It's been a good year to be a fan of arcade-style racing games, with Blur and Split/Second neck-and-neck in the race to be the year's best. Unfortunately for them, Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit from Burnout Paradise creator Criterion Games just took first place.

For the reboot of this Need for Speed sub-series, which saw two installments across PS1 and PS2, Criterion has created a racer that not only lives up to expectations of thrilling speed and pristine visuals but blows past them with a cops-and-robbers career mode.