An attempted remake of the Classic NFS series.
Gameplay: 3/5
The game lets you play as either a racer or a Police officer. With a variety of events you have to complete in order to unlock cars through the progress of your career. The racer career has many fun modes like Gauntlet and Hot Pursuit mode (of course there is also a racing mode and time attack with no presence of the Police). Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit also introduced this new feature called "Autolog" which tracks your progress and is also like the "Facebook" of the NFS series. Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit's driving physics are based-off Criterion's Burnout Paradise. The driving physics is somewhat good, but bad at the same time. For example, you can't manoeuvre through tight corners and traffic quickly, instead, when the player turns the car with the joystick/steering wheel, the car turns about 0.5/1 second later. Which can be quite irritating when you try not to crash or if you want to execute a perfect drift. The good thing about the driving physics is that sometimes its extremely fun! You can just drift around corners like some drift king in a supercar. Another problem about Hot Pursuit is the Rubber-banding AI and the badly placed traffic. If you don't know what is rubber-banding AI, let me explain now: Rubber-banding AI are CPU's that hang back during the start of the race and then later half-way through the race, they just shoot up across you despite being at top-speed in a highway. The badly placed traffic can drive you nuts! Sometimes when you turn in a corner, or if you want to drive into a short-cut, for some reason the game just puts a car in the way either unintentionally or just to make you punch a wall.
Graphics: 5/5
The graphics of the game are awesome! The cars look incredibly... sexy :P
Seacrest's environments look beautiful as well. From deserts, to beaches, coast-lines, forests and mountains. Even the pedestrian cars in-game look great. The police cars livery also look great! Seeing every sports car (Well... Almost all... ) with police livery is like seeing every hot female celebrity naked.
The immense detail of every car is somewhat similar to Gran Turismo 5 and Forza Motorsport 3. But I want to say this to Criterion if they are reading this: Looks don't make the game. You need to care about the gameplay as well.
Sound: 4/5
The soundboard of the game is extremely epic. The car sounds are one of the best i've ever heard, the sound of the Helicopter flying overhead you gives you goose-bumps, the police voice-acting also adds to the intensity of the Pursuit, majority of the Racing music is good and last but not least, the Pursuit music will just make you go "Wow!" because of its sheer epicness.
Overall: 8.5/10
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is not exactly a bad game, but its an attempt of making an extremely good one. Doesn't mean I don't like it as well. This game is basically the only game with the amount of cars that I enjoy driving. (e.g the Porsche 997 GT3 RS). Nice try Criterion, perhaps you should have called this game Burnout: Hot Pursuit.