Review — Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered
Reignite the pursuit.
Throughout the years, Need for Speed has become one of the most beloved racing game franchises. Its history goes back all the way to 1994 with the release of Road & Track Presents: The Need for Speed. Since then, the franchise went in plenty directions, from the underground tuning scene in to open-road racing with luxury cars and a more simulation-style track racing that even laid the groundwork for Project CARS. With such a long history, it was only a matter of time until EA dipped its hands into the remaster business, with Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit being given the honors of receiving the first remaster of the franchise.
Cops vs Speedsters
When Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit came out, it wasn’t the first game released with this subtitle. Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, released in 1998 was the first one and it’s the game that introduced the cops into the franchise. Four years later, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 was released and this was actually one of my favorite racing games as a teenager. The Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, released in 2010 can be considered a soft reboot that went back to these roots, but also noticeable is that is was developed by Criterion Games. Up to this release, they were mostly known for the Burnout franchise and bring their DNA into the mix made for one explosive racing game.
The roots of the franchise are of course racing luxury cars through gorgeous landscapes while being chased by the police .But this time also the other way around, where you’re a cop trying to bust speedsters. All the action takes place in Seacrest County, a map based on Southern California, Arizona, and Colorado. This means you’ll be racing through lush forests, scenes sea routes, icy mountains and vast deserts. There’s a great diversity in the tracks, but what I liked the most is how some of the areas reminded me of the tracks in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, which was of course amazing back in the days.
The game has various modes on display, divided between race and cop events. The race events include typical racing and time trial modes, but also a mode where you’ll be chased by the police, either during a race in Hot Pursuit or against the time in Gauntlet. Duel is a one on one race putting your limits to the test. On the other side of the law you have Interceptor, where you have to take down a high speed racer, Rapid Response and Preview, which are some sort of time trial and finally the reverse version of Hot Pursuit. What makes the Hot Pursuit and Interceptor mode even more thrilling is that you can use various gadgets like spike strips, EMP’s, jammers, road blocks and even the possibility of calling in helicopters.
Only the Lonely
The career mode offers a series of events for you to clear, garnering reputation and medals as a racer or merits as a cop. As you level up, you’ll also unlock an impressive collection of cars from brands like Lamborghini, Ford, Ferrari, Porshe, Aston Martin, Pagani, Audi, BMW, Corvette and Koenigsegg. The remastered edition also includes all cars that were released as DLC. Meaning you have more than enough toys to play around with. And offering you this double career, where you can play as a race and a cop, provides you with plenty of events to clear and the ultimate event is the Seacrest County Tour, a 70 kms long race that will have you at the edge of your seat.
Talking about DLC, other content that was also added to the game were extra events and more notably the extra multiplayer modes Arms Race and Most Wanted. Especially this last mode is great, as it divides the players in two teams of four, one side being the cops and one side being the racers. They have to protect their most wanted racer from the cops and make sure he escapes. I played a few rounds of the multiplayer in the Remastered version, and it was still as fun as nearly 10 years ago. Thanks to the addition of cross-play, you’re also gonna be a bit more lucky in finding opponents to race against. Which bring me to the next feature that was a pretty big thing in the original release: Autolog.
Autolog is a multiplayer feature that focuses on indirect competition between friends. The main components are the Speed Wall, a ranking system, Recommendations and Challenges, where the game invites you to beat your friends’ best times and a Feed that shows all activities that happened. There’s even some Trophies/Achievements linked to it. And while the autolog was a fun feature 10 years ago, when a lot of people in my friends list were playing the game. Today, it fell completely flat for me as not a single of my 117 friends was playing the game, making it a dead feature.
And while I know this isn’t a remake from the ground up, but it feels like they didn’t go full throttle with the graphical improvements. It looks a bit crispier and runs a bit smoother thanks to the 1080p/60FPS visuals (of 4K/30FPS if you want a higher resolution), whereas the PC version runs at 4K/60PFS (something that will hopefully be also patched into a future PS5/Series XS upgrade). Reflections seem to have improved a bit, as do the textures, and there seems to be a bit more color contrast. But don’t expect a huge leap in terms of graphics. The original game was already a beautiful looking game, so it often feels like the visual upgrades are rather minor.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remaster manages to stay relevant thanks to its thrilling races, but it doesn’t feel like this remaster is essential, especially if you’ve already played the original game. I personally hope that this game quickly finds its way to EA Play, blowing new life into the multiplayer and the Autolog system.
3,5/5
Game reviewed on PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 5.
Download code provided by the publisher.
