After a series of flunks, NFS makes a comeback
Graphics
There is very little in this dept that you can pick fault with. The cars are modeled superbly and look great. The scenery is also something that has been crafted with care. There are day and night races and races in rain or thunderstorms. The last 2 weather effects are worth mentioning as GT5 seemed rather pleased with itself, claiming that some courses had rain effects (even though this has been going on for ages in the F1 games). Anyway, I promised this wasn't going to be a GT5 bashing review.
The frame rate never slows either, even when you're traveling at over 200 clicks and the sense of speed you get is something to behold.
Sound
As in the graphics dept, everything here is top notch aswell. The roar of the engines when you select your car is brilliant. The crashes, although slightly over the top, certainly sound the part as you hear the metal crumbling and the windows smashing all over the road.
Although I found it slightly harder to hear, the music was also a nice addition.
Gameplay
If you've read or watched any reviews on this game already, you will know that there is a direct comparison to the Burnout series, and they couldn't be more correct. The burnout series is one I have loved for many a year, I've owned two PS2 games, 2 PSP games and Burnout Paradise for the PS3. You can find quite abit in common with the Burnout series in your first race, whether that is the over the top crashes, the nitros or the ability to gain nitros by driving on the wrong side of the road. All of these are taken directly from the Burnout series.
What the NFS franchise adds to the Burnout games is the ability to drive both as a racer or a cop.
I started out as a racer, but after doing a dozen events, I started to feel I wanted more, so I switched to a cop. Both were just as exciting and fun as you were able to drive the same cars and each get given gadgets to aid your goal.
Autolog, now this is a very nice touch, but also a frustrating one. In other racing games, I would do a race, if I felt I did good, I would move onto the next one. In Hot Pursuit however, this is not the case. All of your friends that have this game are on the leaderboard, so even if I won the race or got a distinction as a cop, if I saw my friends time was better, I'd re-try. This isn't the games fault that it brings frustration, its my own pride.
However this leads onto another point that is the games fault, the loading times. When I did finish the event for the first time, it wouldn't have the ability to retry, it would show you your reward and status and then go back to the Autolog map. I found this frustrating, why is there no retry button on the first attempt? Why must I spend another minute or so waiting to be able to go back into the same event. And even if I paused the event and wanted to retry from there, there would still be about 15-20 seconds in loading and cut scenes before I started. This may be picky, and it may be a sign of the times that loading takes alot longer than back in the day, but this breaks the immersion.
This is a very minor gripe in an otherwise great game though. There are many modes to keep you occupied offline and online (I have yet to try the online modes as yet). So there's alot of hours to burn up if you so wish.
Final Thoughts
Need for Speed and Criterion is a match made in heaven for me. I was never really into the NFS series before now, but they have breathed life back into a stale series and made it alot of fun. Needless to say, if you like Burnout, you'll love this. And even if you've never played a Burnout game before, if you're a racing game fan, this needs to be in your library.