Right, so, basically Criterion are making Need for Speed Hot Pursuit which seems suspiciously like Burnout Paradise 2 "wiv weapons".
For those curious about Need for Speed canon, yes, there already has been a Need for Speed Hot Pursuit, in the late 90s on the PC, NFS3, and it was crap, although I know folk who liked it...
Not sure what the weapons element is, seems to be quite tame, that whole concept threw me off initially, but further Colombo work suggests they've done some work on balance and so forth. And tactical weaponry would mix up the Burnout formula.
Burnout Paradise was in a wave of Drive'em ups where instead of having a focused game design, it was a mashup of do what you want when, and there is alot... kind of a grind but also kind of entertaining. They release a few upgrade packs... one of which was a suspiciously crocked Cops and Robbers mode.
NFSHP seems to be Cops and Robbers done properly. Which is good, because the core idea of the Chase HQ, NFS idea is basically fun.
They've meant to have made the driving engine more interesting too, we'll see, there is a limited demo out today, 26th Oct, for 2 weeks.
Unfortunately there is A LOT of EA presentation to wade through before you get to see the game on the site, with monotone American ladies driveling on...
although I know folk who liked it...
That would be me I suppose. I don't recall it being particularly bad. Much preferred Motorhead as a PC driving game around the same time (a little earlier actully), but NFSHP was fine. Certainly a lot more focused than the horrible mess it became later on.
Well Criterion.... well here's the quote from their site:
Our game is inspired by the original Need for Speed on 3DO – we loved the thrill of the driving the open road and shaking off the cops in exotic supercars. The first thing you’ll notice in our trailer is the open, high speed roads of the coastal, forest and desert regions – very reminiscent of our 3DO inspiration.
So I'm sold, just to see what they've done.
The demo is a bit tepid, I need someone on my friend list to play the game also to unlock the other track.
The handling isn't obvious at the moment, the vehicles feel quite heavy which is interesting. Opponent cars have a 6 blob gauge I think.
As a police car you can summon a road block and a stinger/spike strip in the demo and there is a jammer and helicopter which I am not sure what they do.
Its not obvious if there is an "overworld" or if its all from a map... the map would be better quite frankly.
Summoning a road block, to then have to navigate whilst cars are flying about is quite fun. Taking out opponent cars is quite fun.
I can see it being quite fun.
I can dl the demo tonight and hit you up if you like.
Incidentally does anyone remember Screamer?
PC Game, yeah, my bro loved it. My PC was never up to scratch for it though. Not even sure I had a PC then actually. Never played it. It on GoG I wonder?
Yup:
http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/screamer
Oh sorry mads, hit me up on the 3sizzle if you get a chance.
The "Autolog" system was b0rked earlier, so it might be in vain.
Have a punt anyway. The demo doesn't really indicate anything particularly special at this stage. Just solid.
So far its a bit bland hey.
Mads helped my unlock the normal race, which was a bit dull, not Mads, but the race.
Cops and Robbers, I mean Racers... is fine. Timetrialing on that is a bit thaco, I guess just getting momentum together to string the takedowns.
The design of the tracks is very wide and with massively obvious shortcuts. I don't understand what's going on there.
The most interesting bit is the "Autolog" which is just a stats tracker/highscore board, but its in your face all the time, so when a friend beat my time, it told me, asked me to pull R to try and beat it, which was slick.
What's interesting is they seem to have massively streamlined the whole car game idea back to something a bit more 90s, so there are no, at least not in the demo, no sign of decals, upgrades or anything like that its a map, some races, three modes and a nicely integrated highscore board.
If the cars were twice as fast, which if Burnout Paradise is anything to go by will happen, then it could be quite interesting, the cars feel weighty and wallowy.
They've got a tiny bit of lineancy with me since they given props to the 3do, and to Need for Speed... at the moment, its only has a passing resemblance to Need for Speed.
Now Autolog is working you can look at the "autolog" through a web browser, which is a pretty tidy idea:
http://hotpursuit.needforspeed.com/autolog
And leave rude messages for each other, awesome.
Actually I thought the handling was pretty rough. At no point did I gain confidence in the handling. It's Burnout 3 on Jelly.
Oh and there is some awful rubber banding going on here. Inexplicably your competitors slow right down towards the end of the race to let you past (go figure).
The cops and robbers stuff is basically Chase HQ, but with deployable weapons. The shortcut stuff makes no sense at all as they appear to be mainly off-road, which slows you right down.
The game just doesn't really stack up. However I agree that the Autolog thing is pretty cool once you get over being overwhelmed with information on how bloody good JibberX is compared to you
I was getting my jive on with the drifting which is totally fine, not as nice as Split Second. It's definitely "wallowey", they have made a point that this is intentional, to try and justify the difference between Burnout with fake cars and this with real, they are being "respectful" to real cars.
Doesn't mean its fun!
There is something of the strange about this whole endeavor.
With this being so light and fluffy compared to Paradise, you wonder if they are actually working on that too?
Agreed the drifting is fine, but only fine. The handling model adopted appears to strike a balance between arcade and sim, with a heavy leaning towards arcade, which is annoying as there are far better arcade racers out there and at the other end of the spectrum, well, there's Forza.
I'm struggling to see when I would put this on in preferece to the other driving games that I own. It doesn't have enough of a niche for me to consider it as a worthwhile purchase. I think the cops and robbers thing could be fun actually, but it's virtually impossible to evaluate it fully based on the demo.
I think the cataclysmic rubber banding is going to be a real problem.
They've not demonstrated being pursued so far, and based on the AI I've seen... that wouldn't work, especially if they are so brazen with the catch up / down on the races.
Combined with the social lock in of the Autolog and the times required... we all know that getting time vs AI with rubberbanding is the most pointless affair on earth.
I've just unsold it from myself actually. I'd rather TT splitsecond.
Cancelled me pre-order.
SOmething stinks.
For instance, why can't you do damage to vehicles whilst you are infront of them, except via a stinger.
Another thing, the road block is just terrible. This doesn't appear to damage the cars, and to damage once they've been road blocked you have to wait for them to respawn to then hit.
Sanity has resumed... right now, that money to go towards being disappointed by Sonic Colours.
I knew you'd come round eventually
.
I did spend an hour last night trying to unseat your times with no success, so at least they've got that bit right, but the rest of it isn't up to snuff for all the reasons you've cited.
To round this off. I too really hate the way they have implemented the road block, it seems to be utterly pointless and something that seemed to do more damage to me rather than the AI.
So they've had to explain the demo... mostly with the words "cool", "my favorite", "cool" and spiky hair.
http://hotpursuit.needforspeed.com/node/1927
Apparently the race they've chosen is "one of the cooler races in the game". Someone needs to transcribe that interview... poor chap.
Basically the demo confirms that we badly need an update to Chase HQ, or a home port of the Chase HQ arcade game we saw a few years back at ATEI.
Actually I have Police Camera Action or whatever it's called on the PS, which is supposed to be quite good. Perhaps I should rack that out.
Almost a year on and this is ten pounds in Computer Exchange, since the EA Online pass will have been used. I have no issue with the Online Pass as a concept, esp since it will get revenue to publishers/developers off of the 2nd hand leacher market. But what they've done, probably through over confidence is offered 2 days free, which means you get to see how utterly redundant the online portion of the game is if A: there are not friend playing and B: its beyond 3 months of the game's release, as that seems to be the shelf life of online games.
Anyways, the game itself its utterly represented by the demo it all its dreary fashion. Its quite savagly confusing, by having the "map" as the main menu into the driving you kinda don't know what kind of event you are entering until its started, where as a straight menu, italicised no doubt would require less comprehension.
It suffers from MASSIVE oVeR presentation, most races start with an intro cinematic that might just be load disguising, but you have to skip it on restarts. The most enjoyment I have gleened from it is trying to beat some of the straight time trial events, probably called time trial, who knows, anyways strangely the top TT times require actual skill on the most part.
As for the weapons, it kinda isn't that much of a problem, they appear to be finite in the events that use them, as not all events do, and err, basically are not anything near "instawin".
The AutoLog, or "high score table" would be good if you had enough people playing, and they were commited, but since its just me and mads' demo times up, pchaha.
The game will become more entertaining, as there appears to be a nod to the fact that the early cars are crushingly dull, it is simply doing the same glacial difficulty to speed arc that Burnout Paradise did, which means you either persist or give up. The nod is that pretty early on you get to have a taster on the top vehicles that do go fast, and do make the tracks make sense....getting there is going to be such a massive grind.
So for a tenner, its probably ok, forget online thats pointless. As a slickly presented slightly guff cops and robbers game with some bizarre presentational gaffes well, whatever. I'll have another sesh, see if it ramps up.
(you can drive an RX8, so thats pretty cool for me)