Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

He feels a need, but John Gillooly is not sure what for.

Deep among the countless console racers released over the years lies the much talked about sentimental favourite Need For Speed. While each release in the series has met with different reactions, there is a strong theme carrying through all the games:  fun fast racing with a slight arcade bent.

Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 returns to this, with the basic premise revolving around high-speed police chases in some of the tastiest super cars on the face of the planet. The game is split into two major modes; the aforementioned police chase tomfoolery and a straight racing mode.

Both of these modes feature a campaign of sorts, where you work your way through a series of missions, unlocking more as you go and raising cash to unlock new cars.

Accompanying this are some single race missions and various split-screen multiplayer modes.

Two major features have set NFS apart from the rest of the racers, and they have returned again in Hot Pursuit 2. High speed driving is what NFS is about, and like previous games, the brake is rarely used as you fang some of the nastiest road machines around sweeping country roads. The other standout has been EA’s use of the graphical power behind the consoles, and Hot Pursuit 2 manages to squeeze some the slickest looking graphics we have seen out of the PS2.

Gorgeous graphics pervade all aspects of the game. Little touches like a bushfire raging on the side of one track, lowering visibility and filling up the roads with pesky parked fire trucks, or the funky slow motion replays of particularly overblown jumps all merge beautifully to provide a complete visual package.

This straps on to a fun driving model. Do not expect Gran Turismo levels of physics however, as they are tweaked for handling under speed. This makes for breakneck racing and a surprisingly large amount of plowing to walls when a tight corner does pop up, ruining the Zen-like 200km/h twitch steering that your sub-consciousness has been perfecting. It is pure high-speed fun made all that more tense by the presence of both traffic and the local constabulary in Hot Pursuit mode. And from experience, the traffic usually pops up just when you drift to the wrong side of the road on a top speed corner.

Cars vary from Lotus Elise and AMG Mercedes level, all the way to the Ferrari’s, Porsches, Lamborghinis and Maclarens that appear later in the progress tree.

The special guest appearance made by the HSV Commodore and Ford Falcon in the original Hot Pursuit has been followed up with the inclusion of the HSV GTS Coupe and Ford TS-50 in this version. Unlike the original, there are no cop variants of the HSV.

The cops in Hot Pursuit 2 are much nastier than they used to be. Besides roadblocks and spike strips, the cops now have helicopters that fly just ahead of you, dropping large explosive barrels designed to slow your progress. The assortment of cars available to the cops has increased and it is rare that you will find yourself in a car capable of outrunning the police completely. Instead you have to employ a combination of tidy driving and clever use of shortcuts to get them out of your rearview mirror.

Multiplayer is a fairly standard split-screen racing affair. Unfortunately, the game appears to lack any option for cop car vs. normal car modes, which would have added a huge draw to the multiplayer. But after trawling the game interface screens for ages, there still seems to be no way to do this. But for the modes that are there, you will find that the speedy gameplay is perfect for long trash talking battles on the couch.

The game is fun, but there is no real depth to it. It is a perfect game for killing an hour or so every now and then, but when compared to other offerings for the PS2, it falls behind.

This doubtful longevity keeps it from greatness, like many games of this style, but if you after a fun, pretty and above all, fast racer for the PS2, or maybe just want to practice evading the police, then this is a great offering.