Need for Speed Games Part 4: Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, Need for Speed: Underground

Today on Super Adventures, I've reached the end of the first decade of the Need for Speed games. We're in the EA GAMES TRAX era now, where every time a new song comes on, the TRAX box slides onto the screen to let you know who you're listening to. Even on the title screen.

This also means we're in the licenced soundtrack era, and the sixth gen console era! And Underground brings us to the era of perpetual twilight, where daytime is banned. Unless it's literally set underground, I don't think they ever say.

Anyway this is it, the last part. After this you won't be reading about any racing games here for a long long time, so enjoy it while it lasts (or endure it for just a little longer). Earlier parts are here, here and here.

(If I don't mention what system a screenshot came from, it's from the PC version.)

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2002 - NEED FOR SPEED: HOT PURSUIT 2
(PC, PLAYSTATION 2, GAMECUBE, XBOX)

GameCube version

You can't see it, but there's a hot air balloon just off camera. I decided to go with the shot with action and other cars on it instead, but it was a tough decision. I really wanted that third Need for Speed hot air balloon shot. Partly to prove I'm not crazy for thinking of of them as being iconic NFS scenery.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit II is the sequel to Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, so car ownership and customisation are out and police chases are back! The weird thing with the Hot Pursuit sub-series is that the numbers actually count down each sequel, as this was followed by Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit in 2010.

Actually I should be using plurals here, saying that these Hot Pursuit IIs are the sequels to Need for Speed III, as this is another situation where we've got two games sharing the same name. We've finally reached a new console generation here, but the games aren't split between the current gen and last gen divide like you might expect, or even between the PC and consoles. What happened is that the Xbox, GameCube and PC got one version (by veteran NFS PC developers EA Seattle) and the PlayStation 2 version got another all to itself (by newcomers Black Box). Doesn't make any sense to me, but I'm sure they had their reasons.

PlayStation 2 version

People say that the PlayStation 2 version's the better game and so far I'm agreeing with them. It's even a little prettier despite the PS2 having the weaker hardware. Though the other version's good too.

Plus they both let me play with a Vauxhall VX220, which I haven't gotten to drive in ages. I feel like I used to have one of these in Metropolis Street Racer, but I played that recently and it seems pretty unlikely I got that far in it. NFS games are fun and arcadey and good at tricking me into thinking I'm good at racing, but games like MSR make it clear that I am not. Speaking of MSR, the game is known for its Kudos system, where you gain points for showing off your driving skill, and Hot Pursuit II has a similar system. But in this it's just a reward, not a challenge you have to complete before you can make progress.

Anyway, if there's any difference between the car models in the two versions of Hot Pursuit 2 I can't tell, plus I didn't notice any difference in the handling. There's no differences with the cockpit view either as dashboards are missing in both games. Though I did notice that this track is pretty different!

PlayStation 2 version

GameCube version

There are a number of similarities between the tracks as well I admit, like the layout apparently being exactly the same, but the scenery's all changed! And the PS2 game has extra desert stages the other systems don't get.

Another difference between the games is that in the PS2 version the cops really pursue you. When I met them in the GameCube/Xbox/PC version they followed me for a bit and gave up. In the PS2 game they'd announce on the radio they were about to attempt a PIT manoeuvre or whatever and then they'd bloody do it. I'd frequently find them trying to surround me and I'd have to dart off down the side roads to try to evade them, or better yet get them to drive into a tree.

Playing as the cops turned out to be more fun than in the earlier games either way, as catching up to the racers didn't take forever. You get to call for backup, roadblocks and helicopters, but in the GameCube/Xbox/PC game you're basically knocking down their health bar, while the PS2 game has you trying to force their cars to stop.

GameCube version

Both games feature two branching sets of challenges, one with cops and one without, and it's got me wanting a skill tree to upgrade my car because that's what this screen looks like. The games differ though in what you get for winning, as the GameCube/Xbox/PC version gives you points to spend unlocking new cars and tracks outside of the campaign modes, while the PS2 game just unlocks things for you as you succeed.

Speaking of skills trees, the game does give you a couple of special abilities, as you can pause and get a view 360 degrees around you, and fire off a camera-fireball that gives you a sneak peek of what's coming up ahead. I nearly forgot to mention them because I never ever used them. Plus the GameCube/Xbox/PC version apparently gives you limited time-travel, as I read that there's a half-second input lag that makes all your actions eventually take place in the future!

PlayStation 2 version

The PlayStation 2 game was the one I had back in the day and I remember it feeling wrong to me somehow. Maybe I could sense that it was by a different developer, or maybe it was playing it on console instead of PC that was strange, I don't know. All I know is that after playing all these Need for Speed games in a row I've changed my mind. Hot Pursuit 2 absolutely belongs as part of the series. It's great! Both of them! I missed being able to own cars, and my enthusiasm for the game started to wane long before I ran out of challenges, but it's a solid old school racing game. Uh, two solid old school racing games.

Though I don't appreciate having the song Fever for the Flava stuck in my head. Damn you, Hot Action Cop!

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2003 - NEED FOR SPEED: UNDERGROUND
(PC, PLAYSTATION 2, GAMECUBE, XBOX, GAME BOY ADVANCE, ARCADE)

The Need for Speed games had done well with their formula for nine years. Exotic cars in exotic locations, and sometimes police chases. But then something happened that changed everything: The Fast and the Furious came out.

Someone at EA must have really loved that movie, or how much money it was making, as Need for Speed: Underground is all about modding Mitsubishis and Toyotas and taking them drag racing in the city at night. In fact it's even got a bit of Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift in there too with its drift races, despite coming out three years before the movie.

Not that Need for Speed was doing anything revolutionary here by focusing on street racing culture, as the Midnight Club games started in 2001 and the Shutokō Battle series has been around for just as long as the NFS series. But NFS really committed to its new direction, as it went all-in on modded cars and shiny streets for five more games or so.

This one's by Black Box again, who shared the franchise with EA Canada for the next decade, all the way up to 2011's Need for Speed: The Run. Don't worry about Eden Games, they got to work on the Test Drive: Unlimited series instead. Sadly veteran Need for Speed PC version developers EA Seattle reached the end of the road here and were shut down in 2002.

Porsche 2000 had a little bit of a story going on in factory driver mode, with the other drivers giving you missions briefings in a text box, but this features actual CGI characters talking to your face like the X-Man did in the first game! Well, at least one of them anyway. The rest like to send their mission briefings via text box.

This is Samantha and she hates my car, saying that it's "seriously weak, dude." Then she called me a loser! Samantha is mean. I suppose she's right though, as I haven't even installed my NOS yet!

It's weird to finally get nitrous after so many games without it, and even weirder that you use it up in two seconds and then it's gone for the rest of the race. It can't be earned back with patience or clever driving, it's brief advantage to be saved until you absolutely need it.

Man, look at those beautiful reflections. Makes me glad they've left a tiny hole in the HUD for me to see the track through. It hasn't been distracting me to be honest, but it sure gets elaborate when you're out on a drifting circuit.

The trouble with the game's structure is that you need to do every event in the main 'Underground' mode to unlock things, meaning that you have to do drift and drag races to progress, whether you want to or not. I don't want to, plus I'm really bad at them, so this is a bit of an irritating interruption in my racing. Variety is good, except when I don't like it.

You might have spotted that I'm top of the leaderboard with double the points of my nearest rival, but don't let that fool you. For one thing I've switched down to easy mode for this event, but also I'm weaving from side to side trying to soak up every point I can instead of whipping my whip around corners like I'm supposed to. You get the most points for getting the car travelling sideways at speed on those stripy bonus zones on either side of the track, but I'm always moving too slow in the wrong place. My one skill is being able to stop before I hit the wall and cancel all my points... usually.

Drag races simplify the steering so that you snap to the next lane along when you turn, but you're also having to pay attention to your revs as you need to shift gears manually at the exact right time. Get the timing wrong and let the other cars pull away from you and you're screwed. It's a straight line, you'll never catch up. But focus on the timing instead of the road and you'll get a car in the face.

One time I got a train in the face, because the obstacle I dodged at the last moment turned out to be the ramp I needed to jump over it. In my defence, the road is kind of a blurry mess! It's a pretty mess, especially with all the light trails, but still blurry. Though I suppose I should just be grateful I'm not slipping everywhere on the perpetually shiny wet tarmac.

They've finally taken out the announcer who tells you "You've just got a top ten time for this track!" here, which is an absolute tragedy, but do well enough and your car gets to be on terrible magazine covers! That's not my character by the way. Though I suppose it could be actually, as you rarely get a good look inside the car.

You technically only own one car at a time, but the way it works you can basically swap between everything unlocked and affordable in the shop any time you want, as you always get all your cash back and keep all your upgrades.

Though I really wish I could've modded my car a little more by now and made it a bit more presentable. I got a third of the way through the game in the end and only just unlocked the second kind of vinyls and the second level of paint colours. It's very stingy with the cosmetics.

I know this was the first Need for Speed that lets you put more than a stripe and some numbers on your car, but I couldn't quite remember how powerful the editor was. Turns out not very, as you get four slots to put vinyls into and you can choose their colour afterwards. And that's it. You can't reposition them, resize them, rotate them or anything like that.

To get new cosmetic upgrades you need to increase your style points by achieving things, driving close to traffic, pulling off power slides, stuff like that. Dressing the car up increases your multiplier, meaning you earn points faster and get more stuff to dress your car up. Eventually. Sure does take a while.

Car upgrades are very straightforward. After a few races you unlock a new upgrade to buy, then you reach a race that requires that upgrade to enter. You purchase the upgrade using money and admire the way the bars on the bottom of the screen have just increased. At first I couldn't figure out the difference between the brand packages you can buy, but I eventually realised that there isn't any. They're just different boxes of product placement.

The game has 111 races in total, meaning there's a lot of racing and drifting before you're done with it. Unfortunately there's only eight circuits, eight drift tracks, eight drag races etc. It doesn't let you have the whole city to race around in like the later games, the tracks are just located there.

I've superimposed most of the tracks onto the city map to show you the problem with this. First, they're all a 'city streets at midnight' track, second they all overlap so every landmark's shared by at least one other track. The other games got a bit repetitive after a few races on the same track, but this is so much worse for it. It feels like a really great demo that just keeps looping.

For example: the game starts with a fantasy race in an upgraded end game car. Then you wake up and drive around in your piece of crap starting car instead on the exact same track... or maybe it was a different track, I couldn't even tell!

Incidentally, "Do the same thing, except slower," isn't great game design. Though to be honest the two cars were fairly indistinguishable as well, so I didn't feel a requirement for velocity. It's not like Porsche 2000 where the slow car is slow.

Here's some advice, try not to land on top of traffic. This is especially important when you're on the last lap because it'll have you hitting the 'restart' button instead of 'reset', as your opponents sail past you. Wait, Rappin' Kagaroo? Rappin' Moose? What?

Oh by the way, see those three red chevrons in the background pointing out where to go? Those are bloody helpful and this game's a hero for introducing them. Especially the ones that block off roads. I remember Need for Speed: Most Wanted 2012 getting rid of them for whatever reason, and it turns out that's a terrible idea as you can't tell where the track is anymore! Respect the chevrons.

Need for Speed: Underground has two modes for me: repetitive racing and irritating interruptions, and it's become really easy to see why I never finished it. But I think the actual racing is maybe the best you get in the first ten years of the series. The cars are a dream to drive, there's a real feeling of speed, and the game looks great for its time as well. Probably. It's a bit hard to see because of all the blurriness.

Plus all the ports are identical for a change. There's one game and everyone gets to play it no matter what system they own. Though that's not entirely true...

GBA version

The game also came out on the GBA and it's pretty incredible. I'm not sure I've ever played a 3D racing game where every single turn is 90 degrees before. I know American cities are often built on a grid, but this is ridiculous. Also taking the theme tune from the main game and having it restart over and over as you change menu options, then play during the race as well, is an act of incredible cruelty.

It makes sense that this would be more primitive than GBA Porsche 2000 though, as it came out a few months earlier. I don't think I've ever played any other GBA racing games so I've no idea where these would rank, but I'm fairly sure I can live without ever playing them again. I'd rather go back to the 3DO thanks.

Need for Speed: Underground - Rivals (PSP)

There's also Need for Speed: Underground - Rivals, which was released on the PlayStation Portable a couple of years later, but after careful assessment I've determined that it's not a port of Underground either. It's way closer to it than the GBA game though. In fact it plays more like a budget Need for Speed: Underground rival.

I'm not just being harsh to it because it kicked my ass three races into novice mode, it's missing some of that slick Need for Speed presentation, the textures are surprisingly crap in places, and some of the sound effects are distractingly terrible. It feels overall inferior, in ways that can't be entirely justified by the shift in hardware.

Still, on the plus side they reused Underground 2's soundtrack and added a Soulwax song to it, which I thoroughly endorse.

Need for Speed: Underground - Rivals (PSP)

In fact it's got an entire Soulwax music video hidden in there, which is bloody weird. Actual live action people in a Need for Speed game! Man, it's been a while. Need for Speed: Most Wanted finally brought back proper live action cutscenes to the series a few months later, but this got there first.


CONCLUSION

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The first ten years of the Need for Speed franchise spanned two and a half console generations, eight game systems, and an uncountable number of sequels. I mean, do Porsche 2000 and Hot Pursuit 2 count as two each? How many games does Need for Speed 1 count as, with its Nissan variants and its Special Editions? All I know is that I've seen a lot of title screens these past few days, driven a lot of cars with a lot of horsepower around a lot of cliff side roads, and I've come to the inescapable conclusion that Need for Speed games are good. Generally. The first one's a bit dull and most of the handheld games I played are a waste of time, but other than that I'd be happy to replay any of these games. Which is good, because I still haven't given up hope of finally unlocking some decent vinyls in Underground.

I've tried to get into more serious racing games like Gran Turismo, but after failing the first few licence tests a half dozen times I was ready to throw my controller through my screen and my screen out the window. On the other hand, Metropolis Street Racer's insistence that I power slide through every corner for style points left me just as frustrated. I've come to realise that I've got no interest in practicing to master each track and shave milliseconds off my lap times, and I've made peace with the fact that I'll never get good enough to beat actual racing drivers. What makes the Need for Speed games work for me is that they let me win, but make me feel like I had to work for it.

Well, that's not entirely true as I was losing races all the time, but it was usually because I kept driving into walls, not because my racing line was occasionally sloppy. There's no rewind in these games, so one good mistake can ruin your whole run. But the other drivers are capable of making mistakes too, so the reward for a miraculously flawless race isn't just the satisfaction of making it to first place, it's getting to feel smug for reaching the finishing line 20 seconds ahead of your opponents. Though keeping the lead for the whole race does get a bit lonely, at least until you catch up to the back of the pack.

Before I replayed the games I was expecting Need for Speed III to be my favourite and Hot Pursuit 2 to be the weird one I couldn't get into, but going through them all in order has made it really obvious that they typically improve a little with each installment. They definitely take steps back in certain areas too (I think Need for Speed 2 had the best soundtrack for instance), but overall I think Underground's actually the one I like most right now. Because if it wasn't the best, then why did I put up with all those bloody drag races just to reach more driving?

The older games are definitely dated, but if EA are determined not to sell them online then they could at least make a Need for Speed Generations, full of remastered tracks from the earlier titles and fan favourite cars. Road Challenge had the right idea when it brought back all the circuits from Need for Speed III. It's probably never going to happen, but that's fine as the games all still work on Windows 10 with modern controllers... with the help of fan made patches and some screwing around. The SafeDisc protection won't work though, so they do need No-CD cracks. Would be nice if more companies patched out their DRM themselves when it stopped serving a purpose!

Anyway, the important things to take away from this is that PCGamingWiki is here to rescue you, the Need for Speed series didn't start at Most Wanted, and hot air balloons are a good sign you're playing the right racing game series. By which I mean Forza Horizon.

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Next on Super Adventures... you're going to have to guess I'm afraid (clue: it's not Need for Speed).

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