What I will praise HP Remastered for is the variety of tracks and missions to play, from standard races, cop chases, time trial and preview events, and free roam driving. The environments are nice and it does feel like I’m cruising around places like PCH and Point Dume, but there isn’t anything to really set that tone compared to how other non-Criterion NFS titles have. It’s also set in a place that is faintly reminiscent of coastal state environments like California, Oregon, and Washington. To further add to my point about this game not having a personality, there isn’t a story to really set a certain precedent for Hot Pursuit. What happens next? Everyone else takes the shortcut and despite my takedown points, that leaves me worse off and most likely in the bottom placements. I’ve run into one too many instances where I wipe a player out behind me and my car is already facing a route to easily go into a shortcut, then the game reorients me so I end up taking the original route. It’s very intrusive and frustrating especially when you’re at sharp turns or trying to take a shortcut. Sure, it does make the player focus more on the racing than the car culture, but I feel that was the biggest appeal of the NFS franchise. There is no system to install different body kits on some vehicles, add decals, changing the rims, or even making tweaks to performance adjustments. Call me a Need for Speed purist, but I have grown used to really going all out in customizing my vehicles with more than just a new coat of paint. While I really appreciate the car selection in the game as it has a fair balance of many brands, I started to see the aging in this game’s lack of customization. This creates a set balance to put other racers in the same field with little to no advantages other than skill and map awareness. You have in order: sports, performance, super, exotic, and hyper. Not only that, but the car selections are segmented in five performance tiers or series as it’s labeled in the game. The car selection is fantastic, and dare I say actually slightly better than what we had when Ghost Games were still around for their four NFS titles.

Nfs hot pursuit pc vs xbox