Need for Speed: Rivals Review

The Good

Exciting mix of pure driving, aggressive maneuvering, and using technology;

Seamless integration of single- and multiplayer brings world to life;

Terrifically tempting risk-versus-reward mechanic for racers;

Gorgeous visuals;

The Bad

Conspicuous AI rubber-banding;

"Damage critical." The words appear on the screen in red, sending a rush through me. One more hit and I'm done for. It's too far to the nearest repair shop; I know I need to make it back to a hideout fast or I'll lose everything. I gun it, relying on my reflexes to help me evade the police, with their spike strips and their reckless attempts to run me off the road. There are only two possible outcomes: the triumph of big risks taken and big rewards achieved, or the agony of seeing everything I've earned slip away in an instant. Which will it be this time?

Despite being the work of new developer Ghost Games, Need for Speed: Rivals is clearly a game in the mold of Criterion's entries in the Need for Speed series, particularly 2010's excellent Hot Pursuit. In this game, as in that one, you step into the cars of both cops and racers and cruise around a gorgeous open world, completing events that require you to either evade the law or enforce it. Of course, enforcing the law here isn't a matter of asking drivers to politely pull over; instead, it involves ramming racers at speed, using spike strips and shock rams, and wrecking the elusive racers' vehicles by any means necessary. As a racer, you have plenty of tricks up your sleeve as well, including shock waves that damage and repel nearby vehicles, and jammers that prevent the cops or your fellow racers from using their own weapons against you.

The Redview County Police Department has quite a budget.

This wild technology can get you out of a tight spot as a racer or help you incapacitate one as a cop, but it's your skills as a driver that matter most. Weaving through traffic and around roadblocks, drifting smoothly around turns, and making smart use of your limited nitrous can make all the difference, and dividing your attention between driving skillfully and making the most of your tech is wonderfully stimulating. With so much going on at once, it's not unusual to feel like you're operating on pure instinct, and when you get into that zone, Need for Speed: Rivals is aggressive arcade racing bliss. These cars feel hefty and substantial, so as you side-slam a cop or hit a racer from the rear, you can almost feel the clash of metal on metal in your bones.

Most of this could have been said about Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit too. And the event types that are scattered around the landscape are standard stuff: straightforward races, time trials, hot pursuits in which cops try to bust racers before they reach the finish line, and so on. But there are two things that reinvigorate this familiar gameplay in Rivals. One of those is that, by default, you always share the world with other players. Those players might be cops or they might be racers, and as you cruise around trying to complete objectives to advance your own career, your experiences and the experiences of these other players might collide. If you're playing as a racer, for instance, someone playing as a cop might start pursuing you, whether you're in the middle of an event or you're just cruising around.

These police can fly.

And if you're a cop, hunting a human player across the winding roads of Redview County--an environment that offers no shortage of obstructions you can smash through and shortcuts that you can take advantage of--is more exhilarating than pursuing artificially intelligent prey. Other games in the series have had multiplayer options that pit cops against racers, but here, the multiplayer is seamlessly integrated into the world at large. You can encounter other players at any time, and as a result, the world feels alive in a way that earlier games in the series haven't. If you choose not to share a world with other players, AI cops and racers roam the roads, so there's still a chance you'll run right into a high-speed chase or some other action even when you're playing alone.

The seamlessness with which events are integrated into the world does carry with it the occasional downside. If you start a race, for instance, while being pursued by cops, the cops might... Read the rest of this post --->

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