Further, Criterion racers are very arcadey games by design. It's a Need for Speed game, it's not trying to feel real. Iirc, this is how the first ever hot pursuit played. It wouldn't have to be exactly like this, but I expected the gameplay and balancing to be more natural, but as is it feels incredibly artificial and note very different than any other racing game. If the cop is too far behind, they can either go backwards to set up a trap (if it's a loop with multiple laps), or take some shortcuts unavailable to the racers since their race has a strict path. However, they keep going slower and slower as they keep damaging their cars, and this allows the cop to catch up and take out the next one. In the meantime, the other racers have made some headway. Maybe I'm just way off, but I pictured something like this: A cop catches a racer by trapping them. I haven't played the game much yet (and probably won't, since it has been a huge let down), but I also haven't seen a racer get slowly slower from the car's damage. When you are a cop and catch someone, you get spawned a bit behind the next person you have to catch. You should have to get out of that nasty crash and run away or dodge the police, but the game just places you back into "racing mode" immediately. In addition, I'll add this: When you are a racer, if you crash really hard, the game places you back on the track with your car already having plenty of momentum. The same goes for being a racer being chased. To put it in one sentence: If someone has 1 health bar remaining, and you tap into their rear bumper, they shouldn't go flying off and blow up as if you've "beat them". However, the way everything is set up doesn't feel like a chase, but a racing game with a chase gimmick. I expected the cop to have to crash into you to the point of completely wrecking your car (not just making any minor contact 5 times), or crashing into them in a way that traps them. It is not that one-to-one, but my point is that a car tapped from behind shouldn't be losing that much health, and that isn't how you'd catch someone.
You can ram a car from the side to remove 2 health points, or tap it from behind for 1. I think all of my issues with the game trace back to the heatlh bar mechanism. For instance, when you are a cop chasing cars, the gameplay is basically crashing into them to remove the car's "health points" until it becomes disabled. I'm wondering if anyone had this experience with this game, and whether there is any entry anyone knows that doesn't suffer from the same issues.Īs the title says, my issue with the game is that is seems too scripted and game-y.