There’s only so much beating that a dead horse can take, or to put it another way, don’t expect any innovative new features in the new Need for Speed: Rivals game, a title that reuses a tried and true arcade recipe to sell many copies designed to be fun for a while…a short while.
It’s good that Electronic Arts mostly goes by EA these days, because there really is little or no art left in it for them.
Rivals is pretty much the same game as 2010’s Hot Pursuit, which itself was a reheated version of the original Hot Pursuit game from 1998 that also went by the name Need for Speed Three. It had cops, baddies, spike strips, electromagnetic strikes and a wide variety of cars for both sides to choose from.
What it didn’t have that this new cutting edge 2013 game does is an admittedly gorgeous looking open (and persistent) world, seamless online connectivity (which does add a new edge to the experience) and limited performance and visual upgrades that probably do more to annoy than quench players’ thirst for modding their car.
Not even the fully supported return of Ferrari to the franchise isn’t enough (for me, at least) to say this is a game worth recommending; you should try it out, though, but only if you like the eye candy, lots of crashing, a deeply cliché story that you will always skip through and the satisfaction of going round hairpins at three digit speeds with hardly any tire squeal.
I may be missing its point, and if so, feel free to have your say in the comments section below. Before you do that, do check out the slew of reviews and related videos posted below.
By Andrei Nedelea
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