Hot Pursuit 2010 is overrated

Edit : I'm sorry for having done this but after seeing this post about how the people on r/needforspeed "allegedly" insulted them, I wanted to see if they were really telling the whole story and decided to make this critique that really doesn't reflect my own views about HP2010.

Turns out that you can express your dislike about a generally liked NFS game without being insulted as long as you are being respectful yourself. So thank you all for being constructive in your criticism in the comments.

I hope the mods don't remove this post for trolling because some of these were my genuine critics about the game as I'm always open to point out the negative aspects of a product no matter how much I like it myself.

The Review :

Look, I'm not your usual BlackBox fun that dislikes any game that doesn't have a story or customization but the way this sub talks about HP 2010 you'd expect it to be on the same level as Gran Turismo 4, which is also overrated.

The game has a beautiful open world, solid car list and a fairly decent soundtrack. The graphics also hold up pretty well for a game from PS3 era. I also love the engine sounds and that sudden rush of adrenaline when you use Turbo.

That being said I'm just not a fan of the brake 2 drift mechanics and the lack of customization. The cars handle like they all weigh 2 tons and the physics aren't as responsive as in Rivals. Sometimes it's just not possible to react to the traffic when they appear after a blind corner.

The AI is not that fun to race against and they rarely react to my presence so it's like racing against ghosts in time trial except they're tangible and can ruin your race. There's also a fair bit of rubberbanding going on but it's a lot less noticeable than in MW 2012's blacklist races.

In terms of customization, your only options are choosing between manufacturer colors (only Remaster has custom paint options). There are also no performance upgrades or tuning so you're stuck with stock handling. One of my pet peeves is that a car's stats absolutely don't reflect its performance and that some of them have better nitrous duration or power than others even though this isn't even mentioned anywhere.

Multiplayer was (not talking about the Remaster) full of sweats that also happened to be meta hoarders and rammers. This made it very difficult for the casual player to enjoy online racing so I spent most of my time in offline career mode.

This isn't really a complaint but the freeroam mode is so barebones that it's comparable to the Drone Mode in Horizon games. Though Criterion could've simply decided to not add that feature so it's still a positive I guess.

TL;DR : HP 2010 excels at what it wants to do but it simply isn't for everyone. I give it a 7/10.