESET ME!" I say so what if it's not realistic to slam into little traffic cars at ungodly speeds and just keep going, I think we have established with the arcade feel that this is about hyper-fast fun not realism. Crashes are not even at Burnout's level of detail, it's still like Matchbox cars crashing, with scratched paint and a little damage modding.
This is mainly a retrospective about back when Need for Speed was "Road and Track presents: Need For Speed" about racing the fastest present day dream machines ,you could never hope to actually own, HellaFast through some of the most beautiful scenery our humble planet has to offer. Also, by "present" day I bring up another point, the reason there are no Supras, R-34 skylines or Classic Muscle Cars is because they are not in production today. I wouldn't have minded say the Supra, or the 'Cuda etc. to show up, but it's just not what this one is about. There are some older things in the DLC, like the Countach. I should also point out Ferrari is missing, which is strange, This seems like a game they wouldn't want to miss. If you like Porsche's though they've got you covered, there's a bunch of Porsches, and a few as DLC too.