Need for Speed Rivals review

What fun is a competition if you have no rivals to compete against? That seems to be the philosophy behind Need for Speed Rivals which provides you plenty of things to compete for with rivals known and unknown.

The latest installment in the annual Need for Speed franchise is a debut game from the Ghost Games studio and it uses the new Frostbite 3 engine. There are plenty of fast cars on offer for you to cruise the scenic roads of Redview County, which is a smorgasbord of various different regions like Mountainous, Canyon, Country, Highway, Forest and Seaside Cliffs among others. One setting that is missing is the densely packed road network of the urban locale. There are some areas which might cause a feeling of déjà vu to gamers that have played earlier entries in the franchise.

The game lets you play as both Racer and Cop with the story playing out from both perspectives. Ideally one should alternate between the modes for a more interesting experience. While numerically it may seem that Racers have fewer cars, which is simply due to cops having 3 variants of every car, which could have been handled more elegantly than is currently implemented. Racer cars are upgradable to improve performance while cop cars seem relatively weaker and are limited to whatever differences each variant offers.

The Economy of the game is based around the currency called SpeedPoints (SP) which seems quite balanced in both Racer and Cop mode, despite the numerical differences in what one can earn in every outing. Racers get a multiplier for increasing their SP rapidly but they also have a lot of vehicles, upgrades, pursuit tech and liveries to spend on. Cops get their vehicles free but non-upgradable, with pursuit tech being the only thing they can spend SP on. Also, SP is tracked individually for each side of the law.

For the first time in the franchise you can customise your own License plate, but the game seems to have no option for slapping the same custom plate on all your vehicles. Other personalisation options include the standard body and rim paint, decals and liveries.

The handling of cars in the game is quite unrealistic and arcadey, but that’s what you would expect from a Need for Speed game. You might take a while getting used to drifting around corners and firing the Nitrous only along straight roads. Drifting can be accomplished by a light tap on the brakes while turning though sharper turns require tapping the E-Brake. Nitrous seems to make the car harder to turn and can have you smashing into walls if you aren’t using it along a straight road. Going off-road can significantly reduce your speed depending on the car you’re driving and this can sometimes result in you failing jumps. There isn’t any manual gear option and the game uses automatic gears only.

The most touted feature of the game is AllDrive which seamlessly blends single and multiplayer. On paper this seems a brilliant concept, but in practice it hinders more than it helps. If you intend to play the game solo, it might be better to set AllDrive to Single Player only so that your game session is not interrupted by the host deciding to end their game and the uncomfortable pause that follows while everyone is migrated to a new host. This migration disregards whether you had some event in progress and can usually place you at a disadvantage depending on your internet connection. The other problem with AllDrive is that it’s limited to 7 players in a significant game world, which means organising a multiplayer race is rather hard.

Speaking of Races, the game offers standard event types like Time Trials, Timed Pursuit Escapes and Sprint Races for the Racers while the same events can be played as Cops with slightly different objectives such as clean driving for the Time Trials, Timed Pursuits and Shutting down the Races. However the trick the game uses to keep you immersed is that it lets you challenge any Racer you meet on the road to a Head-to-Head Sprint. As a Cop you can join in any Pursuit that passes you.

While the Game has free roam, as a Racer you will soon find yourself in pursuits or challenging other racers you meet along the way, or both! You must gather SP every time you enter the Game World and can only keep that SP if you make it to a Hideout or Command post without being Wrecked or Busted. While the game’s unescapable tutorial tells you the basics of both modes, it fails to mention that you can jump into a Hideout while still in a Pursuit. Given that the game lacks any spots to hide from the cops while your heat level is up, you might just get bored trying to escape pursuit after pursuit if you wait to be in the clear to enter a hideout. The cops will pursue you even if you are just parked by the side of the road. Free Roam is less of a hassle in Cop mode as you can choose not to pursue every racer that you meet on the road. Though the game shows a damage meter, damage is cosmetic only and merely indicated by loss of a few panels from your car. Damage is not caused by smashing into the hundreds of destructible objects that dot the game world, but by colliding with other cars and crashing against the barriers.

The most annoying part of the game is that there is no pause function in the game world. Bringing up the map does not pause the game, which can lead to a loss of progress if you’re not careful. The only way to stop the action is to make for the nearest Hideout or Command Post using EasyDrive which is a helpful shortcut tool in the game. EasyDrive also lets you browse any AutoLog challenges you receive.

The game allows you to compete with friends or rivals it finds for you for top spot on many different Speedwalls. These include completing all objectives on your Speedlist in the shortest time, getting the fastest speed on Speed Cameras littered around the world, the fastest average speed through Speed Zones, the longest jumps and the best times on any event. Speedlists are objectives that let you progress through the game and you can only pick one of three at a time. If you were to stick to the Speedlists alone your time in the game would be not quite as much as you would clock trying to top all Speedwalls in the Open World.

As is the recent trend, a companion app called Need for Speed Network for mobile devices and web browsers is tied into the game. This lets you find new challenges from your Friends and features a mode called Overwatch which lets you mess with your friends’ games on the go. Overwatch also unlocks Challenges, Liveries and Vehicles in the game. Overwatch has its own timed challenges which are poorly designed in that you could infinitely repeat a select few low cost, high return ones to level up rapidly and not bother with the others.

This review would not be complete without a word on the pathetic state of affairs that is the PC version of the game. The game is a port on the PC and while one might expect it to look rather good, given the Frostbite 3 engine, it is rather disappointing. The game can look pretty in parts with all the lens flares, lighting effects, weather effects and the large amount of particles (leaves, flowers or dust) that seem to populate every road, these do not detract from the awful texturing in the background and seeming lack of antialiasing. The 30 fps lock is built into the game’s systems and trying to circumvent it results in a broken game. The lack of detailed graphical customisation is also a downer. The excessive particles can become quite distracting when in a tricky situation in either a race or a pursuit. The game can inexplicably crash at start-up from time to time. Also you can accidentally cross the game world boundaries in certain locations resulting in the crash animation playing. The current state of the game certainly doesn’t justify the rather steep price of ₹3499 on the PC.

The gameplay is quite solid and the game keeps you engaged even when you are free roaming. The handling may take a while to get used to, but isn’t much of a hindrance. The game looks pretty in places but some effects can hinder the gameplay. Lack of detailed options on PC is regrettable. While the game tries to do something new with AllDrive, its implementation is poor and the PC port is a rather messy affair that fails to leverage the power of the platform. The companion app tie-in is also lacklustre. Lack of Pause option is annoying.

This game was reviewed on a Windows 8 PC with GeForce GTX 770