EA knows not to mess with the classic formula, so the largely visual upgrades work, creating a satisfying game. Truth is, racing games haven’t changed that much in the last decade; it’s about speed, and letting you feel that speed. Sure, you’re missing the “rewind” feature of current racing games, and it might have been nice to get that added in here.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered is pure arcade madness, with a couple of interesting new multiplayer modes, a killer soundtrack and an accessible, instant-action approach to its career and online contingents.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered brings back a fantastic arcade racing game, and is still brilliant fun 10 years down the line. Autolog feels right at home in 2020, and the over-the-top cops vs. racers gameplay is a blast. While the remaster itself is a little underwhelming, and some of the original title's issues remain, this is nonetheless a great game for petrol heads and adrenaline junkies everywhere.
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit is a gem from 2010 that we didn’t really need again. It definitely wasn’t in my top 5 NFS games to come back as a remaster, but still one to welcome with its new additions. This is a game for those who never experienced it in its initial state in 2010 or for those who want some variation in the arcade racing genre in the meantime until the 2021 iteration is released.
We could praise riveting races, unforgiving opponents and spectacular destructibility – but all that was already present in the original game. So what does remaster bring to the table? The answer is “nothing”. [Issue#250, page 52]
Need for Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered is as good as the original was - with all its post-launch content. But it feels more like a lazy port than a proper remaster of this racing game that you can, of course, still enjoy on Nintendo Switch.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit may have had its heyday, but this particular entry feels well past its prime with bland visuals, uninteresting courses, and terrible controls.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a really good racing game with great graphics and gameplay. The only flaw is that there is no opportunity to tune your car like in Need for Speed Underground 2
Quick background on me the reviewer, I tend to like single player games that is heavy on narrative the most. I also play a lot of racing games and use to play multiplayer games in my high school days but now that it's hard for me and my friends to find a good time to link up so now it’s rarer for me to get into a multiplayer game. Up to try any genre of games and sometimes I find something new that I didn't think I'd like. I own a PC (built by me), Xbox One X, Xbox Series X, PS3, PS4, PS5, and a Switch. I prefer Playstation due to their focus on narrative games. For scoring, I’ll be using the Gameinformer review scale and of course influenced by my personal opinions. (7) Average. The game’s feature may work, but are nothing that even causal players haven’t seen before. I've never tried the original Hot Pursuit so this was a completely new experience to me. The first thing I noticed was the graphics, expected the graphics to be better. Gameplay was fun but the car physics needs some work. I really liked NFS Rivals which pretty much did the same concept but is a newer version of the game. Rivals has better graphics, car physics, and same gameplay. I recommend playing Rivals instead of this remaster that is still out dated and failed to modernize the originally Hot Pursuit. I didn't play the original but it feels like they just ported it to the new consoles without updating the game to take advantage of the newer hardware. Normally I would redact a point for bad business practice for something like that but since I never actually played the original, so I can't do that in good faith. I can still have fun with this game and so can you if you got nothing else to play.
Despite the title, this game doesn't feel anything like the original NFS III: Hot Pursuit (1998) or NFS: Hot Pursuit II (2002), some of the best games in the series. Still, it's one of the most fun NFS games from its generation, and one with considerable influence from Burnout (a series in which Criterion also is known for), perceptible in this game's frequent requirement of you driving on the oncoming lane or get near misses to refill your nitrous (necessary to win most races), that, rather than a one time use can, acts like a stream. This insistence limits your experimentation with cars and handling in events as refilling nitrous is critical for victory in races, and also survival, in hot pursuits. I haven't played the original on PS3 or Xbox 360 when it came out, but in this remaster every car feel very heavy, and the gravity is unforgiving, at times pulling you towards other vehicles, what gives a sense of challenge in every track, whether you're a racer or a cop, but also a frustrating time if you don't get the handling, and it doesn't really take you by the hand to show how it works. This game also falls into a long standing predictability of the series, in which some cars in certain ranks have better acceleration or handling than others in the same rank, sometimes much better, and, if it's not that predictable at first, observing a few races against the same opponents will teach you soon which car is better for each situation. That hasn't however prevented me from trying out all cars, even those out of favour in their own category. The map is beautiful and interesting albeit arguably not very lively, and it's practically all countryside and no city, only loosely inspired by certain tracks of the aforementioned Hot Pursuits for PS1 and PS2. This game has no "real" open world since in the open world you can't access events or do anything - you reach those in a map, what's handy, though the game limits which cars are available for each events, and that add repetitiveness and it's kinda frustrating that some cars are available in only a handful events in the beginning, as you're discouraged to put them to their limits later. Still, this game requires some reasonable amount of grinding if you want to get all cars, but nothing close to later titles of the series. The cop career is perhaps one of the game's highlights (and something sorely missed in later titles) despite the hardest events I found in the game are the cop rapid responses (time trials) in which you're penalized for hitting traffic or elements in the road. There's no customization of car parts, what's good (for once, the cars come up fully upgraded when you buy them, and no need to grind points to buy a lot of extra parts to "fix" them), and on the visual aspect you can still add stickers / decals and change colors & finishing, what's enough. The car roster is considerably big, including iconic cars such as the Porsche 959, the Mclaren F1, the Lamborghinis Diablo and Murcielago, plus hyper cars from the time such as the Koenigsegg Agera and Pagani Zonda, though missing a few cars from the original release such as the Mercedes Stirling Moss, what's a shame. But the game really dictates which cars you can use for each events and some are available for only a few, what is just frustrating. It also dictates which weapons you have available as cop or racer in Hot Pursuit events (you can't choose or equip others than those the event puts by default), though that's understandable, and mostly manageable. The opponent racers' "rubber band" (the ability of catching up with you especially close to the end of an event, no matter how many miles far ahead you've put yourself throughout the race) feels very forced here, though in the whole series it's common so there's no running from it. Or from the cops' recklessness. There's no story in this game, what's also a good thing since the story in every NFS is ridiculous and detrimental to the racing experience. Occasionally fun and always challenging, this game is not close to the fun of the earlier titles, though arguably a breath of fresh air into a series that was losing its way, and, one way or another, became a classic in its own right, if not by merit, by time. But in no way a proper "homage" to the games it's named after. Played for hundreds of hours on PS4 Pro.
Nice cover, crap content. A truly beautiful game, a good soundtrack, a good fleet of vehicles, although outdated, the spirit of nfs, but everything is spoiled by a terrible imbalance, with crooked physics where the car is chattering all over the road, unrealistically evil rivals, because of which the difficulty increases to very high, you have to replay many races several times. This ruins the entire experience of the game. A simple choice of difficulty could solve this problem. I can't recommend this game.
SummaryFeel the thrill of the chase and the rush of escape in Need for Speed™ Hot Pursuit Remastered on Nintendo Switch™. Unleash a savage sense of speed both as an outlaw and a cop in the world's hottest high-performance cars. Outsmart the heat or take down lawbreakers with the tactical weaponry at your disposal in a heart-pumping, socially co...