Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit

It's as if Burnout 2 and Burnout Paradise got married and had the most wonderful child you ever did see.  I'm not very far into the game at all (this is all Autolog's fault - I load up with the best of intentions and then I'll see someone's gone a second faster than me on a particular race, which absolutely must not be allowed to stand.  Then an hour passes...) but what I've played has been very good.

A few things that have stood out so far:

- The game's idea of a slow car is a Porsche Boxster.  No earning your spurs in a Chevrolet Cobalt or VW Golf here.

- The sense of speed from the bumper cam is something else.  The races I've done so far haven't been full of civilian traffic but I've still had races, particularly in the preview events (sort of like Burnout's Burning Lap, a flat-out blast against the clock in a car you haven't yet unlocked for general use) where my focus has been on the horizon because if I don't see the oncoming car from that distance, I'm probably going to hit it before I've had time to get out of the way.  If I hit the oncoming car, I need to restart if I want to get a Gold medal or go top of the Autolog Speedwall...

- ...and I don't mind one bit.  Hot Pursuit is one of those racers where a top-end sportscar will never dip below 130 even in the tightest hairpins the game has to offer, but the handling model has some depth to it in spite of that.  The cars have weight and inertia, while the drifting mechanic is such that you can shave little bits of time here and there by making sure you don't scrub off too much speed and using brakes and throttle instead of steering to make small course changes.  Rather than being an annoyance, a restart is an opportunity to go back and perfect your run.

Annoyances?  I have a suspicion that some of the fastest times on certain cop challenges are going to be achieved by fluke rather than skill, but I'll get over that.  The loading times are alright but you'll go through a loading screen every time you restart a race, along with a little intro scene that's apparently skippable but seems to play whether the game tells me I've skipped it or not.  Oh!  I'm not sure if the AI rubber-bands but I am sure it's happy to stay competitive with you or even in front of you until the last mile or so of every race.  At that point it suddenly becomes less enthusiastic about beating you, though I don't know if this continues through the faster car classes.

All in all, there's a lot to like.  I paid full price, which I rarely do these days, and I'm not at all unhappy to have done so.

I have absolutely no idea, mate.  I would be surprised if that option appeared, since civilian traffic has been central to Criterion's other racing games and this one has a very similar feel, but I'll have a look for you.