Review

Need for Speed: Rivals

Racing down a rainy road, with leaves swirling by as you delve deeper into the mountains, a cop car notices you. You immediately put the pedal to the metal and attempt to get away from the police as they radio in for assistance. Normally they’d have trouble catching up with you in your souped up Enzo Ferrari, but the officer chasing you isn’t driving a normal squad car. They are keeping up fairly well in their Lamborghini Aventador. The cops are right on your tail, bumping you from behind causing you to momentarily lose control.  No worries; you’re a racer. You got this. Mashing the turbo, you zoom out into the distance before skidding around a turn and hitting a guardrail. Your car informs you that your damage is critical and you know instinctively to start searching for your hideout. The officers are back right behind you, attempting to pin you against a wall, taking all that you have earned. But the hideout is in sight! Can you make it?

What I described above is a normal occurrence in Need for Speed: Rivals. The basic gameplay revolves around cops and racers, both with their respective pros and cons. As a cop, you chase these bad guy racers around, taking their points away from them and busting them to make Redview County a safer place to live. Why are these racers bad, you might ask? Well, one of your cop buddies was injured trying to apprehend one so you’re out for revenge. In order to bust some punks, you’ll be able to take your tricked out ride and arm it with weaponized gadgets and tech. Turbo (think Nos), an EMP weapon, spike strips, and more can be used against racers. If that’s not enough, points earned by accomplishing simple tasks and arresting racers can be used to move up in rank, unlocking better vehicles. It’s all pretty simple and straight forward, yet a lot of fun playing as cops.

If being on the right side of the law doesn’t appeal to you, you can be a racer. As a racer you can upgrade the performance of the vehicles you own in your garage. You earn the right to upgrade your vehicle by earning speed points and finishing tasks laid out for you by the game. The longer you drive in the world, the higher your multiplier will be and the richer in speed points you’ll become. Once a new vehicle is unlocked you can purchase it with the points you have earned.  After that it too can be upgraded using your remaining points on performance enhancements such as durability, strength, speed, etc. This will prove necessary because if the cops bust you, they’ll take all the speed points you’ve earned on that run. Just like the cops though, you also have tech to help in a pinch.

Once you have decided what side of the law you want to be on and what kind of car you want to drive, you’ll have a large map awaiting you. There are bases for both sides; cops have command centers while racers have hideouts strewn around the map. Just choose where you want to start and get to driving. From the map you’ll also see up to five other players driving around. This is Ghost Games’ attempt at a pseudo MMO-style game (not unlike other open world racing games). With Rival’s map covering 100+ miles of road, it’s hard to understand why they limited the world to just six players total. Added AI-controlled cars try to fill the void, but there is nothing that compares to having a real person chasing you and vice versa.

After selecting where you want to start the game will place you in the world. Outside of chasing and being chased are races. The great thing is that they’re easy to get going – an impromptu race between you and other nearby racers is just a quick Left Bumper (LB) press away. I love this system of initializing races. It’s so easy and ingenious. One thing I would change though is how the game handles races between two or more racers. When starting a race with other players, the game will bring in AI cars to pad the experience instead of notifying other players. I understand that it’s quicker this way, but it would be ideal to alert others and see if they’d like to join in.

Even during races, you’re never safe from the law. If a pursuit starts during a race, you’ll not only have to worry about coming in first but also getting busted (losing all of your points for the race). Playing as a cop, hitting the LB will turn on your lights allowing you to chase whomever you see fit. Again, there are other things to do; there are an equal amount of events for both cops and racers that extend the longevity of the game. Still, this is a great way to spend one’s time.

One of the things that  makes Rivals special is also its weakness. Using Frostbite 3 (the same engine as Battlefield 4) a sense of realism in surroundings is attained that I haven’t experienced in any other racing title, including Forza 5. The fact that it’s running at 30FPS is a real shame. I understand this is standard for multi-platform launch games at this time; once the game programmers get their hands dirty with the new consoles they will be able to wow us with something special. In the meantime, even at 30FPS I’ll be enjoying Rivals for some time to come. This high octane, edge of your seat racer doesn’t let up – it’s hard to find a game with a more addicting risk/reward system!