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Need For Speed: Rivals Review
Arcade racers have disappeared from the radar over the past couple of years with only a few contenders facing off. As a big fan of the genre I am always happy to hear of a release but can’t help but feel slightly disappointed when it’s the announcement of yet another NFS game that has Criterion on board.
Need For Speed: Rivals is your typical NFS game. Taking the greatness from both Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit and trying to blend them together to become one great arcade racer is what new developer Ghost and the Criterion team have tried to do here, but sadly, they have failed.
As usual, you can experience being the driver of some of the worlds most powerful and beautiful road cars but in a non-sim game this is a problem for me. I love Burnout because of its over-the-top arcade racing where you can drift on a straight if you want, but in NFS:R the car handling takes away a lot of that fun, which means that the car handling is heavier and more frustrating when trying to complete a quick manoeuvre in order to avoid danger, and that’s if the horrific car pop-up doesn’t get you first!
Yes, pop-up! On too many occasions I’d be going at an amazing speed thinking I was going to win, when a car appears in front of me, not giving me time to avoid the inevitable... Yep, I came last, again!!! This was one of the most frustrating things about NFS:R alongside the constant need to restart most events due to one problem or another, making NFS:R nearly as frustrating as Midnight Club Los Angeles (We all remember that hideous elastic band effect).
Anyway, in NFS:R you are given a great choice of cars such as McLaren, Ferrari, Porsche and Maserati, each with their pros and cons. Once you’ve selected your first car, you embark on a journey to become the best racer in the fictional town of Redview County.
As you race, drift, annoy police and nitrous your way through Redview, you are rewarded speed points. SP are the games currency which allow you to upgrade your vehicles performance and also pursuit tech. The problem is that SP accumulates and multiplies depending on the amount of risks that you’re taking and if you don’t get back to a hideout before wrecking or being busted by the cops you lose EVERYTHING!!! So, don’t get too cocky or you’ll do a lot of work for nothing. And this is where another annoyance occurs. Going back to a hideout to bank your SP should be easy, right? Wrong! I can’t even count the amount of times that I marked a hideout route only to find that when I got there I was unable to just pull-up and press LB to enter, I’d have to do laps of the building and find the sweet spot and with police on your tail, it can get a little frightening.
The upgrades are basic but great and allow you to customize your performance, whether you feel that you need to improve the strength of the vehicle, top speed, acceleration or durability NFS has you covered. But then there’s the pursuit tech, the brilliant and sly technology that allows you to keep cops and racers at bay. You can have up to two pursuit tech gadgets on your car ranging from EMP to mines and these are allocated to you “Y” and “B” buttons. Timing is key when using pursuit tech because maximum impact obviously helps you out the most.
The races were also a pain because, like the 2012 Most Wanted game, the opponents speed off at the beginning of a race instead of starting on the start line like normal, leaving you behind and trying to gradually increase your speed in hope of catching up. Where do the developers get the idea that this might be liked or an improvement over the norm AS IT SHOULD BE!!! Stop with that rubbish and get it back to being fair! On top of this, I (on many occasions, again) found that I would be racing along thinking “wow, these racers must have great cars and drivers because they are nowhere to be seen” only to find out that this is because the game has glitched out and I am the only racer that existed… What the hell is this? I had to restart again and again in order to fight past this silly bug and nearly caused me to give up on the game and its annoyances all together.
NFS:R allows you to take a break from being chased by cops and trying to rule the streets by putting you in the driver seat of a cop car. Being a cop is slightly less frustrating and very funny at times and with the added pursuit tech like stingers and EMP, you’re sure to get someone back for all of the pain you have endured so far by being a racer. It’s a nice change of pace but it’s not too long before you encounter something that reminds you of why the game is a bit of a shambles.
So if everything else is annoying you, why not go online and race some friends? Well, the problem with that is that there is a maximum of 6 people allowed in any one game and in order to start an event you all have to go to the same place or chase each other around trying to tap LB in order to start a head-to-head. Absolutely ridiculous for what is a next-gen release title and a 2013 game.
There is something great about NFS:R and that is the geography. I have never seen such diversity in a racer, ranging from desert to snow and with beautiful vistas. I am a sucker for nature and the beauty that it holds and Ghost and Criterion have done a great job in showing you how it should be done.
Ok, so NFS:R annoyed me hugely and wasn’t as great as it should and could have been. Hopefully Criterion will go back and continue with the greatest arcade-racer to ever hit a console… Burnout and Ghost can continue to try and improve the NFS series and hopefully consider taking it back to how it used to be.
6/10
Review By Wicket2961
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