Need For Speed - Hot Pursuit 2 Review, By Alex Wheeler


	Genre : Racing Rating : Everyone Publisher : Electronic Arts Developer : EA Games

	HTTP://WWW.NEEDFORSPEED.COM

MINIMUM SYSTEM

Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP operating system
Intel Pentium III (or compatible) CPU running at 450Mhz or higher
16MB DirectX 8.1 compatible video card
128MB of RAM
DirectX compatible sound card

RECOMMENDED SYSTEM

Windows 98, ME, 2000 or XP operating system
Intel Pentium III (or compatible) CPU running at 800 MHz or higher
32 MB DirectX 8.1 compatible video card
128 MB RAM or Higher
DirectX compatible sound card



		Well Electronic Arts have managed to bring out another chapter in the Need For Speed series , this one carrying on from the Need For Speed 3 : Hot Pursuit. This game is bringing new advances into the racing genre. One of the programmers has said �We�ve held up the best of our competitors as the minimum standard in each area�, although only time will tell if this is true! This review is based on the DEMO and the offical Need For Speed Web-Site. Alex!


	From the day I heard about this game I thought that it was just going to be another Need For Speed game. I�d enjoyed a few of the series before although I thought that theyd be pushing it abit to make another one, although I was very happly suprised! After a rather lengthy download (92Meg) of just under 8 hours, I installed it and got stuck in. From the outset the graphics were AMAZING. As you can see from the screenshot above the detail they had put into the graphics was very impressive.


	Although the cars looked VERY detailed the scenery seemed to have been neglected slightly. Although this was a very minor problem. I was running this on my main machine (1Ghz CPU, 256RAM, GeForce4 MX440) and with all the graphics flat out on 1024x768 it was unplayable, although just by turning down the Car Detail it made the performance much higher, this shows that there must be alot of detail in the cars themselfs. Changing the Car Detail didn�t make a great deal of difference although the World Detail made the most impact on the graphics although the least on the actual performance (not exacly sure why)!

An interesting detail that is not normal is its one of the first racing games to actually put the Speedo in the center (it is, honest). This is useful if your allways wanting to know what speed your doing, although for experienced gamers, it will probably just get in the way (it did for me anyway)! The gameplay is very fast, although not so fast you can�t keep up. From the previous NFS games, the gameplay seems to have got more like an arcade game. The steering is quite springy and I found that I was using handbreak turns to get round the corners. From the two cars I drove, the driving style was different in each. In the full game there will be 30 different cars and hopefully 30 driving styles.


	There are some options that Ive never come accross in any racing game before. One is the �Jump Camera�, this from the picture on the left means that every time you go over a jump the camera goes out of the car and you get a cut-scene of your car going over a jump. The �360 Camera� just spins the camera around when the Jump Camera is active. These are both good fun and brilliant for getting screenshots (although pritty useless if you want to actually race)! The sound isn�t anything special, it has some nice engine sounds although nothing special.


	The music I personally think has got worse (although there is only one track in the demo). From what is going to be in the full game there is going to be several modes of gameplay that all look very interesting. The A.I. doesn�t seem any smarter than anyother racer although one really annoying thing is that the Cops really like comming to the side of your car and knocking your back end, this sends you straight into the nearest barrier (its a good trick although really annoying).


	Overall this is a very fast paced, street racing game, with the latest sports cars (which all have there correct names). I think the main improvement over most racing games is that the detail of the cars has been heavily improved. The only part of this game I didn�t try out is the ForceFeedBack system. Although Racing is my favorite genre I still only use a gamepad. Well I think this game is definately going on my Christmas list (along with a steering wheel)!


	92%


	Although being a great racing game, it isn�t a ground breaking game.

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