Hot Pursuit goes back to the Need for Speed series' roots and takes on the gameplay style of earlier Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit and Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 titles in the Need for Speed franchise with exotic cars and high-speed police chases. Hot Pursuit lets players be either a racer or a police driver, and features a full career mode for both roles. The relationship between the cops and racers is described as "a dog chasing down a rabbit"; the police being more powerful while the racers are faster. Each side has several power-ups including calling for roadblocks and radar jamming.[7] According to Criterion the single-player section is somewhere between 12 and 15 hours long, but with much replay value.[8]
The game takes place in a fictional location known as Seacrest County based on the West Coast subregion of the Western United States.[7] It's an open world and features over 100 miles (160 km) of open road, four times larger than that of Burnout Paradise, Criterion's previous title.[9] Hot Pursuit features a new social interaction system called "Autolog" which is described as "Facebook for the game".[10] The game features both single-player and multiplayer game modes with up to eight players; as an option to live multiplayer racing, players can post records and achievements on the Autolog feed for friends to see, which they then can try to beat. Autolog also contains an experience system called "Bounty".[11] As of July 2012, the Web Dashboard for Autolog was shut down for all games, except Need for Speed: Most Wanted.[12]
The driving mode of the game is described as "fun, accessible, okay", however not as arcade-styled as Burnout Paradise, but far from a simulator.[7][11] All vehicles in Hot Pursuit are licensed real-world cars and SUVs, described as "all the cars you dreamed of driving, in the way you dreamed of driving them".[13]
Most vehicles are available in both racer and police variants, but a few cars are exclusive to each side.[11][14] Also exclusively featured in the Hot Pursuit is the Porsche 918 Spyder concept.[15] Ferrari automobiles however, last seen in a Shift DLC-pack but notably absent from all other Need for Speed games since Hot Pursuit 2, are also absent from Hot Pursuit.[16] There is no car customization or tuning, other than color changing, "just because the game really focuses on the Hot Pursuit element."[11] Unlike previous Need for Speed games which use unbranded, fictional models, real cars like the Audi A4, Chevrolet Cobalt, Porsche Cayenne, Nissan Frontier, and Ram 1500 are used as traffic cars.