Loud sounds and shiny things collide in NFS: Hot Pursuit 2
What happens when an otherwise straight-laced racer gets the car chase treatment, with slo-mo stunts and spin-outs everywhere? When police choppers drop toxic barrels and the cops lay spike strips, but your flashy ride barely takes a lick?
It’s Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2, the 2002 PS2/Xbox/Gamecube offshoot of EA’s long-running Need for Speed series that adopted wailing sirens, exotic sports cars, and the ability to use both as you either play the cop or the speed demon. Whether you throw everything you’ve got at some hapless speeder and bust them in ’Be the Cop’ mode, or opt to test your memory of how to recover from a spin in the many Career modes, you’ll bank points towards the purchase fo specially-tweaked NFS edition cars and have a pretty damn good time of it, too. NFS HP2 omits the customization (read: ‘Pimp my Ride’) modes popularized in more recent games in favour of the real challenge of working with what you’re given and actually, y’know, racing. A good selection of original musical accompaniment and European-inspired tracks also encourage hitting the pavement, and probably help explain the game’s Greatest Hits status (which also makes it a steal.) Definitely a racing game worth owning.


So it turns out that FTM is a very charming and personable, pick-up-and-play type of game that’s perfect to cover on the last day of the month when I’m down a few posts. But moreover, Sonic Team has created an endearing, universal story of boy-meets-girl, does crazy stunts in performance troupe of questionable motivations to impress her, and given it retro, cut-out visuals and sexual-revolution-era musical stylings. It’s all unified rather amusingly by a Japanese variety-show sensibility as FTM makes entertaining, challenging use of the mic and touch screen, often in tandem. I recommend this over WarioWare’s scattered, fetish-themed humor any day.
It’s become a virtual impossibility to find
is (mostly) my kind of game. As SCEE’s highly-stylized take on the most familiar refrain in hack-’n-slash gaming–of blood feuds, internecine warfare, accursed weapons, and the fated prophecy that ties them all together–it’s a description that reads like any given pagan myth, lasts only as long, and causes the occasional abraision through needless button-mashing and the Six-Axis’ slightly rough edges. Once you get used to the motion controls, however, the ever-popular Aftertouch becomes the highlight of Nariko’s five-day quest, next to the oldest story in gaming–in which our interest, perennially renewed by a mere modicum of skill in presentation and delivery, is ramped up as Heavenly Sword veritably flexes PS3’s cinematic muscle. Although combat may tend towards combo-matic monotony and visual flair, there’s some engaging boss fights to bind the mindless battles and puzzles in between.One can easily trace its bloodline to the likes of God of War and Jade Empire, right down to the epilogue-as-prologue chronology, but the tried-and-true formula of Heavenly Sword is still working. It ain’t broke, and they didn’t fix it.

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