Need for Speed Rivals is the twentieth installment in the series and was developed by both Ghost Games and Criterion Games. It is a combination of Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted in terms of its focus, with the ability to play as both racers and police in an open world.
Upon starting the game, you quickly go through the tutorial for both sides before being able to pick one to play as. You’re able to freely swap between the two and they each have a slightly different focus. Each side has a rank, which acts as your level. Instead of experience points, you are given a set of tasks to complete. You usually have three sets to choose from so you can pick one that you feel is easier or more suited to your play style. Once you complete the sets, you will rise in rank. Unfortunately, the tasks for rising in ranks are from a very limited pool. It can easily get repetitive a few hours into the game.
As a racer, your aim is just to have fun and win in races. There are four types of events. A Race has you pitted against others for first place; Time Trial has you aiming for a specific time; Interceptor tasks you with escaping from police; and Hot Pursuit is a race against others but with police already on your tail. You will earn SP for everything that you do, from near misses against other cars to winning races. SP is used to upgrade your cars, customize them and buy new ones.
There are a variety of cars to (eventually) choose from. Each car has various stats including acceleration, top speed and endurance. This is important because you may have a fast but fragile car which means you probably won’t be using it for the Interceptor or Hot Pursuit events. It plays like other Need for Speed games, being an arcade racer, you can drift and use nitros to your advantage. Each side has weaponry to hinder other cars, such as EMP blasts and spike strips. Although it does have its own quirks in regards to physics and the handling so you’ll need a short amount of time in order to get used to it.
Driving around as a racer, your Heat Level will constantly increase. Heat Level is what dictates how aggressive the police will chase you. Once sighted, police will try and apprehend you by wrecking your car, or busting you if you end up being sandwiched by them and staying in their vicinity for too long. The only way to decrease your Heat Level is to return to your hideout, and speaking of the hideout, you also cannot pause the game unless you return to your hideout.
SP banking is where the game’s gimmick comes into play. You cannot use your SP until you return to your hideout and “bank” it. Being busted means that you will lose all your points gathered during the time since you last banked it. Losing all points is really annoying and easy in the beginning of the game. You end up not being able to play more than one event without the Heat Level being high enough for police to be persistent. It’s quite lame when all your progress is for nothing especially when Heat Level rises way too quickly. This isn’t about risk and reward; this is about some minimal level of recognition for your efforts when you can’t even finish one race without being hounded by police. Once you’ve either unlocked new cars or upgraded them, it becomes easier.
As you can probably gather, your hideout is one of the most important aspects. In addition to banking your SP and getting rid of your Heat Level, they serve as places that rank you up, buy and upgrade cars, and fast travel. It’s neat that you can easily fast travel straight to an event or to the other side of the map. The load times aren’t bad either. Playing on the police side will give you slightly different events, where you focus on busting the racers. Thankfully, the cars you use are more robust than as if you play as a racer, so taking down a car is easier. Time trials, or Rapid Response as they are known, require you to do a clean lap which can be annoying when the cars controls like rubbish, as if they are heavy lumps of rock, and the traffic doesn’t spawn in your favor (and it never does).
There is a story mode, one for each side. The game is set in Redview County, which is mainly comprised of open country roads with barely any city elements. As a racer, the story is about how the police are your rivals. The voiceover will explain that it is not the racers’ fault as they haven’t done anything wrong. Rather it is the police who is using excessive force to take them down, although it is very hard to sympathize with the racers’ plight since they did bring it upon themselves. The story doesn’t take too long, probably only around five hours and most of that is just doing the events. Getting the maximum rank however, is another story.
The story mode for the police side is the same story of the police chasing after illegal racers. However, by playing the other side, you are supposed to see what it feels like when you’re the one being accused by the public of using excessive force. Unfortunately, similar to the racer’s story, the dialogue is cheesy as if it is written for kids.
As per standard in a Need for Speed game, the rubberbanding is terrible. There are moments where it is so blatant that it is disgusting. Slamming into other cars to wreck them will take a while, and when wrecked yourself, you will lose precious seconds as a cutscene plays, which can disorient you as well. The most annoying elements is when you make a mistake towards the end of an event that cost you multiple positions, resulting in a loss. The rubberbanding is more blatant when you’re playing as the police. This is because you’ll be right on the tail of a racer, using your nitrous to boost your speed to ram them. You’ll then find that the racer will magically speed up (without using nitrous) and keep being ahead of you.
The game can feel way too luck based at times. When the police literally appears in front of you as you’re racing and you have no choice but to smash into them costing you your position, that is terrible design. It is way too trigger happy with the damage and crashes, making it feel very unfun. There is a severe case of artificial difficulty, the AI likes to cheat and it’s frustrating when you lose like this. The path markers indicating the route is terrible. When the road suddenly branches and you need to take a turn, you’ll probably miss it on your first time. It seems to expect you to have memorized the routes after repeated attempts.
As you play more and more, it is surprising that the game gets worse and worse. Things that you would expect to get better don’t, the variety dies and it becomes repetitive and lame. One notable aspect is that there is obvious product placement from Ford, since there are numerous Ford related achievements / Trophies.
Overall, Need for Speed Rivals is an uneven and flawed game. It can be a fun racer with great moments at times, but there will also be some extremely frustrating times. The handling is weird to grasp even after playing it for a few hours, the AI is artificially hard, and there are too much luck based elements such as the spawn of traffic that affects your performance.
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