Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit Developer: In-house Publisher: Electronic Arts Category: 3D Racing System Req: PII266, 64Mb Ram, 120Mb HD, D3D/3dfx card, Win95/98 Might look like: ? Date posted: 14 November '98 Written By: Bjorn - This game was tested on P166, 32mb Ram, Voodoo Graphics, Win95 - A little Introduction Its a Racing game! The Manual Need for Speed's manual is not very big. It just contains the essential information about the game and thats about it! If you think you can find specific details about cars, tracks or anything else well you will have to forget that. Better look into the game for that ;). Other then that, it has some nice shots with the serious game-talk and also a troubleshooting section is included. Anyway, we don't really need big manuals for racing games because, you just step on the acceleration, move a bit left or right and follow the road. Simple! The need for Speed A few years ago, I can hardly remember the year, duh, Electronic Arts, then a smaller company than now, released the first car racing game that has begon a racing revolution in the game industry. That game had excellent graphics (at that time), magnificent sound and music, excellent gameplay and more importantly, it ran at a very decent speed. It was called 'Need For Speed'. Do YOU have the need for speed? Well, many people had it obviously because it was a top selling game. A great succes for EA (Electronic Arts), so a few years later the team of the first NFS decided to do a sequel, hoping that it would be even better then the first one and perhaps even hoping on a bigger success which I translate in getting more money off it :). Guess we are all the same. At that time, for Electronic Arts, Need For Speed II wasn't so successful as the first one, and personally I might know why. First of all, the gameplay wasn't the same, less fun and the tracks weren't cool enough. Still it sold good but not as they have hoped. Now, 1998, EA 'again' decided to release another serie of that big-earning racing game with the third installment called Need For Speed III: Hot Pursuit. They said 'it is the best racing game ever'. So, are they just lying or is it really true? It will become all very clear to you if you continue to read this review. Installation When its installation begins, you can choose in what language you want to play the game. It's very handy if you want to play it in your motherlanguage but there are just 3 choices in the European version which are English, Espanol (Spanish) and Svenska (probably Swedish). So I took English of course and went to the next screen. Next, you have to decide how much you want to install on your hard drive. There are 4 choices so don't worry. First of all we have the 'Minimum' which takes 85 Mb. Great if you have a very fast pc and a much faster CD-Rom because the speed of this mode really depends on that drive. The faster it goes, the faster it loads ;). Secondly, we have the 'Standard' mode, probably the most common used mode too. Takes about 115 Mb. Next we have the mode for the gamers who have large hard drives, the 'Maximum', takes about 270 Mb. Some will say: that ain't much either! True but if you have 5 or 10 games installed, your HD will sweat. Finally, the last option is the 'Remote' mode. This is only used for Multiplayer spawned games. In network, every one installs the game but you just need 1 copy to run it.    The different race modes Every decent racing game has different race modes and NFS III is not an exception. There is the "Single" race mode, where you just grap a car that you love and a track that you might love and off you go. There is also a "Tournament" mode, more like a championship where you have to gain lots of points. More enjoyable is the other option, the "Knockout" mode. It's not weird but very cool. Pick a car, track and race like your life depends on it. Why? Well in knockout mode, you can't be the last player in the race. If you are, you are excluded for the next race. But there are only 8 cars and 7 tracks here. So after track 3, there are only 5 cars left! It is up to you to race as long as possible. Very exciting! And the last option, which is also used in the NFS title is called "Hot Pursuit". In this mode you can choose whether you want to be pursuit by the cops or take the law in your own hands and pursuit those speedkillers. Both are extremely enjoyable because it has never been done in any racing games. If you play as a driver, you race and you avoid being arrested by the police. They can set up roadblocks, put spike strips on the road to blow your tires or they will try to push you off the road to offer you a nice ticket. When you get 3 tickets in a row, you are arrested and the race is over. As a cop, you have to arrest every racer on the track as quickly as possible. You can also put those spike strips to slow every speeder. The siren and the lights of you policecar are gorgeous, especially when 3D-acceleration is enabled. It also has a 2-player option. You can race against someone else on the same Pc. I tried it with a friend of mine and it was very enjoyable. The screen is split horizontally and there was absolutely no frame loss on my system. Picking the same car is allowed here. Next Page Up Previous Page If you want to review your favorite game, or if you work with a computer game company and want your products reviewing, mail info@playdevil.com. All contributions are welcome. 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