Playing Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 On PCLinuxOS

by Alessandro Ebersol (Agent Smith)

Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 is a game produced by Electronic Arts and released for PlayStation 2, Xbox, GameCube and PC in October, 2002.

Two different versions were released, the PS2's (made by EA Black Box) and, for other consoles and PC, made by EA Seattle. The PS2 version was considered the best by critics. It is the last game in the series to have the Ferrari cars, Holden Special Vehicles, and the last game of the classic generation. It is the second game of the Hot Pursuit series, thus the successor of Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit and predecessor of Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit (2010).

And, it was the last game of the series before it became a copycat of The Fast and Furious. Yes, until this game, we had famous cars and racings on the roads. Then, afterwards, you only saw tuned cars and racing in the city (which I hated).

Gameplay

Hot Pursuit 2 draws primarily on the gameplay and style of Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit; its emphasis was on evading the police and over-the-top routes with long shortcuts. As with the original, the player also has the option to play as a police officer, trying to arrest speeders. To achieve this, the player must hit the runaway vehicle several times to disable it. The player must turn on lights and sirens of his car while pursuing, and they automatically turn off after arresting the suspect. Police can ask for a barricade, additional units, "Unit 9" in the broadcasting service (only on PS2), spike belts and ask for help from a helicopter to aid target the pursued vehicle. In the end, the player's score is based on the wrecked fugitive cars. In the PlayStation 2 version, this mode is called You're the Cop while PC, GameCube and Xbox versions is Be the Cop.

The races take place in four environments that differ in the atmosphere, with a handful of courses per environment. The different courses in an environment are formed by different roads being connected or separated by roadblocks. A fictional tropical island, reminiscent of Hawaii, is the most varied environment. The course crosses a city, a volcano, a waterfall, a beach, a forest and two villages.

The environment of the coastal forest, reminiscent of the Washington coast because of its forest and nature, sometimes has a foggy weather, but that does not effectively limit visibility during races.

The Mediterranean coast, which resembles Greece because of the stadium and a building that resembles the Parthenon, and the so-called Alpine environments that resemble Alaska, are more homogeneous, with little variation, except one or other occasional shortcut.

NFS cars' Editions also are in this game, the cars are the same as you see above, only slightly modified. However, in the PS2 version, the BMW cars did not receive their corresponding NFS Edition modifications. This occurred because of a BMW licensing policy restricting unauthorized vehicle modifications. Also in the PS2 version, the Ferrari 360 Spider did not get its NFS Edition corresponding modification due to the Ferrari 360 Modena Challenge being available as an alternative and exclusive to the PS2, while in other versions there is the Ferrari 360 NFS Edition available.

How to install and run on PCLinuxOS

You will need Winetricks. In Winetricks select:

• Select Default Wine prefix
• Install a Windows DLL or Component
• Now, look for DirectX9:. D3dx9_36 and mark it for installation

Next, install the game.

Install the game normally, if you have the media on CD. It will ask for the serial number and will install without problems.

Now, every time the game runs, you need to mount the CD which it was installed from.

There is another, more practical way, which is to make an ISO of the installation cd (with tools like AcetoneISO), install the game from the ISO that was created, and use a no-cd patch in the game executable nfshp2.exe.

However, the ISO must be mounted (the same AcetoneISO or CDemu) each time you run the game, since it plays the movies and music from the installation CD.

I hope you enjoy and have fun with the game, which, despite being 14 years old, it's still fun to play, aged very well and won the Platinum seal on WineHQ AppDB.

All the pictures were captured from actual PCLinuxOS gameplay.