The trailers for Need For Speed Hot Pursuit succeeded in making the game look totally awesome, to my eyes at least. I was really looking forward to getting my hands on the game to see how it plays. Rather like when I played Gran Turismo 5 at the recent Eurogamer Expo, I was initially a little underwhelmed by the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit demo.

It was all over so quickly. There is only 1 track to play if you have no friends and 2 tracks if you do. For a 1.3Gb demo I was expecting a little more than ~10 mins game time. Drive as a cop, take out 4 lawbreaking, super speedy cars and then drive a 4 min time trial race again 5 other (AI) cars and your done. And that was my first, admittedly rather sloppy attempts at driving those tracks too. After a few more goes I’d knocked minutes off both of these times. Speedy cars, finish the demo speedily!

I’ll admit I was expecting hoping the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit to be another awesome Burnout game with lots of sexy cars like the Bugatti Veyron. But it’s not. At least in terms of the cars handling it’s not like Burnout at all. The cars felt sluggish and unresponsive. They didn’t feel fun to drive at all. It was all a bit like a 21st century version of Chase HQ.

I was hoping this was because these were early (aka rubbish) cars, and later cars would proffer far more grip and all around better handling. Digital Foundry from Eurogamer.net has offered some reassurance by saying:

However, what should be pointed out is that the demo is only allowing you access to what are effectively the slowest cars available in the whole game. In the full game, directly after the roadster level you play in the demo, you gain preview access to an ultra-limited edition version of the Pagani Zonda which gives some idea of just how fine the handling model is on the higher-end cars.

Like in Burnout you can slip-stream other cars for extra speed (plus points) and you get nitro boost for driving on the wrong side of the road and any near misses. The car crashes, with all their bits and pieces flying everywhere are very Burnout like. It’s shown in glorious slow motion too. However, unlike Burnout, there are about 2 other cars (i.e traffic) on the road, not counting the ones your are racing. This makes the game more about driving a decent line around each corner and using your boost at the right time than causing total automotive carnage. I’ll admit this did take me a few goes to get adjusted to this new approach. Apply the breaks, hit the apex of the corner and boost! However, it proved quite satisfying powersliding around big sweeping corners once I got the hang of it, which didn’t take long.

During the time trial race, I wasn’t able to inflict damage on my fellow racers. They all had pristine bodywork despite my nefarious efforts. This behaviour did remind me of the first 4 Gran Turismo games. It’s all about the cars looking pretty as they drive along the road. At least in the pursuit races you get to inflict some serious car damage.

I wasn’t really able to check out Autolog either as I didn’t have any friends added, making the system a little superfluous. I can see that it will generate some extra level of competition amongst your friends. However, for people who aren’t blessed with a zillion mates who all play games, Autolog could become a bit redundant. I’m sure there will be plenty of single player content to keep them happy as I see Autolog as a nice addition to the Need For Speed franchise, rather than a game changing, double rainbow feature.

Even though I’ve complained about the demo in a few areas, I’m still looking forward to playing the full game. There will be lots more and better handling cars, I’ll get more than a few minutes game time and I might have some friends to play with. I just expected the demo to sell the game to me more than it did which was disappointing. Now if Criterion Games had chucked in a Zonda, Lambo or a Veyron into the demo. That would have been awesome.

What did everyone else think of the demo? Did you like/hate it?

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is released on the 19th Nov 2010 on Xbox 360, Wii, PC and PlayStation 3.

In the demo you get to drive the Dark Horse Hot Pursuit event as a cop. This event takes place through the coastal highway and mountainous ridges of Seacrest County. The cop cars look absolutely awesome (see right for proof). I really hope they drive as well as they look. You’ll also get to experience Criterion’s new social network called Autolog.

Autolog tracks your progress during the single player game and then uses this information to make personalized recommendations to you in-game, like try and beat your mates time on this track. Rather than Criterion Games themselves creating challenges they’ve enabled the community to create its own challenges using Autolog. Only time will tell how effective this will be. Autolog won’t be available on the Nintendo Wii. Don’t know why, it just won’t.

Anyway, for the purposes of this demo, you need to add at least 1 friend to unlock a second track called Roadster’s Reborn. This is a time trail track, so race your friends to see who’s quickest, or just beat your mum if you have no friends ;-) Downloading the demo will also earn you 500 bounty award points for use in the full game. This is probably a teeny tiny proportion of the points required to unlock all the super cool stuff in the full game, but at least it’s a start.

There is also a lovely trailer for Need For Speed Hot Pursuit featuring oodles and oodles of car pr0n!

If anyone is getting Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, I’m up for a bit of online racing (via Xbox Live). Just leave me a comment on this post and I’ll add you.

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit is released on the 19th Nov 2010 on Xbox 360, Wii, PC and PlayStation 3.

Update 16th Nov 2010: The demo period is over, but don’t forget to check out the Need For Speed Hot Pursuit cheap deals.