Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

The Good
Graphics are cool. The car models are beautiful, levels are very detailed, textures are large, polycounts are high. Everything is very pretty in an "unreal2esque" sort of way. What else is good about this game? Did I mention the graphics? Oh yeah...

The Bad
Buses. These are not the regular buses that you can see in the streets of GTA3. No, these are rectangular blocks that for some unknown reason were placed on the road where you are racing. The AI for the bus drivers is non-existant, not only they manage to hit you regardless of how you drive, they also hit trees and other non-moving objects on the sides of the roads. Add to that their enourmous size and everytime you meet them you will curse the game designers.

My second gripe is the damage model. It is completely inexcusable. I don't care about licensing terms at all. I just can't suspend my disbelief when a head-on crash into a bus just slows you down a bit and when the worst thing that could happen to your car is an opened hood or a few scratches on your stop-lights.

And last but not least the AI sucks, especially the cop's AI. They are only slightly more intelligent than bus-drivers and bus drivers are utterly braindead. Cops have only one strategy - accelerate their extremely fast cars to come alongside you and drive next to you. To say it is boring is to give this game a compliment. After a very short while I opened the Options menu and started looking for a switch to turn off the buses and the cops. Too bad for a game which presumably revolves around cops chasing you (Hot Pursuit).

The Bottom Line
Unreal2 of racing arcades - beautiful graphics, but fun is missing.