Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2

Hot Pursuit 2 draws primarily from the gameplay and style of Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit; its emphasis was on evading the police and over-the-top tracks featuring lengthy shortcuts.

The game allows players to play as the police, where the goal is to arrest speeders. A variety of methods may be used to arrest a speeder, including ramming, calling for assistance (backup) by other police cars and utilizing spike strips to immobilize a speeding vehicle. The "Hot Pursuit" mode is less realistic than preceding versions of NFS, as it is possible to arrest a speeder by lightly ramming them often enough. However, in timed races it is more effective to use less time-consuming, actual police tactics, such as spinning the offending driver.


Races take place in four environments which differ in atmosphere, with a handful of tracks per environment. The different tracks in an environment are formed by different roads being connected or separated by road blocks. A fictional tropical island, reminiscent of Hawaii, is the most varied environment; the track traverses a city, volcano, waterfall, beach, forest, and two villages. The coastal forest environment, reminiscent of the Washington coast, sometimes has foggy weather, but this does not effectively limit visibility during races. The Mediterranean coast and so-called Alpine environments are more homogeneous, with little variation except the occasional short cut. Compared to NFS III, which features weather and day/night variation independent of track, and widely varying environments from snowy mountains over cities to desert, NFS:HP2 tracks have significantly less variation.

For the multiplayer mode of the PC version, players can host a game server for local area network (LAN) or internet based playing. In addition to this, the GameSpy internet matchmaking system can be used to publish and locate such servers.

Hot Pursuit 2 is also the first in the series to lack an in-car view that was available in preceding Need for Speed titles. There is only a "driver's perspective" view available, without a visible dashboard.

Different versions of the game were produced for each game platform; the Xbox, GameCube and PC versions were developed in EA Seattle, a subsidiary of EA Canada, while the PS2 version was developed by Black Box Games in Vancouver, B.C. Canada. Also, it did not feature a career mode allowing car customization. Instead, there is a point system where cars are purchased from winning races. Points are determined by laps led and finishing position. In the "Championship" and "Hot Pursuit" trees, extra points are awarded if a medal is won, decided by the requirements. For example, a sprint (see section below) would give 5000 points if awarded the gold, 4000 for silver, and 2500 for bronze, etc. Points would give types of tracks to race on, cars, police cars, etc. If the tree is completed, extra bonus races are unlocked. These races include the hardest AI and the hardest courses.