Nostalgia eyes talking?
OG Hot Pursuit and Hot Pursuit 2 dont hold a candle to Hot Pursuit 2010, 2010 does everything the OG did better.....literally everything.
Porsche 2000 was good but again its most likely nostalgia talking if you think its better than UG, UG 2, Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit 2010, even taking time into consideration....it wasnt a godly game at launch.
Hot Pursuit 2010 was one of the top racers of the last generation and should be included in every best arcade racers of all time conversations, it was the last borderline perfect Need for Speed especially for someone who played a lot of the Need for Speed games from pre-Underground era. I think it scored 9/10 at most outlets and the PC version is godly if you boot it up today other than the cars being old it would still rate in or close to the 90s.
Wait, are you saying that Porsche wasn't a godly game at launch? It's one of the best racing games ever made, at least the PC version (the PS1 version was vastly different and considerably worse).
It's also totally futile to compare it with Underground or Most wanted, or even Hot Pursuit 2/2010 since it was a totally different game. Hot Pursuit, underground are hardcore arcade games, whereas Porsche was a simcade.
Porsche had 2 career modes. 1 was a journey through Porsche's history with car economy and proper race events.
2 was you role playing as a porsche test driver, essentially a challenge mode.
Porsche had proper damage that affected every part of your car and you actaully had to repair your car using your earnings in the career mode, so driving clean was important. It also had an incredible dashboard cam view for its time.
Aside from the Monaco tracks, every track was p2p. Hugely diverse scenery, multiple routes and lenghty tracks with insane amount of detail. Probably some of the finest levels designed in a racing game.
The handling was lenient enough to allow you to play even on a keyboard and enjoy the game, but playing with a proper steering wheel, it was an incredible experience as the game, especially for its time, was doing a great job with simulating real driving.
NFS Porsche is a culmination of everything that NFS was up to that point, a racing game that danced on the edge of simulation and arcade (similiarly to Forza Horizon nowadays).