With
the recent news that Criterion are back onto Need For Speed, I’m hyped. The
team might have seen some change since Burnout Paradise, but they are a great studio.
That concept they had for the extreme sports game never got off the ground, but
there was promise within it.
And
you’ll note that I said back to Need For Speed. Once finished with Burnout Paradise,
the Criterion team were put onto EA’s other long-standing racing series to make
Hot Pursuit. After the success of that game, they followed up with my personal
favourite of the series in Most Wanted [2012].
While
they did help with Rivals, their time on the series looked as though it was
done, with Ghost Games [now EA Gothenburg] being the main developer of Rivals
and taking on the series since that time.
With
the news that Criterion are back, I’ve been revisiting those old games they
have to their name to see what it is I liked about them. And though they differ
greatly from the other, they both have something to enjoy.
Hot
Pursuit took the cops and crooks concept and ran with it for the whole game,
offering a mission structure that followed both sides. As the cops, you’d be
hunting down racers, smashing into them and using the equipment on hand to
arrest them. While the racers also had equipment, these were more defensive
blocks to the police’s powerful force as you tried to complete the race.
The
mission structure allowed both sides to be playable from one career, earning experience
in the form of bounty to unlock new cars and equipment for that side. At first,
you would start off with little in the way of power or speed, but through gaining
experience would become a force to be reckoned with on whichever side you
chose.
While
there was also a freeroam mode, it felt a side feature to the missions. Despite
not getting far with those missions, I could be found within the freeroam
often, riding around in a police cruiser just taking in the scenery. The map
might not be the most refined, but there’s still a decent amount of things to
explore within it.
With
Hot Pursuit’s map being more natural, the bustling city of Fairhaven is where
Most Wanted takes us. And this time, the freeroam was the main attraction.
Taking cues from Burnout Paradise, billboards and security gates are around to
smash, with speed cameras also being placed around the streets.
The
difference with Paradise are jackspots – the way to gain new vehicles.
Scattered around the map are plenty of these spots that grant access to new
vehicles, being in both easy to spot and hard to find locations. Once you’ve
found a vehicle, it gets added to the list to warp to for future use, though you can swap at that location.
Each
vehicle has six events tied to it to unlock performance upgrades for that car.
The reason for doing so is to encourage swapping vehicles to build up your Most
Wanted level, as there’s ten drivers who will only challenge you once you have
enough Most Wanted reputation.
I
love exploring this world more than the one in Hot Pursuit, with the cops
always on the lookout for wrong-doing and some very great chases able to be
had. This was one of my most played games on the PSV, such was the fact I had
double the Most Wanted level of the highest on the list when returning to it on
PC.
Neither
game has the size or variety in their maps as latest games, but those latest
games lack something in terms of mechanics when driving. I’ve still yet to play
Heat, but it is one I’m wanting to get to. As Ghost Games’ last, it will be
interesting to compare their first solo effort to their last.
As
for Criterion and the newest game they are working on ready for the next
generation (for a release in 2021, I expect), I hope it can be as great as
these two games rolled into one. Featuring the exploration of Most Wanted with
the tightness in mission structure (and the cops and crooks concept) of Hot
Pursuit, and a map that I’ll want to be exploring featuring plenty of variety.