Summary
Quite possibly the only reason to buy a PS2
The Good
NFS has, for a long time, been my favorite racing series consistantly (Test Drive series: excellent but buggy, always relatively mediocre graphics. 2002 edition is the best by far, but eve of destruction looks like crap. Gran Turismo. The 2nd was was excellent, but 1 and 3 were crap). So anyway...
If you just got a small lottery prize of around $200 and you had Xbox and both Nintendos. What do ya do? PS2 and HP2? An excellent way to blow it.
Let's face it, PS2 is plagued with slow loading times and 99% of its games are multiplatform. This isn't really, and it's damn good.
All HP2 really is is an INSANE arcade racer, putting ya through a series of missions. Extremely simple premise, but it's all about the thrill of getting your McLarens, baby. There isn't too much to say, other than "infrichencredible", so read on here...
The Bad
It's a tragedy that EA made the bone headed mistake of choosing a different developer for all the XBox, GXN and PC releases. They claim it was due to time restraints, but they probably knew just how damn good it was, and all the other consoles had their fair share of excellent racers (and I mean CONSOLES, PC racers are... uh...) And let's face it, GT3 was absolute crap compared to its predacessor, which actually was the best PSX racer. Anyway, it would have been worthwhile to wait another 6 months and just release and equal game across all platforms. The "secondary" game isn't bad, but it's still nothing compared to the real version (they took out the desert levels!?!?!). I'm afraid the other releases are just barely above mediocre third part bargain binners. How dare they price it above $10. And PS2 version is worth $50...
The Bottom Line
Test Drive 2002, across any platform, will certainly provide you with more thrills than secondary Hot Pursuit 2's. The PS2 Hot Pursuit 2 is one of the best racers ever, and a contender for best game ever. And what's sad is just how mediocre a console of PS2. This and GT3 are the sole exclusitivities on a slow, old platform. Trust me, the only modern consoles worth bothering to own are Xbox (many exclusitivities, the poor man's PC) and Gamecube (all the great licenses are here, and the console is cute and portable). PC ain't a console but also great if ya got the money to buy yourself one. Oh, and perhaps a GBA if you ain't broke yet :-P. So... yeah... PS2 sucks.
