Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 ( Windows )

Discount Price: $7.99

Features:

• You've got a garage full of the world's fastest cars, to conquer the wildest racing events -- the ones you don't see on TV!
• Hop into your Ferrari, Porsche, Lamborghini and hit the tracks
• Stay alive and cruise into first, if you can dodge traffic, police and natural elements in high speed and high style
• The more you earn, the more you win -- cars, tracks and high performance upgrades are yours for the taking
• Open-world environments and realistic graphics and weather effects as you race past cops at 160MPH

Customer Reviews:

Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2 [Posted on 2004-04-04]
Need for Speed is a great racing game beet the cops or be a cop get it! it's the best game ever better than the other need for speed products

mega thrill-ride [Posted on 2005-12-07]
I was addicted to this game in a heartbeat. I love cars and tend to have fun gawking at lamborghinis and ferraris, so i was rather amazed at how great the graphics are. The cars and scenery are very realistic and well-done, and the tracks are both challenging and enjoyable. i'm not a big-time gamer, so it's easy to impress me, but this is probably my favorite racing game. the police set up road blocks and send helicopters after you to drop bombs if you've been speeding for most of the track, making it fun to dodge explosions and such. You can change the weather condition (when it's set at overcast it gets tougher due to the thick fog) and some competition courses are set a sunset so sections are dark, making those tracks harder. If you are looking for an easy game to beat, this is not for you, but if you're in for a thrill and racing fast cars against tough competitors, than you're in for some fun.

Somewhat Fun but Frustrating Game [Posted on 2005-12-18]
The graphics, and particularly the sound, are pretty good for a game that has been around for a few years. The sirens are especially good, with accurate Doppler effects, even when you force the cops to enter a tunnel while you veer off onto an open dirt road. But overall this is just an arcade game; it's not realistic at all, and that's the part that makes it so frustrating.

Just a few examples: You can run head-on into a bus at 145 mph and bounce away unharmed. It's impossible to go off the road, drive over a cliff, or even to take a wrong turn--the track funnels you where you need to go no matter what, like those old orange Matchbox car tracks. You can flip a convertable through the air and the driver just sits still with his hands on the wheel throughout, calm as a Sunday driver. The cops ignore competitors that zoom by them at 125mph, and instead go after YOU while you're traveling at 70mph (Well, okay that last one might be realistic!)

The cars all handle pretty much the same, except that the smaller cars get shoved around by the cops so easily that even though you can eventually outrun them, you're guaranteed to be pushed into the wall enough times for all your competitors to pass you. I was once in first place, with the finish line in sight, and a cop came out of nowhere and crashed into me. By the time I reoriented myself, I was in last place. Like I said, a very frustrating game.

The game crashed my computer on the first install (causing CHKDSK errors), but finally worked after about 1 hour of reinstalling and rebooting over and over again. Why it finally worked, I can't say. I didn't really do anything different. What made me most furious about it was the ghastly website EA Games has setup, which is nothing but a hyperanimated, resource-hogging sales pitch for their products, with limited support only hidden in the deepest crevices of this lousy website. To get useful information and the patch, I had to do a Google search and get it from some gamer site instead (risky).

The game hiccups once or twice each race--freezes for a second for no reason, then suddenly jumps back into action. Otherwise, it seems stable. (My computer far exceeds the minimum requirements).

The only part that is truly realistic are the animated scenes when you get busted: about 10 studly-looking cops surround an unarmed, handcuffed, and completely cooperative suspect with guns drawn while he's being led away. It's paranoid and unnecessary overkill, but typical cop behavior, at least in Southern California.

After playing it for a few hours, the only really fun part of this game was shoving cop cars into head-on collisions with oncoming busses and other vehicles. But even that got boring after a while. Unless you're looking for a really inexpensive racing game, I'd look for something that has at least some resemblence to reality (or better yet, go toward complete unreality with TrackMania!).

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