While Sid and I were giving EA’s Dead Space 2 and rebooted Medal of Honor a go, our soccer-mad English counterpart, SCEE’s James Gallagher, drifted (see what I did there?) over to the Need for Speed area. Our good friends Criterion are tasked with developing the next NFS title, Hot Pursuit, and it’s already looking like a change for the best. James chatted with the team – presumably over tea – to find out more about what the Burnout Paradise devs have planned in Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit.
One of the games attracting the most attention at E3 was EA’s Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit; the first title in the series developed by the people behind Burnout, Criterion Games.
James Deverill and Doug McConkey of that team gave me a demonstration of the game and it’s clear that they’re looking to return to the roots of a series that has gone through many changes since it first arrived way back in 1994.
“I remember playing Need for Speed even before working in the games industry,” said Deverill. “Three things stood out for me then: it had the coolest cars on the planet, it had amazing highways to drive them on and there were cops pursuing you. It’s these three active ingredients, in particular, that we want to bring back with our game.”
The playable demo at E3 was a game of Pursuit Mode, which is essentially cops and robbers with the old bill trying to ram the street racer’s sports car until it is totally wrecked. You can play as either a Cop or a Racer and both parties have their own weapons to add strategy. For example, a Cop can radio in a roadblock while a Racer can scramble his opponents radar and even send a decoy – a second blip on the Cop’s radar to throw them off the scent.
There are full career modes for both Cops and Racers that you can switch between at will, as well as an extensive suite of online modes.
“Online multiplayer supports eight players,” explains Deverill, “and one of the coolest things we’ve included, for me, is the way that you can have any combination of players; you can even have seven cops against one racer if you like and this adds a lot of variety.”
As you would expect from the brains behind Burnout, it is blisteringly fast and utterly gorgeous. It also boasts licensed supercars and a game world four times the size of Paradise City.
Unusually for game that features police chases at more than 250 miles per hour, the team seems most excited about Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit’s menu interface.
“We’re very excited about the way that Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit brings players together,” said Deverill. “Digital communication is at the heart of how people behave these days so, given that, we’ve included a social network in the game to connect, compare and compete. We call this the Need for Speed Autolog.”
In a nutshell, they’ve included everything you would expect from a basic social networking site and not only included it in the game, but also made it accessible via the web and mobile phones. Everything you do in the game is compared to what you’re friends are doing, whether they’re your PSN friends, your Facebook friends or just people you met playing the game.
“It can be a bit depressing to see a leaderboard and discover you’re ranked 10 millionth in the world, or something like that,” added McConkey “so we’re looking to drive rivalry between friends foremost.”
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is out on November 16, 2010.
I hope that they bring billboards, take down and etc to this game like the paradise version had. Also motorcycles ranging from street bikes to choppers as that would make for a very interesting chase too. I’ve waited years for the return of NFS Hot Pursuit.
I hope they have the license feature too like paradise that snaps your photo and shows you your level. That would go really well when getting busted by the cops.
Don’t forget some nice hideouts and cool jumps to evade cops.
Man I am excited!
@shark301
I’m sorry, but that is a stupid idea. The objective of the game is too RUN from the police. What fun is it just to pull over and get a ticket? The game is called HOT PURSUIT. >_>
I know what the game is called and if you played it at all you would know that sometimes you do get busted by the cops. Thus you are fined and etc. I just suggested that it reflects on the license level. No one claimed that getting pulled over to get a ticket was fun. The object is to not get pulled over so you don’t loose cash, your car or your license.
One of the problems with the older version was that no matter what you always were busted and went to jail. There was no warnings, tickets and fines. You just simply went to jail even if you were doing the speed limit. That’s boring.
Also we got paid cash for completing milestones such banging up cars and road signs which gets old fast… Why not bring a little paradise over and have take downs, stunts, billboards and etc for milestones? That’s a lot more fun imo.
Also add the garages, boosts and repair shops to the roads. The old NFS was either new car or dead car… There was no in between to fix, fuel up and etc. If you played Burnout Paradise then you can almost see the only thing missing from it was Pursuit. Mix those two together is a potent game in the end. But that’s just my opinion.
Also, in the past NFS the only way to evade cops was to get a little distance ahead and they would drop off pursuit. That’s cheezy and old. My suggestion was to add some hideouts where we can drive inside a parking garage and hide along side other vehicles. Or paintshops so that we can change the color of our vehicle when bulletins are put out on us or jumps and stunts to evade pursuit kinda like Dukes of Hazzard style if you remember that show.
I just want to see something new and fresh instead of the long boring chase to finally pull me over and say “Busted”. We need some clever getaways as I mentioned.
A better analogy of stupid was the past 6 or so NFS releases . Here’s the flop list:
Need for Speed: Underground (2003)
Need for Speed: Underground 2 (2004)
Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2005)
Need for Speed: Carbon (2006)
Need for Speed: ProStreet (2007)
Need for Speed: Undercover (2008)
Need for Speed: Shift (2009)
Need for Speed: Nitro (2009)
Need for Speed: World (2010)
Guess I’ll have to put down Hot Pursuit 2 when this one comes out. Oh ya, one more thing, WE NEED SPLIT-SCREEN!!!
This game HAS to have split screen or it will be a good game but no fun like midnight club la or nfs shift.