The competition
Burnout:
BurnoutAholics:
Around the time of the release of Burnout 2: Point of Impact another great racing game was released from one of Acclaim's competitors. EA Games released Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 on October 2, 2002.
To meet the competition Acclaim put together a comparison of the two games and used quotes from the press to prove their point. At this point in time there was a lot of focus on the technical specifications of the games and that the games ran at 60fps. Here is one of Acclaim's slogans that was used in marketing:
"Burnout 2: Point of Impact satisfies your need for speed better than the competition (and doesn't drop below 60 fps trying)".
Today it's clear that Criterion had a huge advantage in the Renderware engine and looking back at what happened it is not very surprising that EA acquired Criterion and RenderWare from Canon Inc in July 2004.
Here is the original comparison table that was published on the Acclaim web site.
| Burnout 2: Point of Impact | NFS: Hot Pursuit 2 | ||
| Specular Bloom Effects |
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"You won't see the glare of the sun off the pavement [in NFS: HP2] as you would in racing games like Burnout 2 and Gran Turismo 3..." - GameSpot |
| Progressive Scan Support to 480p |
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"Criterion has delivered a technically savy game for you: Progressive scan TV support is fully supported [in Burnout 2]" - IGN |
| 60 FPS framerate |
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"[NFS: HP2 is] not quite the 60 fps you'll find in Burnout 2" - GameSpot |
| The most realistic traffic patterns |
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"You'll feast on visual bliss as you go ape sh*t among heavy traffic [in Burnout 2]" - Play |
| Superior antialiasing |
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"[NFS: HP2's graphics are] not up there with the top of the PS2 market" - IGN |
| The best crashes on the planet |
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"Smoke, fire, flying car parts...[Burnout 2] is the sh*t"- IGN |
| Opponent AI with humanistic spatial awareness |
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"Burnout 2 surpasses its predecessor in almost every department." - GamePro |
| Frame rate that bogs down at times |
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"We only wish [NFS: HP2] ran at a full 60fps and didn't bog down" - PSM |
| Ugly little jaggies |
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"[NFS:HP 2 has] frame rate sputtering and trademark...jaggies" - GamePro |
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