Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit

"This hot pursuit will burn you before you even start the race."

Electronic Arts have done it again, this time providing high performance motoring dreamers with another method of running rampant and breaking all the rules, without busting their wallets and bank accounts. It's Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, and it's gonna change your ideas of racing - you can also be the cop who brings 'em down if you want. From the moment of placing the CD into your computer, you notice that this game is going to keep you playing for a long time. A wonderful, impressive short-length movie to feast your eyes upon is next on the agenda - lightning bolts, car views and morphing effects dance around the screen in a true viewing delight (it even combines with screen-shots from the actual game too). EA really loves to give its audience something to look at before gameplay, but it just seems too short for my liking. An important aspect about this movie is that it introduces to the game-player the fact that a unique aspect has been drawn into this game: law enforcement. This definitely provides a new dimension to the game, and is probably one of my favorite sections.

One of the unfortunate things that I have noticed with this game is that when played on a Pentium-166 without a 3Dfx card installed, the game basically looks terrible. This is seen as soon as you enter the game, in which the title screen is awful - extremely hard to navigate and choose options, and no fancy effects with carmakers' labels scrolling across the screen randomly. Within the game itself, the cars look like boxes with minimum detail chosen, and there isn't much improvement either when high detail is chosen (game speed is considerably reduced with this option on as well), which is extremely frustrating.

Now, back to the game itself. The title screen is fairly good, with awesome music to listen to (which can be changed according to your tastes within the Setup menu). Four options are presented - one player, two players, connection and load game. In terms of connecting players, you can connect via a local network, TCP/IP, modem or direct connect via your serial port.

From the one player and two player menus, there are several racing options which are available. A Single Race option exists for practicing or just for a quick game. The second option, Hot Pursuit, allows you to race as either a runaway car to achieve the title of Most Wanted (to win an El Nino vehicle) or you can race as the law in a Pursuit Corvette to collect all of the hoons and rank yourself as Top Cop (to win a Pursuit Diablo SV vehicle). Knockout options - 8 cars begin, 7 races, last placed vehicle out of each race is eliminated - be the last remaining car and receive the bonus track Empire City (expert knockout also receives the El Nino bonus car). The final option, Tournament, pits yourself against other racers for points - win bonus cars throughout if you're good enough. Options within the single race don't stop there though. An easy to use interface exists, you can either bring up a menu to list all options in text, or you can scroll through choices of the menu itself. You can modify the transmission (auto or manual), colour of the car (according to the vehicle's make and model), compare the vehicles between one another (either all of them at once via a bar graph, including hidden vehicles, or two vehicles side-by-side with direct comparisons of acceleration, top-speed, handling and braking). Audio modes (including every individual sound effect such as engine volume) are easily adjusted, as are options for graphics views and Force Feedback (very nicely supported, especially in regard to control, road effects such as gravel and collisions, engine idle, road grip and body rolling.). Function Keys can be assigned and you can check the pre-defined keys (map choices, saving screens, etc.). Camera choices for your viewing pleasure are bountiful and include in-car view (detailed view including dash-board and internal view), roof cam, heli cam behind you, bumper cam (most difficult setting), high cam and low cam.

The vehicles themselves are divided into three classes: Class A (exotic, high-performance), Class B and Class C. But don't discount the two lower classes either, they contain some great cars in there too - especially the Australian-made (woohoo.) Holden HSV VT. Class A examples include El Nino, Ferrari 550 Maranello, Jaguar XJR 15, Lamborghini Diablo SV, and the Pursuit El Nino. Examples of Class B cars include Chevrolet Corvette, Ferrari 355 F1 Spider, Lamborghini Contach and the Pursuit Corvette. Class C consists of Aston Martin DB7, Ford Falcon GT, Holden HSV VT GTS, Jaguar XK8, and the Mercedes SL600.

Let's get into the game now. Eight tracks are available, in which there are four beginning tracks and four expert tracks provided at the beginning of the game. You can choose how many laps you wish to race (2, 4 or 8), the direction of the course (if you get used to going one way in the course, you can reverse the direction for more challenge), night-driving, and weather. Headlight and brake light effects are fantastic. Track records are quite detailed and can be sorted out in regard to place, name, cars, total time and top speed. Also, placing the cursor over sections of time and speed during the racing summary provides you with a breakdown of results to see whether or not you were consistent throughout the race. The big thing that caught my eye was a detailed track information section that provides an overview and pictures of the track, a few little hints about cornering technique and general racing procedures, and a three-dimensional view to show steepness of the course.

When you're about to race, you get a full-screen shot of your vehicle with a handy status-indicator at the bottom of the screen to show you that the game is indeed loading. Music and sound effects throughout the game itself are excellent and well placed (information is provided to you as needed), and realistic driving controls are present. Different views are astounding, especially during night and wet driving. Within your view of the game, the bottom left hand corner indicates who your opponents are, and how far ahead of you they are (or how far behind, depending on how good a driver you are.). Other indicators (analog or digital, your choice) include time of this lap, race position, speed, what gear you're currently in, tachometer (RPM), rear-vision mirror, and track record.

Off-road effects are great and extremely well thought out by the designers, especially the skidding and churning of the surrounding grass around the track and the realistic collision effects (sparks along the wall, skids on the road, rolls involving great effects such as fireballs at the front of the car). The graphics scroll very nicely and the computer can generally handle all effects quite well, depending on the speed of your computer.

The pursuit portion of the game is awesome and really gets your heart going up several notches with the adrenaline flow. Both versions (racing as the law or not) allow use of an on-board scanner to hear the police communicating with the dispatcher. You can hear the mentioning of police methods such as laying a spike trap near the bridge, and you can also hear their disappointment as a vehicle evades the traps. The only down-fall about the pursuit game is the fact that, as the law, it is very difficult to apprehend all eight runaway vehicles within two laps (at least you can adjust the number of laps, though). One other thing that I have noticed about the game is the ability to reverse the car, and option not previously available in Need for Speed II. This is absolutely brilliant and was a major disadvantage to NFS2.

Once the entire racing is over, an option exists for a replay of the race, which is great to see how good (or how bad.) your performance was. Different automatic changes in the camera view are illustrated during the replay (frontal view, rear view, side view) with extremely nice rendering and close-ups of the vehicle you were in control of. All burnouts, crashes, skids and spins are wonderfully recreated in a scenario for you to just sit back, relax, and learn about how you can improve your technique.

Reviewer's Score: 8/10, Originally Posted: 05/31/00, Updated 08/07/01