Need For Speed Hot Pursuit (Portable) Review

Need For Speed Hot Pursuit, is a port of the console versions for Apple devices. This game requires no gas pedal, the game handles this, allowing you to focus on steering at high speeds. The only commands you need to input are for nitrous, brakes, power ups (more on these later), and the hand brake. You swipe up for nitrous, and down for the handbrake. To brake you tap the brake pedal in the bottom left corner. There are three power ups for each faction, that you tap to use. For the police you get spikestrips, EMPs, and roadblocks. As a racer you get oilslicks, overdrive, and jammer (which freezes all enemy power ups and nitrous for a brief period). The game is broken up into 4 tiers, each harder than the next. Each tier has 6 stages, two in each environment (coast, mountains, and desert). The events range from races, elimination events, interceptor, and more. Some events are more common depending on which career you’re playing. The two careers offer plenty of playtime, and questing for better cars and full completion will keep you coming back to play. The other main game play element is the bounty experience system. Each event gets you money, more for more stars (up to a max of three for each stage). This money is then added to your total earned bounty, which is how you rank up. Each rank up unlocks a new car, up to level 15. The car list is pretty varied, and there are some differences between the cars you getin the two careers. The

racer career also gives you the option to change your cars colour. Graphically this game is amazing. The opening cut scene in particular. There are a few frame rate issues when you hit over 370 kph while two or more cars are on screen. Other than this they run extremely smoothly. The sound quality is great, you can definitely hear the different engines roaring,and the music, and voice overs aren’t overly obtrusive or annoying. There is a lot of car flipping action, and all takedowns are shown in an awesome semi-slow motion perspective.

These scenes really add to the game. Another cool thing is that although the police cars can’t get new paint jobs, they have armour making them harder to takedown, while racers are far easier to take down (probably because of all those weight reduction kits) This really adds to the challenge. However the handbrake is severely underused. The only time it’s actually used is in the tutorial, and after that only to complete an achievement.

I thought that this maneuver could’ve been used better: for instance racers pulling of a 180 and going off in the other direction and reversing the path of the chase. The one part of the game I haven’t tried is the local multi-player because I haven’t found anyone else who has it, but if I do I’ll post a mini review in the form of a comment. Also like most EA games NFS Hot Pursuit costs 4.99, and I also got this on sale. Despite the cost, this game is awesome, and if you just want try it out a free lite version is available.

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