Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 update

We dropped by the Electronic Arts offices in Redwood City, California, yesterday to take a look at the crop of upcoming console games. Among the list of games that the company had on display was Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, the sequel to the original PC and PlayStation games, both of which were released in 1998.

Like its many predecessors, the game features a number of exotic cars that you can race around various circuits and road courses. Included in the list of more than 20 cars are the BMW M5, BMW Z8, Ferrari 360 Spider, Ferrari F50, Porsche Turbo, Porsche Carrera GT, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, and Lamborghini Murcielago, all of which are faithfully re-created with a high number of polygons and a thick sheen of environment-mapped gloss. Players will need every last ounce of horsepower from these cars in order to outrun the law in Hot Pursuit 2, since the cops will use everything from helicopters to spike strips in order to put a stop to the player's recklessness.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 will have 60 different events that are split in half between a championship mode and a hot pursuit mode. Both types of events involve a branching campaign that will yield new prizes with the successful completion of each race. These awards include new cars, new paint jobs, and previously inaccessible courses. There will even be a quick race mode that will randomly select the player's car, the opponents' cars, and the track they'll race on for an instant fix, as well as a challenge mode that will let players customize their racing settings.

The game is still two to three months away from completion, so expect us to have a more in-depth look at it sometime in the near future.