Another fantastic entry in the Need For Speed series by the practically infallible Criterion

And yet another game in yet another yearly franchise presents itself. And just like Assassin's Creed IV, this is another "next-gen" launch title that must also be able to run on current gen hardware. But fortunately,  this is another game that uses the mighty Frostbite 3 engine so it will look impressive on everything.  But more so on newer hardware.  And more so again on a high end PC which is what I played it on.

This is now the 3rd entry in the Need for Speed series made by Criterion. Yes, technically this was made by Ghost Games

but after some re-arrangements at EA, most of it was made by Criterion and therefore it will be awesome.

And it was awesome. A short way of describing it would be that it is Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2. A very similar but much visually enhanced follow up with an open world structure and different and varied task lists acting as levels of progression instead of just linear progression.

Again, you can play as both a cop or a racer. The cops must bust the racers and the racers must avoid the cops. The events are again similar to Hot Pursuit: time trials, races, interceptors and hot pursuits. Time trials and races are self explanitory. Interceptors are cop events where you must chase down and bust a single racer and Hot Pursuits are different depending on which side you are on. As a racer, in a hot pursuit, you must simultaneously avoid the cops and beat the other racers to the finish line. As a cop, you must bust as many of the racers as possible before they reach the finish line.

You progress through the game by completing lists of tasks (called assignments as cops and speedlists as racers) where you must perform a certain number of tasks such as win X number of races, take down Y number of racers, score Z number of points etc etc. These start off as short and easy lists of tasks but soon get to be extensive and difficult as you progress. progressing also unlocks more events, cars and pursuit tech. Ah yes, the pursuit tech. Think of these like your items in Mario Kart. Each car can have 2 and you can pick from a variety of offensive and defensive weapons. Some are limited to cops, some to racers and some available to all. For example, only cops can call in helicopters and set up road blocks, only racers can use super turbos and shock pulses but everyone can use EMPs and electrostatic fields. These weapons mix things up and give you a wider set of tactical options while trying to bust or avoid being busted.

As mentioned before, the game runs on the Frostbite 3 engine so it looks absolutely stunning even on current gen consoles and low end hardware. But this also allows for a lot more flexibility in the environment. In racers of old, you were limited to drive only on the road and there would be barriers all around the roads (either visible or invisible) to stop you going off the road. However the Frostbite 3 engine allows for a huge amount of destructibility and complexity in the environments so you can now go tearing off road, through fields, fences even buildings. It creates a much better feeling of action and immersion to be able to slide wide on a corner, tear through a field full of fences and come out on the other side realising you had just accidently taken a shortcut. And did I mention it looked gorgeous? Just look at the shots for yourself above.

It's not all good though. There are some minor complaints I did have with it. Truly huge load times going in and out of the open world to change cars, bank points etc. No way to pause the game (this is due to it being aimed at primarily online multiplayer which I did not partake in). The cops are truly out to totally murder you when you are a racer. And I mean they absolutely will not stop until you are 6 ft under. And a large difficulty imbalance between the racer and cop careers. Racer task lists are generally much harder to do and racers must buy new cars whereas cops are simply given them. There is then also the fact that a racer is targets of other racers and cops so everyone is out to kill you but cops have allies in the other cops and a racer will rarely be aggressive towards a cop and simply try to outrun him. Also due to the extreme high speeds that you are usually travelling at, you regularly crash into things before you have the chance to avoid or sometimes even see them. But this has always been the way with Criterion's racing games so it's to be expected.

These are all fairly small niggles though and none of them stopped me having an enormous amount of fun with this game just as I did with Hot Pursuit and I would give this a very very strong recommendation to any fan of racing games. But if you're new to Burnout or the newer Need for Speed games, you may be unprepared for the initial learning curve and get frustrated with it but stick with it, crash through it and speed your way to victory and awesomeness at 225mph.

Long live Criterion (and now Ghost Games). They can do very little wrong in my book.