head to head
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 asks more than Grand Theft Auto V, and the gap is execution.

Execution · Practiced Mastery
Sandbox crime playground spanning shooting, driving, and a persistent online economy.

Execution · Practiced Mastery
Arcade car control at speed over memorised tracks with scripted police pressure.
Grand Theft Auto V leans Execution (Practiced Mastery); Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 leans Execution (Practiced Mastery).
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 leans clearly harder on execution.
Grand Theft Auto V
Driving and shooting demand decent inputs.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
High-speed cornering and traffic dodging are the whole test
Grand Theft Auto V leans a little harder on reads, though the gap is small.
Grand Theft Auto V
Online PvP exists but mostly gear/positioning, not modeling.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
AI racers and cops follow rubber-band scripts
Same score on variance - which means the number cannot separate them. The difference is in what each one asks of you.
Grand Theft Auto V
Some mission and lobby randomness.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Cop spawns and traffic add mild run-to-run noise
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2 leans a little harder on optimization, though the gap is small.
Grand Theft Auto V
Heists, money loops, builds learnable.
Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit 2
Track knowledge and racing lines are learnable and fixed
A matching score does not mean a matching test. Two games can both sit at 10 on execution and demand completely different things of you - which is why the reasoning above matters more than the number beside it.