NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

2010 Need for Speed Hot Pursuit
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xturbo
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NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by xturbo »

I'm too lazy to write down my impression of the game. Only thing I will talk about that is that the game is just awesome in every single way, except some issues I detected now that I finished both Racer and Cop missions (in single):

- AI -> It's ok, rubberbanding is there to actually put things hard for you, but I think it's a clear disadvantage for the new players that are just getting into NFS. It's not attractive for them to actually get beaten up by the AI several times and have to restart races sometimes 10 times or even more. I had to restart a time trial even like 5 times because the AI, even if it crashed like 5-6 times behind me, was still there. I left him behind for about 6-7 seconds, and after that, magically he was behind me like nothing and passed me. Curiously I was using a CCXR at I was going at 420 (max. speed, the gauge was red) but this normal CCX passed me like nothing (and it wasn't using the nitrous) and I was like -> :shock: if they could re-balance the AI again, would be sweet. For a trivia, in the last race as Racer (the SeaCrest Tour) like 3/4 of the race, the AI was behind me until the last 20.0kms: for some reason, he crashed once and was behind me for about 10 seconds or 15, but he didn't catch me up, which was strange and I could won the race very relaxed. It was like if the AI rubberbanding just got deactivated :S

- Graphical -> Game for me, runs at 60FPs with no complications, none. But I've seen that some effects are missing in the PC version. I know it's a port of the console version, but I think the raindrops would enhance the experience a little bit more. Also the police siren lights are like "dead", there's no glow of the light as seen in the console versions. The textures of course are way sharper than the console versions, but in my opinion they enhance the gameplay even more. Now, something that has been whined in the forums to death, it's the AA (AntiAliasing), which at least, for me, is not that important, but it would be cool to have it there, sometimes looking at the horizon, due to the jaggies, I can't see what is coming in the opposite lane or the actual spike strip :(

- Sound -> Some time ago I read through a twit that the game would have the option to import soundtrack (mp3) and was going to be useable in NFSHP. However, there's no option for it. Don't get me wrong, I don't care honestly, I just run Winamp and problem solved, but if you are twitting through an official account...hey....I think it's responsability of the company to actually do what they say...anyways, again, it doesn't bother me at all.
Another thing I have noticed is the low engine sounds and music as well. For some reason, some cars are actually have normal volume levels, such as the Porsche GT3 RS, which sounds awesome. But some cars, like the Nissan GTR sound pretty low. You can notice this when you fully stop you car, turn off the engine, and then fire up again. The fire up sound level is higher than the actual initial revving of the car. The LP670-4 SV is a clear example of that: ignite the engine and listen to the revving of the engine as soon as the gauge starts to rise.
And of course, EA Trax missing, I hate some songs :(

- Handling: is perfect, nothing to say, I enjoy so much to drift in this game, but the overuse of drifting sometimes annoys me. Especially online which some of the guys out there drift like crazy and curiously don't lose speed when doing it. I was racing with a group and 2 of them were drifting in every single corner, and I took a shortcut but they were ahead of me before I was out of the tunnel, maybe they were using nitrous but anyways...just a point.

- Online: Balancing? I agree that online pursuits are awesome, but sometimes it gets nasty especially at the very start of the race (as racer). Not to mention that we have guys throwing spike strips to other racers, the emp feature in cops seems way too unbalanced. I have no problems to dodge the emp by going through some small areas, but the EMP will resume after the initial "touch" has made. I guess if that you interrupt the emp sequence, that would count as dodged, but it is not. I wish I could fully interrupt the EMP as soon as I'm out of visibility.

- Photomode: Criterion's attempt to create something similar to Forza 3 photomode. It's awesome, but I did a test with it: While I was running speedtest.net and the upload ammount, I took a photo and did the corresponding tweaks, then I pressed upload, and I went to resume: to my surprise, the game still had the image tweaks I did, and I was playing normally, but when the upload was complete, tweaks were turned off and image went to normal.

By the way, Bojan, you should send a letter to Criterion and ask them if they're at least aware of some issues like AA and other small things, but I'm sure they're working in autolog fixes rather than graphical things. Or at least tell them to look over this forum, we have a way more constructive environment rather than all the rage stuff that is going through the official forums ;)

And for now, that's it :)
Last edited by xturbo on 23 Nov 2010, 23:15, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by ElvenAvenger »

I agree with everything.

I don't know if you noticed it but cop sirens "appear" through landscape.

I mean, if i take a shortcut and see a roadblock near the exit, i see the siren's through the wall.


In addition, i can't hear the Shelby GT 500 Super Snake. I didn't see a muscle car in real life(only a 2005 Mustang standing in a used car dealership)
But i guess a 750 HP engine would be ...noticeable?


And for some reason i also didn't need to make any efforts to win Seacrest Tour.
Near the finish line i was ahead of them by 1 minute(!)


I hope Bojan can contact Criterion about some issues (in general, and PC version in particular). Ability to exclude some tracks from playing at all, visible raindrops in PC version, anti aliasing on PC, more controllers/wheels support, and i'd like to see some optimization fixes.
My problem is FPS drops on any mini cutscenes involving smashing a cop or a racer. Sometimes it just drops from rocksolid 60 FPS to single digit FPS.

Yes, i doublechecked and it happened regardless of background tasks going on, antivirus on/off, defragmenting and all. It isn't a problem on my side.
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by xturbo »

ElvenAvenger wrote:I agree with everything.

I don't know if you noticed it but cop sirens "appear" through landscape.

I mean, if i take a shortcut and see a roadblock near the exit, i see the siren's through the wall.
Not happening to me at least, I've just checked it and it's not happening. I have my little 9600GT 512MB and everything is perfect :)
ElvenAvenger wrote: In addition, i can't hear the Shelby GT 500 Super Snake. I didn't see a muscle car in real life(only a 2005 Mustang standing in a used car dealership)
But i guess a 750 HP engine would be ...noticeable?
I agree with you as well. Sounds are way too low, it takes the sexyness of the cars, it's like "hey I have the best guitar on earth but I have crappy amplification"...I don't know if that's clear...
ElvenAvenger wrote: And for some reason i also didn't need to make any efforts to win Seacrest Tour.
Near the finish line i was ahead of them by 1 minute(!)
Now that's strange, I mean, all the other races are hard and rubberbanding is crazy with the catch-up....but the last race....damn....something went wrong there lol
ElvenAvenger wrote: I hope Bojan can contact Criterion about some issues (in general, and PC version in particular). Ability to exclude some tracks from playing at all, visible raindrops in PC version, anti aliasing on PC, more controllers/wheels support, and i'd like to see some optimization fixes.
Well, they may do it, but I fear that console guys will get them first. Autolog stuff seems more important for them, but who knows? I thrust 200% over Criterion compared to Blackbox, if you don't trust, ask them about NFS Underbeta..oops sorry Undercover :^o
ElvenAvenger wrote: My problem is FPS drops on any mini cutscenes involving smashing a cop or a racer. Sometimes it just drops from rocksolid 60 FPS to single digit FPS.

Yes, i doublechecked and it happened regardless of background tasks going on, antivirus on/off, defragmenting and all. It isn't a problem on my side.
Now thats something I didn't know. Probably something is wrong with your OS. I have Win 7 64bits....well I'll tell you my specs:
Intel Core i7 930 @ 4.2 Ghz
MSI X58m
Corsair XMS3 DDR3 6GB (6x1GB) @1600mhz
MSI NX9600GT 512MB OC Edition
Windows 7 64bits


And NO lag, seriously. I have a drop of frames to 30FPS just when I use fraps to record videos, but nothing else. It keeps being 60FPS even duing the cutscenes :)
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by Hydro_PT »

@xturbo: Nice opinion, you got straight to the point, and I agree with you on pretty much everything. I haven't beat the game yet, so I cannot give a "final" opinion, but I mostly agree with what you wrote. :)

Now, I want to ask you something: do you have slowdowns while playing? I also have a 9600GT 512MB (XFX version and overclocked by me), and the game runs 99% of the time at 60 FPS, maxed out @ 1280 x 1024. But sometimes I have slowdowns, even if there's nothing "heavy" going on the screen. My CPU is nowhere near as good as yours, and I have way less RAM, so I don't know if that's the problem. An E8400 @3.0 Ghz seems enough for this game, but maybe the 2GB of RAM I have are the cause of that slowdown... I don't know, I thought it could just be bad optimization, or a graphics card-related issue. If you have any slowdowns, please let me know. :)

As for the sound of the cars, I also noticed it. Ever drove on rain or in the mountains? The rain sound and the wind totally silence the car, and that sucks. I love to stop and rev the engine to its maximum, then drop the pedal and just get to top speed (music is off). They should either increase the sounds of the cars or create an option to let you reduce the "environment" sound or increase the engine sound.

I really hope Criterion checks this forum, as here the critics are at least constructive. Bojan, if you can, since you have contact with EA and so, you could give them a heads-up about what we want fixed (we are not asking much to be honest hehe).
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by xturbo »

Hydro_PT wrote:@xturbo: Nice opinion, you got straight to the point, and I agree with you on pretty much everything. I haven't beat the game yet, so I cannot give a "final" opinion, but I mostly agree with what you wrote. :)
Well, I tried to be objective in the post, so you guys could give opinions as well. The game is so much fun, at least something is going on with this game, compared to NFS Undercover which was the peak point of the mess. Anyways, when you get to the SeaCrest Tour, let us know how the AI behave in the event ;)
Hydro_PT wrote: Now, I want to ask you something: do you have slowdowns while playing? I also have a 9600GT 512MB (XFX version and overclocked by me), and the game runs 99% of the time at 60 FPS, maxed out @ 1280 x 1024. But sometimes I have slowdowns, even if there's nothing "heavy" going on the screen. My CPU is nowhere near as good as yours, and I have way less RAM, so I don't know if that's the problem. An E8400 @3.0 Ghz seems enough for this game, but maybe the 2GB of RAM I have are the cause of that slowdown... I don't know, I thought it could just be bad optimization, or a graphics card-related issue. If you have any slowdowns, please let me know. :)
Probably (and I honestly think that is the problem) the 2GB of RAM is causing those micro-stuttering. If you have Windows 7 you need more ram. Sometimes I hit the 4GB with Win 7 64bits so you may need to increase the ammount of RAM bro. But yeah, I rarely have that micro-stuttering but it's way too fast to be noticeable anyways, but there's "something" that feels laggy, but I guess it's the game. You may want to update everything, I'm using the 260.99 drivers and no problems so far. 60fps all the time. I checked with FRAPS for 2 hours and in any scene I had a drop below 60FPS, so you make sure yo increase a little bit more the ammount of RAM. But it's strange you run the game on 1280x1024, I'm running the game on 1440x900 (19" widescreen 16:10) and it runs perfectly. Probably the C2D E8400 may be also creating a bottleneck between the RAM and the CPU itself, so yeah you could try increasing the ammount of RAM or upgrade the platform (i5 are cheap and will provide you an excellent performance, I had an i5 750 before going to the i7 930 and games were running flawlessly). But if none of that helps (which I think the problem is) it's the game ;), but I'm telling you again, with my PC, no problems so far.
Hydro_PT wrote: As for the sound of the cars, I also noticed it. Ever drove on rain or in the mountains? The rain sound and the wind totally silence the car, and that sucks. I love to stop and rev the engine to its maximum, then drop the pedal and just get to top speed (music is off). They should either increase the sounds of the cars or create an option to let you reduce the "environment" sound or increase the engine sound.
It takes the sexyness of the experience as I said. The cars should be the ones that need to be "singing", not the environment lol, but yeah, we need those individual options as previous NFS titles, or at least hope for a balancing of sounds in a future patch.
Hydro_PT wrote: I really hope Criterion checks this forum, as here the critics are at least constructive. Bojan, if you can, since you have contact with EA and so, you could give them a heads-up about what we want fixed (we are not asking much to be honest hehe).
I really hope that as well. Everytime I go to the NFS forums, 100 of 90 threads are full of rage and complains. I bet you that most of the guys are running illegal versions of the game, and experiencing the typical problems. I mean, come on! Why complain if this isn't a glitchy game like Undercover or a failboat like BlackBox (As you may notice, I HATE Undercover and BlackBox), so explain how it runs perfectly in here? or in your PC for example? My best friend has an Athlon X2 +5200 @3.2 Ghz, 4GB DDR2 RAM and a 9500GT and game runs "perfectly" (I mean not fully 60FPS but it hits the number several times) and he's between 45FPS and 60 FPS....and we all know that after 30FPS everything is the same (unless you have an eagle eye) so he can run the game maxed out without a problem, and the whinners can't in their Quad Cores and blablabla....isn't that telling you something?? :roll:

Second thing I have to say against the whinners is that they don't thank Criterion for what they did. These guys focus in the superficial things instead of the core of the product. They want graphics, they want cars, they want AA, they want this and that....but hey!!! After all these years, we have finally something that is 90% close to what NFS used to be before BlackBox took the franchise and tried to "innovate" with their stuff.

I agree, they started with "good" games, HP2 wasn't the best, we need to admit that, but with NFS Underground, they took a different step: EXCELLENT! They did another approach to NFS, BUT! they overused the same concept with variations until they almost killed it, and that "almost" was Undercover, we all know how that ended, and reviews will support that.

Now, EA realised that "hey, blackbox is killing our franchise, we need another studio developing ideas". First they got Slightly Mad Studios, cool! they produced another entry in the NFS franchise, a semi-simulator game, nice! Then...the magic appears with Criterion. And thrust me, when they mentioned Criterion, I was like: "finally, old school will be back" and they did it. They didn't use the BlackBox concept, instead they just went back to TNFS and said: "this game had this, this and that, and we will put those concepts into our game", "NFS II and NFS III Hot Pursuit (amen) had this, this and that, let's use it" and so on until they got to Most Wanted (they took the rechargeable nitrous and massive cop chases from there) and there you go, best stuff of every NFS game and put it there. But they didn't use the tuner concept, which wasn't the main core of the OLD games (TNFS until NFS Porsche), but instead the concept of NFS Underground.

I seriously hate when people isn't really looking at the potential this game has and instead they bash the game to death. Criterion knows how to release DLC (Burnout Paradise is a clear example of that), BUT my fear is that EA is, again, cutting the wings of a studio which has the potential to create the most complete NFS experience in years by limiting the DLC to consoles, to releasing poor patches and a few extra features.

So yeah, that is what I had in mind all this time since the launch of NFS Hot Pursuit. Maybe I'm wrong in some points, but heck! I'd love to Criterion have a look at this post and threads HERE IN NFSUNLIMITED, because NFS forums aren't a place for real old school racers and constructive criticism, but here we have the ones we care about a game that has given us lots (not to say millions) of fun momments, and thrust me, with Criterion having the chance to fully create the real NFS experience, we may be pretty sure that NFS will be reborn form the ashes.

I wish NFSDrew could be at least reading this (not saying that he has to post, it's his own decision, I think if a person feels it is correct to say something, it's his willing, not ours) but maybe I'm asking too much. Not to offend him, I thrust in the guy but lately I've been kinda speculating if devs are around to take serious feedback about we, as a group, have to say.

Good night gents, I'll be heading to bed, tomorrow I'll be trying to post more stuff as it comes to my mind.



;)
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by Hydro_PT »

xturbo wrote:Probably (and I honestly think that is the problem) the 2GB of RAM is causing those micro-stuttering. If you have Windows 7 you need more ram. Sometimes I hit the 4GB with Win 7 64bits so you may need to increase the ammount of RAM bro. But yeah, I rarely have that micro-stuttering but it's way too fast to be noticeable anyways, but there's "something" that feels laggy, but I guess it's the game. You may want to update everything, I'm using the 260.99 drivers and no problems so far. 60fps all the time. I checked with FRAPS for 2 hours and in any scene I had a drop below 60FPS, so you make sure yo increase a little bit more the ammount of RAM. But it's strange you run the game on 1280x1024, I'm running the game on 1440x900 (19" widescreen 16:10) and it runs perfectly. Probably the C2D E8400 may be also creating a bottleneck between the RAM and the CPU itself, so yeah you could try increasing the ammount of RAM or upgrade the platform (i5 are cheap and will provide you an excellent performance, I had an i5 750 before going to the i7 930 and games were running flawlessly). But if none of that helps (which I think the problem is) it's the game ;), but I'm telling you again, with my PC, no problems so far.
I also think this micro-stuttering is caused by my low amount of RAM. I even have a ram optimizer running in the background, but it is not enough. As I am right now (just Firefox and WMP running), I only have about 1400MB of RAM free, sometimes less. I'm using Windows XP 32-bit. Yes, I'm one of those persons who refuses to install a new Windows until I must do it lol. I know how good Windows 7 is, but I just can't get rid of XP, it has worked for me so well in the past 9 years that I don't feel the need to change. Plus, I have some old hardware which I think won't work properly in 7, since it didn't work in Windows Vista (tried that thing for a week). I will try to buy at least 1GB in Christmas, I'm short on money at the moment. Buying a new CPU is out of question, I would need to upgrade my motherboard and therefore also my RAM (I have DDR2). But the E8400 is very good for OC, I just need an aftermarket cooler for it, just like I did with my 9600GT. :)

I run the game @1280 x 1024 because I have a 17'' monitor. I never liked widescreen. :P

As for the rage on the forums, well that's what happens when kids use the Internet. They can't review a game properly, so they just rage about this and that, small things that don't bother anyone. Of course there are always things we would like to change, but we aren't the developers, and they can't please every single person. I think this game is way better than previous NFS done by BlackBox (especially Undercover), they did something different, it's a "solid" game, a fun and good experience. There's room to improve, certainly, but there's always, with any game. It was the same with SHIFT, it could have been better, but it was a good game already, so good in fact that I ended up buying it, and I always think very well on which games should I spend my money. The same will happen with Hot Pursuit, so far it has been great, so I will just take out the credit card and order it from GAME. Both Criterion and SMS deserve my money for their work. Now if BlackBox wants my money too, they must release something good in 2011. :wink:

Let's hope they read this forum, here people give good critics, we don't simply rage about superficial stuff like "my Carrera GT cannot be painted pink! I WON'T BUY THE GAME, YOU SUCK EA!!!!! #-o
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by xturbo »

Gladly they're releasing a patch which contains the coronas effect and rain/snow effect, which is extremely good! Around next week it will be released for PC :)
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Re: NFS Hot Pursuit....hello Old School racing!

Post by Evil Kid Weaselmush »

I agree with your post. It's the best NFS in years IMO and reminds me so much of the older ones. But it does have some minor issues, especially the PC version. Mine randomly crashes sometimes, and from what I've read on EA's forums, many other people are having the same problem. I should be able to run it fine. It doesn't really lag much when I'm playing it, maybe a little bit sometimes. I'm really glad to hear about the patch though, and hope it will stop all the crashing.
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