Need For Speed - Hot PursuitFor automotive die-hards, there was only one racing game out this year.

But with the smoke from the burnt digital rubber settling, and Gran Turismo 5 now come and gone with relatively apathetic fanfare, there’s a bolshy, reinvigorated contender screeching around the corner with its eye on pole position.

In terms of sheer fun, Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit leaves Polyphonic’s ‘racing simulator’ stalled on the starting line. It strips its competitors for their best spare parts before reassembling a beast of an engine that powers past them all.

What plot or set-up there is revolves around Seacrest County and its escalating car crime. Players are sat in the driving seat of either the cops or the criminals, meaning you can either spend your time crashing, bashing and shunting the bad guys off the roads (and, entertainly, off cliffs), or lead the razzers on a merry chase in a frantic bid to ensure that never happens.

While shiny, beautiful landscapes and expertly modelled cars are something to behold, there’s really only two things an arcade racer needs to succeed – tight controls and a feeling of speed.

Considering that Burnout alumni Criterion have been tasked with the revamp, it’s unsurprising to hear that not only have they nailed both, they’ve refined and transformed the franchise’s other selling point – its weapons.

EMP lock-ons, turbos, spike strips and road blocks are just a number of the Bond-esque gadgets on offer, throwing a distinctly anarchistic Fast and the Furious-meets-Road Rage-meets-Mario Kart spin on the race (but with a delicate enough balance to ensure that, unlike its rivals, it never feels unfair).

But don’t get us wrong, the visuals are eye-poppingly gorgeous, and hardly flinch even in the chaotic madness of Pursuit’s multiplayer which boasts a few bonuses of its own.

Like Bizarre’s Blur, it comes with a new-fangled social interface that gives regular updates on your friends’ achievements and spurs you on to abuse their records and know they’ll have the shaming bulletins posted direct to their in-game wall.

Pimped to the max with enough content to last you long into 2011, and with a brilliant ‘borrowing’ from Burnout’s best bits, it delivers the turbo-charged kick up the arse the genre may not have known it needed, but feels even more fitting in the wake of Gran Turismo’s anticlimax.

[Rating:4/5]