Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

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Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Developer(s) Black Box Games/EA Black Box (PS2)
EA Seattle (PC, Xbox and GC)
Publisher(s) EA Games
Series Need for Speed
Engine EAGL
Platform(s) PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and Windows
Release date October 2, 2002
Genre(s) Racing
Mode(s) Single player, multiplayer
Rating(s) ESRB: Everyone (E)
System requirements Windows: Pentium III 450Mhz, 128MB RAM, Windows 98/ME/2000/XP, 16MB DirectX 8.1 compatible 3D card, and 1.2GB of hard-disk space.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is a 2002 racing video game, serving as the debut Need for Speed (NFS) title from EA Black Box (created after the purchase of Black Box Games in Vancouver), and the first Need For Speed for the sixth generation of consoles. In 2003, the game was awarded Console Racing Game of the Year at the 6th Annual Interactive Achievement Awards.

Contents

[edit] Overview

Hot Pursuit 2 draws primarily from the gameplay and style of Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit; its emphasis was on evading the police and over-the-top tracks featuring lengthy shortcuts.

The game allows players to play as the police, where the goal is to arrest speeders. A variety of methods may be used to arrest a speeder, including ramming, calling for assistance (backup) by other police cars and utilizing spike strips to immobilize a speeding vehicle. The "Hot Pursuit" mode is less realistic than preceding versions of NFS, as it is possible to arrest a speeder by lightly ramming them often enough. However, in timed races it is more effective to use less time-consuming, actual police tactics, such as spinning the offending driver.


Races take place in four environments which differ in atmosphere, with a handful of tracks per environment. The different tracks in an environment are formed by different roads being connected or separated by road blocks. A fictional tropical island, reminiscent of Hawaii, is the most varied environment; the track traverses a city, volcano, waterfall, beach, forest, and two villages. The coastal forest environment, reminiscent of the Washington coast, sometimes has foggy weather, but this does not effectively limit visibility during races. The Mediterranean coast and so-called Alpine environments are more homogeneous, with little variation except the occasional short cut. Compared to NFS III, which features weather and day/night variation independent of track, and widely varying environments from snowy mountains over cities to desert, NFS:HP2 tracks have significantly less variation.

For the multiplayer mode of the PC version, players can host a game server for local area network (LAN) or internet based playing. In addition to this, the GameSpy internet matchmaking system can be used to publish and locate such servers.

Hot Pursuit 2 is also the first in the series to lack an in-car view that was available in preceding Need for Speed titles. There is only a "driver's perspective" view available, without a visible dashboard.

Different versions of the game were produced for each game platform; the Xbox, GameCube and PC versions were developed in EA Seattle, a subsidiary of EA Canada, while the PS2 version was developed by Black Box Games in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Also, it did not feature a career mode allowing car customization. Instead, there is a point system where cars are purchased from winning races. Points are determined by laps led and finishing position. In the "Championship" and "Hot Pursuit" trees, extra points are awarded if a medal is won, decided by the requirements. For example, a sprint (see section below) would give 5000 points if awarded the gold, 4000 for silver, and 2500 for bronze, etc. Points would give types of tracks to race on, cars, police cars, etc.

[edit] Game Modes

[edit] Single Race

Like all NFS games, this mode is from 2-8 players racing on any course, with more customizations, like how many laps, traffic on/off, World racing or Hot Pursuit, etc. You only get 3 opponents in hot pursuit mode, however.

[edit] Race types

All types of modes can only have a certain class of cars to be used. Faster cars are used near the end of the "Championship" and "Ultimate Racer" modes.

[edit] Delivery

  • A timed point-to-point dash, with the police in pursuit. This similar to delivery mission in NFS Porsche Unleashed (Playstation) while the police pursuit make it more challenging.

[edit] Sprint

  • A long track to get from one end to the other before the opponent.

[edit] Time Trial

  • 3 laps on a level with the goal being to beat the required time to get the gold/silver/bronze medal.

[edit] Lap Knockout

  • Last person to finish after each lap is knocked out (eliminated) until one remains.

[edit] Knockout

  • There are three opponents. After each race, the last player is disqualified and there is one less player left for the next race. This continues until there is only one opponent left and you have a last head to head battle between you and that opponent.

[edit] Tournament

  • A number of levels won by earning the most points at the end of the tournament (by winning races). Gold, silver, and bronze places award different amounts of points.

[edit] Single Race

PC version of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, showing the player in 'You're the Cop' mode in pursuit of an offender, having called for backup in the form of an additional police unit.
PC version of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, showing the player in 'You're the Cop' mode in pursuit of an offender, having called for backup in the form of an additional police unit.
  • A regular race, with a specified number of laps.

[edit] Be The Cop

  • In this mode, the player chooses a police vehicle, and the task is to disable speeding cars (by ramming into them multiple times), thereby apprehending them. The player can turn lights and sirens on and off, ask for a road block or spike strip, request help from a helicopter, or ask for a backup car to assist in chasing the target vehicle. At the end, the player is awarded for the cars busted. In the Playstation 2 version it is called "You're the Cop" mode.

[edit] Championship/Ultimate Racer

  • The goal here is to get to the bottom of a racing 'tree'. You first start off at a time trial. Once you beat that, you will have 2 options. Then you continue on from there until all the races are completed with a bronze/silver/gold.

[edit] Free Run

  • This lets you drive around any unlocked track, with or without traffic. Cops are not available in this mode (PC version).

[edit] Soundtrack

Hot Pursuit 2 is the first Need for Speed game to feature licensed rock music under the EA Trax label ("EA GamesTM Trax" at the time of game launch) along with techno music composed by contract artists. The game's soundtrack consists of eight vocal rock songs and seven instrumental rock and electronic songs, all fast-paced with elements of grunge, hip-hop and rap. The vocal songs (marked below with asterisks*) are also featured in a second, instrumental version. In the "Be the Cop" and "Hot Pursuit" game modes, the instrumental versions replace the vocal ones, which avoids obscuring the police radio messages by the song lyrics. In the PS2 version, there is the option to change weither or not certain songs are played in normal races, hot pursuit races, the game menues, or if they are not to be played at all. The soundtrack is not available on CD anymore.

The track order and lengths given here are those given by last.fm. They match the track order and length (to a few seconds) of .wav files converted from the .asf files included in the PC version. The file names given are those of the PC version.

[edit] Rock

  1. Bush - "The People That We Love" (4:02, track0.asf); instrumental version (3:29, track15.asf)*
  2. The Buzzhorn - "Ordinary" (3:09, track1.asf); instrumental version (3:07, track16.asf)*
  3. Course of Nature - "Wall of Shame" (4:02, track2.asf); instrumental version (3:36, track17.asf)*
  4. Hot Action Cop - "Fever for the Flava" (4:05, track3.asf); instrumental version (4:36, track18.asf)*
  5. Hot Action Cop - "Going Down on It" (4:52, track4.asf); instrumental version (4:46, track19.asf)*
  6. Pulse Ultra - "Build Your Cages" (3:55, track5.asf); instrumental version (3:08, track20.asf)*
  7. Rush - "One Little Victory" (5:08, track6.asf); instrumental version (4:09, track21.asf)*
  8. Uncle Kracker - "Keep It Coming" (3:23, track7.asf); instrumental version (3:15, track22.asf)*
  9. Matt Ragan - "Bundle of Clang" (3:04, track8.asf)
  10. Matt Ragan - "Cone of Silence" (3:00, track9.asf)
  11. Matt Ragan - "Flam Dance" (3:00, track10.asf)

The included vocal versions of the songs "Fever for the Flava" and "Going Down on It" feature lyrics adapted to the car racing theme, while the original lyrics are explicit (other, less accurately transcribed versions of "Fever for The Flava" can be found here and there).

[edit] Electronic

  1. The Humble Brothers - "Black Hole" (4:01, track11.asf)
  2. The Humble Brothers - "Brake Stand" (4:23, track12.asf)
  3. The Humble Brothers - "Sphere" (4:06, track13.asf)
  4. Rom di Prisco - "Cykloid" (4:18, track14.asf)

[edit] External links

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Need for Speed video games