The game takes place in a fictional location known as Seacrest County based on Southern California, Arizona, and Colorado. It's an open world and features over 100 miles (160 km) of open road, four times larger than that of Burnout Paradise, Criterion's previous title. Hot Pursuit features a new social interaction system called "Autolog" which is described as "Facebook for the game". The game features both single-player and multiplayer game modes with up to eight players; as an option to live multiplayer racing, players can post records and achievements on the Autolog feed for friends to see, which they then can try to beat. Autolog also contains an experience system called "Bounty". As of July 2012, the Web Dashboard for Autolog was shut down for all games, except Need for Speed: Most Wanted.
The driving mode of the game is described as "fun, accessible, okay", however not as arcade-styled as Burnout Paradise, but far from a simulator. All vehicles in Hot Pursuit are licensed real-world cars and SUVs, described as "all the cars you dreamed of driving, in the way you dreamed of driving them".
Most vehicles are available in both racer and police variants, but a few cars are exclusive to each side. Also exclusively featured in the Hot Pursuit is the Porsche 918 Spyder. Ferrari however, last seen in a Shift DLC-pack but notably absent from all other Need for Speed games since Hot Pursuit 2, is also absent from Hot Pursuit. There is no car customization or tuning, other than color changing, "just because the game really focuses on the Hot Pursuit element." Unlike previous Need for Speed games which use unbranded, fictional models, real cars like the Audi A4, Chevrolet Cobalt, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Frontier, and Ram 1500 are used as traffic cars.
Development
The game was first hinted at during E3 2009 by EA’s CEO, John Riccitiello. Riccitiello stated that Criterion Games, developers of EA's own Burnout series, was working on a "revolutionary" addition to the Need for Speed franchise, stating: "We don't have a plan right now for a separate major launch on Burnout, because the team doing it is working on a revolutionary take on Need for Speed." The title was confirmed to be in development by EA's chief operating officer, John Pleasants, at a Stock meeting in June 2009, where he stated: "We've taken the Burnout team and combined it with our Need for Speed franchise. So we now have that in our favor because that Burnout team is probably one of the more online-centric and notably high-quality game developers that we have out at Criterion." Shift producer, Jesse Abney, expressed his delight to work with Criterion Games, stating that it would be a "great team to work with on that stuff," referencing the development of Need for Speed. It was reported that the game was scheduled for release in Q4 2010. EA's COO, John Schappert, said that the Q4 NFS title was, "a new action based Need for Speed from our Criterion Studio," in a post-financial report conference call. The title was officially revealed as Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit at EA's Media Briefing during E3 2010, with a trailer which showed a high-speed police chase involving three different racers. The trailer was followed by a live demo of the game on stage between creative director Craig Sullivan as a cop and producer Matt Webster as a racer. According to Riccitiello, the game was in development for two years.
In August 2010, before Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was set to take center stage at EA's press conference during Gamescom, it was announced by art director Henry LaBounta that Criterion collaborated with Battlefield creators EA Digital Illusions CE (DICE) in building the massive open world of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit. Early in November 2010, Patrick Söderlund, Senior Vice President of EA Games Europe, said this of the collaboration: "I think the most important thing, when you have two high-quality developers working together, for it to work, they need to have mutual respect. They need to have that respect, to say ‘Ok, we trust you to do this.’ This was a case where that was so obvious, where the Criterion team had a full trust in the DICE team to do what they were doing, and vice versa."
Reception
Pre-release
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit was well received by critics at E3 2010 and was most notably awarded with "Best Racing Game" from Game Critics Awards as well as several other media outlets.000001 Other games in the category included Forza Motorsport 4, Gran Turismo 5, Test Drive Unlimited 2 and MotorStorm: Apocalypse.1 IGN stated that it had "an inspired level of connectivity", while 1UP.com claimed that "the other racing games at E3 never had a chance".1 This was the first game in the Need for Speed series since the original Hot Pursuit to win an E3 award.1 Hot Pursuit was also nominated for "Best Xbox 360" and "Best PS3" game by IGN, and "Best Graphics" by Gaming Excellence.01
Post-release
Hot Pursuit was received positively upon release, review-aggregating website Metacritic hold the average score for the PlayStation 3 version at 89/100,1 the Xbox 360 version at 88/100,1 and the PC version at 86/100,1 while the Wii version was met with mixed or average reviews receiving 50/100.1 In the edition of 8 November 2010 of Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine, the first review score was given as 10/10. The reviewer said "It's consistently challenging without feeling difficult. It's immensely rewarding without ever being taxing."
