Yesterday's release of Criterion's Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit demo serves to remind us that when it comes to cross-platform development, the Guildford-based studio is in a class of its own. Everything about the demo suggests that the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the new racer are almost totally identical.
After nearly three decades of NFS games, here's a list of the best Need For Speed titles that have ever been released in the past years, ranked by The Nerd Stash.
Paul writes - "EA know a good thing when they see it, and for multiple years November was Need for Speed month. In a break from the usual routine, I'm going to be looking back at two games here, released in 2005 and 2010 respectively. The earlier game is Need for Speed: Most Wanted, which has the distinction of being one of the very best in the franchise. The second game comes from 2010, and is Need for Speed Hot Pursuit; which I'll talk about just as the Remastered version of the game has hit the stores."
I completely adore this game! In fact its probably my favorite racing game. I recently dusted off my xbox 360 to play Most Wanted 2005. Still a great game, though I do not remember there being such horrible performance. Like massive frame-pacing issues. screen tearing, latency. If any game ever truly needed to be remastered, it this one for sure!
A pulled retailer page previously listed a November release date.
No NFS released since Hot Pursuit (2010) has came close. The Ghost Games NFS games were just dreadful (to me they were anyway, 2015 was okay I suppose). Would love to replay this and I hope it has an update for next-gen as well.
I loved Most Wanted as well (on PS3, I think it released in 2012). After that, it has gone downhill, but the latest games are slowly coming back up. I loved NFS Heat, but it needs to get better before it comes back to same level as NFS Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted.
Then again, NFS Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted were likely better because they were from Criterion (in fact, those were the last 2 games from criterion in nfs series).
I would be excited but NFS is basically dead in the water at this point, a shell of its former self.
"Framebuffer analysis suggests that Hot Pursuit is running at native 720p with 2x multi-sampling anti-aliasing on both platforms. However, Criterion has some seriously impressive tech going on with regards reducing aliasing over and above the advantages brought about by the MSAA."
Weird, I found the game jagged. Could have sworn it got no AA applied. That was actually the only thing that disappointed me from the demo. I hope EA devels incorporate MLAA in their upcoming PS3 SKUs.
Looks like both versions are essentially the same. Expected. Platform parity is a non-issue when the devel known what to do and game is no a port from the xbox.
Props to Criterion! Everyone wins. Really digging the demo. Chuckling at some of the comments in the Lens Of Truth article from yesterday. Die hards on both sides bickering over superiority when clearly both are awash.