My thoughts on NFS:HP

  Personally, I thinks it's a really refreshing change from Split/Seconds' short but great gameplay and Blurs' frustrating single player. Actually, it's nice to have new, good racing game after a while of waiting for one. First of all, the graphics are fantastic. I believe it uses one of DICEs' engines, and with great succes: Seacrest County is a very colourful and beautiful place. It really captures the US's west-coast area as they intended. The game runs smoothly too.

  I also like the controls and handling. Its a mixture of realism and arcade which is pretty neat, and they also managed to pull off some of the most satisfying drifting I've ever experienced in a game. Also, I really like the inclusion of the photo mode, where you can take some delicious snapshots of things you'd never see real cars doing.

  I think the single-player is pretty solid and paced in such a way that it can last for a long time. It can get a bit repetitive sometimes, bet repetition is not always a bad thing in this game... There's tons of cars to unlock on both sides of the Racers and Cops and its fun to unlock and try out new cars. They didn't leave it at that, though, as there is also some technology to unlock! I wouldn't call them power ups, but they certainly are satisfying to use. Spike-strips, road-blocks. That sort of stuff. My favourite is definately the Turbo for the Racers.

  The feature that has been advertised a lot was "Autolog". They might as well have called it "RaceBook". It's a slick addition, but it also troubles me. The whole game revolves around Autolog, and the whole game has much to do with playing and competing with friends, and Autolog has even more to do with friends. Let's just say that, with the release of "Black Ops", that's all my friends think about, and most of them won't go near a racing game. My point is that I'm not getting the most out of this game, as Autolog is a central part of the game.

(Multiplayer is great, by the way)