Need for Speed Hot PursuitHigh Resolution Images
Page 1 / 1 11/21/10
Introduction
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is the sixteenth title in Electronic Arts long running Racing/Simulation video game series. Hot Pursuit was developed by Criterion Games, who are also responsible for the largely successful Burnout Racing series. With the latest Need for Speed, the series has gone back to its roots by bringing back some of the classic features that have made the series a success - Cops, high speed chases, exotic vehicles and fast paced gameplay. And sure enough, the final product is a pleasure to both play and watch.
Personally, I am not a huge fan of racing/simulation video games. Having said that, I do not mind trying out titles that seem interesting and catch my attention. To date, I have tried out various racing games (only PC), both arcade and simulation but there have only been a handful titles that have kept me interested for more than a couple sittings of gameplay. Codemaster's GRID was one such title which I got quite close to finishing. Another game I really liked was Split/Second. It was pretty shallow, and short, but a lot of fun while it lasted. And now there is Need for Speed Hot Pursuit which I am thoroughly enjoying these days.
Need for speed Hot Pursuit for the PC is clearly a console port. The lack of graphical options is disappointing to say the least but the game still manages to look quite sharp. However, the lack of native Antialiasing support blemishes every scene and is quite conspicuous even at 2560 X 1600. All in all, the graphics are more than decent, the sound quality is top notch (I prefer to hear the actual sound effects of the car's engines, crashes, and Cop's Radio, rather than blaring music in the background ...I turn the music down while playing for a better experience), the crashes are spectacular and the sense of speed is amazing (especially when you turn on the nitrous or better yet, turbo to see the superb motion blur effect kick in). The environments in the game are also richly diverse - To name a few, you have snow capped mountains, lush forests, old construction sites and railway tracks. That is quite a variety!
As far as performance goes the game engine is locked at 60 FPS and there is no option in the game menus to change that. I looked at the configuration file to see if I could manually unlock the FPS but there was no such option to be found. The game performs really well though. Running on a single 5870 2GB and an I7 920 at 4.2 GHZ, at 2560 X 1600 and everything enabled, I hardly ever go below 60 FPS. If I run crossfire though, one can notice some rare dips in FPS in the 40's. This mostly happens in tracks that feature rain effects. Maybe a future patch will improve crossfire performance.
Screenshots
Let us look at some screenshots from actual gameplay. These are 2560 X 1600 images and clicking on the thumbnails will open up the full size image in a new window.
I hope you enjoyed the screenshots. I would have performed a performance review on this game if there were some more graphical options available. Or even if AA was supported, or FPS cap was not there. Let us hope there is a patch in the future which improves on some of these features for the PC version of this otherwise fantastic game. Thanks for reading !