Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

For the original game from 1998, see Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit. For the remaster, see Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered.

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit

Developers
	Criterion Games
	DICE
Publishers
	Electronic Arts
Engines
	Chameleon
Release dates
Windows	November 16, 2010
Reception
Metacritic	86
IGDB	90
Taxonomy
Monetization	One-time game purchase
Modes	Singleplayer, Multiplayer
Pacing	Real-time
Perspectives	First-person, Third-person
Controls	Direct control
Genres	Racing
Vehicles	Automobile, Street racing
Art styles	Realistic
Themes	Contemporary, North America
Series	Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit, Need for Speed

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit
Subseries of Need for Speed
Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit	1998
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2	2002
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit	2010
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit Remastered	2020

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit is a 2010 racing game developed by Criterion Games and published by Electronic Arts. It is the sixteenth game in the Need for Speed series. A throwback to the original Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit (1998) and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 (2002), Criterion's Hot Pursuit returns to the roots of the NFS franchise by having players drive sportscars and exotics as a racer or a cop in beautiful environments, taking place in a region called Seacrest County, which is inspired by places found in the West Coast of the United States. The game is also noted for the introduction of NFS's asynchronous multiplayer system, Autolog, where players can compare their best times in events against their friends.

It was released for Windows on November 16, 2010.

Currently, the game was delisted from all online storefronts in 2020 in favor of its remastered release.

General information

Steam Community Discussions

Availability

Source	DRM	Notes	Keys	OS
Retail		TAGES Solidshield DRM, Limited Edition & EA Crew Edition also available.
Amazon.co.uk
Amazon.com (unavailable)
Origin (unavailable)
Steam (unavailable)		Origin account and key activation is required for multiplayer.

Version differences

Limited Edition content includes the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione and Ford Shelby GT500, with early access to the Alfa Romeo 8C Competizione, Ford Shelby GT500, Audi TT RS Coupé, Chevrolet Camaro SS, Porsche Cayman S and Dodge Challenger SRT8.

EA Crew Edition content includes the Mercedes-Benz SLR McLaren 722 Edition, Maserati Quattroporte Sport GT S, Chevrolet Corvette Z06, Lamborghini Reventon, Bugati Veyron 16.4, Aston Martin DBS, and Audi R8 5.2 FSI.

DLC and expansion packs

No DLC other than the Limited Edition and EA Crew Edition content was made available for the PC version of the game, with these also being available through retail copies only. However, the 2 exclusive vehicles and 6 early unlocks from the Limited Edition (also included in the EA Crew Edition), 7 exclusive vehicles from the SCPD Rebels Pack (available in the PC version through the EA Crew Edition only), and several additional events from the Lamborghini Untamed Pack, Porsche Unleashed Pack, and Super Sports Pack (none of which had a PC release) can be modded in on the base version of the game from digital storefronts with a mod.

Essential improvements

Patches

Patch 1.0.5.0 (NFSHP_1000_to_1050.exe; PCGW mirror) is the last patch for the game. It is only required for retail version of the game. Digital versions are already patched.

Changelog (and PCGW mirror of all patches).

DLC mod

Installation

Download the mod from here. Extract the files to <path-to-game>. Notes Does not include the Armed and Dangerous Pack. Does not include new cars related to the DLC events from the Lamborghini Untamed Pack, Porsche Unleashed Pack, and Super Sports Pack. Single cars or selections of cars from the base game are used instead. The 8 DLC event icons are located to the right side of the map and have no icon but can be selected normally. The DLC events won't have new videos at the start and will show videos from the base game instead. When the event cursor is at the DLC event icons, going into freedrive will make the game crash immediately.

Game data

Configuration file(s) location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\config.NFS11Save %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\Save\Default\controls.NFS11Save
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/47870/pfx/

Save game data location

System	Location
Windows	%USERPROFILE%\Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\Save\Default\
Steam Play (Linux)	<Steam-folder>/steamapps/compatdata/47870/pfx/

Save game cloud syncing

System	Native	Notes
Origin
OneDrive		Requires enabling backup of the Documents folder in OneDrive on all computers.
Steam Cloud

Video

Video settings.

Graphics feature	State	Notes
Widescreen resolution
Multi-monitor		Menus remain scaled to 16:9 and the in-game HUD extends out of the primary screen, but the FOV scales well.
Ultra-widescreen		Menus remain scaled to 16:9. However, both the in-game HUD and FOV scale well.
4K Ultra HD
Field of view (FOV)		Racer_S Camera Hack can tweak this; get nfs11camhack103 or nfs11camhack10a if former doesn't work. Doesn't work with the last patch.
Windowed		See Windowed.
Borderless fullscreen windowed		See Windowed.
Anisotropic filtering (AF)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Anti-aliasing (AA)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
Vertical sync (Vsync)		See the glossary page for potential workarounds.
60 FPS
120+ FPS		Frame rate is capped at 60 FPS.
High dynamic range display (HDR)		See the glossary page for potential alternatives.

Due to the game's deferred rendering implementation, Super-Sampling-AA seems to have better performance than MSAA, if using a utility such as Nvidia Inspector.^{[citation needed]}

Forcing Vsync to off via GPU panel does not work on AMD cards.^{[citation needed]}

Run the game at screen refresh rate

The game enforces a 60 Hz refresh rate. This results in huge tearing artifacts when V-Sync is disabled and huge input lag when V-Sync is enabled.

For monitors that support more than 60 Hz, the following might help[citation needed]
Download Special K. Copy SpecialK32.dll into the game folder. Rename SpecialK32.dll to dxgi.dll. Start the game and exit. Open dxgi.ini in the game folder. Change RefreshRate=-1.0 to RefreshRate=0.0 under [Render.FrameRate]. It is recommended to also disable V-Sync otherwise, stuttering might occur.

Windowed

Force windowed[citation needed]
Download and run DxWnd. Click on Edit, then Add. Set the name and executable path. Set the window position and size. Set Desktop for borderless fullscreen windowed. Click OK, then File and Save.

Post-processing and HUD

The following mods can be used simultaneously.

Lens flare disabler mod

Disables the lens flare effects that are applied over the sun, street lamps and headlights/lightbars without affecting the basic sun texture, volumetric light shafts and bloom effects.

Turn lens flares off
Download this file. Extract the files to <path-to-game>.

No HUD and real lights mod

NFSHP_RealLights_v2.tpf only affects headlights, while NFSHP_NoHud_RealLights_v2.tpf also removes the HUD.

Better headlight textures and HUD disabled
Download the file from here or here Extract the files to <path-to-game>. Run TexMod.exe and click the folder icon to specify either Launcher.exe or NFS11.exe. Click the folder button in the toolbar and select the desired texture file. Launch the game from TexMod. TexMod can be automated and launched from within Steam (allowing the Steam Overlay and playtime to be counted) by using EasyTexMod.

Input

Controller and Keyboard bindings.

Keyboard and mouse	State	Notes
Remapping
Mouse acceleration
Mouse sensitivity
Mouse input in menus
Mouse Y-axis inversion
Controller
Controller support		Steering wheel support can be achieved via a Racer_S mod
Full controller support
Controller remapping		Fully remappable, can assign any action to any button.
Controller sensitivity
Controller Y-axis inversion

Controller types

XInput-compatible controllers
Xbox button prompts
Impulse Trigger vibration

DualShock 4 controllers

Generic/other controllers

Additional information
Controller hotplugging
Haptic feedback
Simultaneous controller+KB/M		Keyboard only.

Audio

Audio settings.

Audio feature	State	Notes
Separate volume controls		Music, Speech, and Sound Effects sliders
Surround sound		5.1 and 7.1
Subtitles
Closed captions
Mute on focus lost
Royalty free audio

The game's sound-mix is bad. The low audio-volume of the player-car-engine was fixed in v1.0.2.0 to only some extent. To improve sound-quality copy DSOAL + HRTF into the game dir to greater enhance car-engine-volume (also option of no HRTF attached). Make sure you have stereo set in audio options for 2.0 configurations (alternatively use IndirectSound (no HRTF) and .ini). In DSOAL the changes are even pushed forward in this aspect. Now you may like to lower SFX volume to hear the music louder. Alternatively you can test out 5.1 setting in game options for better results with IndirectSound if DSOAL doesn't work on your current Windows 10 build.

Localizations

Language	UI	Audio	Sub	Notes
English				UK and US variant available
Traditional Chinese
Czech
Dutch
French
German
Hungarian
Italian
Polish
Brazilian Portuguese				Fan translation, download
Russian
Spanish
Turkish				Fan translation by Gökhan Kocaman or download Direct Link

Manually change game's language

Registry edit to change game language

Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Wow6432Node\Electronic Arts\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\. Find the language and locale key and double click it. Change the value in language and locale order to the following list below: English UK - en_UK English US - en_US Chinese (Traditional) - zh_TW Czech - cs Dutch - nl French - fr_FR German - de Hungarian - hu Italian - it Japanese - ja Polish - pl Russian - ru (Alternatively, download this registry file to change it to Russian.) Spanish - es Note: Certain languages may not work for voices.

Network

Multiplayer types

Type	Native	Players	Notes
Local play
LAN play
Online play		8	Versus Features three game modes: Hot Pursuit (team based, semi-co-op racers vs. cops race), Interceptor (racer vs. cop head-to-head battle), and Race (classic race).
Asynchronous multiplayer		Autolog.

Connection types

Type	Native	Notes
Matchmaking
Peer-to-peer
Dedicated
Self-hosting
Direct IP

VR support

3D modes	State	Notes
vorpX		G3D User created game profile, see vorpx forum profile introduction.

Issues fixed

Micro stuttering

By default, the game places most of its processing load on the first CPU core only, which may cause stuttering and occasional framerate dips on some systems while traversing through the map. To fix this, the affinity of the NFS11.exe process must be changed to exclude CPU 0; after doing so, the load should equally spread across the remaining cores.

Manual fix

Enter the Task Manager via Ctrl+Alt+Delete. Move to the 'Details' tab. Right-click on the 'NFS11.exe' process and click on 'set affinity'. All of the cores should be activated by default. Untick the 'CPU 0' entry by left-clicking it. This process has to be repeated upon every launch of the game. Notes For 1+2+3 cores/threads setting on launch, a .bat file can be created and placed in game directory with the Start /affinity E nfs11.exe command - "E" being a hex value. To set it manually, get the corresponding "Associated value(s) (n)" from here and convert it to a hex value (third option here), then replace the "E" with it.

Permanent solution

Download ImageCfg and put it where the NFS11.exe file is located. Backup the NFS11.exe file. Open a command line where the NFS11.exe file is located, then use the following command: ...\ImageCfg.exe -a 0xE NFS11.exe Using this command it will force the game process to use CPU cores 1, 2, and 3, skipping CPU core 0. This is ideally for CPUs with 4 cores. 0x<hex-num> has to be adjusted based on the CPU core count, according to the following table: 0x01 = 1 = CPU0 0x02 = 2 = CPU1 0x04 = 4 = CPU2 0x08 = 8 = CPU3 0x10 = 16 = CPU4 0x20 = 32 = CPU5 0x40 = 64 = CPU6 0x80 = 128 = CPU7 E.g. 0xF = 15 (CPU0, CPU1, CPU2, and CPU3 - 1+2+4+8 = 15; All CPU cores on a CPU with 4 cores enabled) 0xE = 14 - (CPU1, CPU2, and CPU3 - 2+4+8 = 14; All CPU cores on a CPU with 4 cores minus CPU 0 enabled) Notes The executable will then be permanently patched.

Controls settings not being saved

Edit controls file[citation needed]
Open in notepad %USERPROFILE%\Documents\Criterion Games\Need for Speed(TM) Hot Pursuit\Save\Default\controls.NFS11Save and edit the word "KEYBOARD" or its translated meaning to its respective counterpart in the game language of the previous save. Alternatively, it can be deleted.

Other information

API

Technical specs	Supported	Notes
Direct3D	9.0c
Shader Model support	3.0

Executable	32-bit	64-bit	Notes
Windows

System requirements

Windows
	Minimum	Recommended
Operating system (OS)	XP SP3	Vista SP2, 7
Processor (CPU)	Intel Core 2 Duo 1.8 GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 4000+	Intel Core 2 Duo 2.8 GHz AMD Phenom II X3 720
System memory (RAM)	1 GB	2 GB
Hard disk drive (HDD)	8.3 GB
Video card (GPU)	Nvidia GeForce 7800 ATI Radeon X1900 256 MB of VRAM DirectX 9.0c compatible Shader model 3.0 or Higher support	Nvidia GeForce 9800 ATI Radeon HD 4850 1 GB of VRAM
Sound (audio device)	DirectX 9.0 compatible
Other	512Kb/s or Faster Broadband connection for Activation and Online Play