Hot Pursuit 2?
The Need For Speed franchise has had its ups and downs over the years, but it seems to have found its stride over the past few entries such as Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted. Rivals feels like a combination of these two with its open world gameplay and the return of choosing to play as a cop or a racer in two different careers.
Rivals mixes things up with the potential to gain and lose a ton of points depending on whether you make it back to your safe house or not as a racer, while cops get some pretty good tech to stop you in your tracks. On the flip side, you can get this gear for your own cop career and bring racers to their knees.
The open world of Redview County is impressive and offers multiplayer in a seamless way that is entwined with the campaign, so there’s no separate menu option for multiplayer…it’s all in one, blurring the lines between single and multiplayer. No lobbies and no waiting sound like something from next-gen, but it all works just fine in current gen PS3.
You’ll drive some beautiful cars from manufactures such as Ferrari, Koenigsegg, Nissan, Audi, Porsche and Chevrolet to name a few and they can all be customised in every way you can imagine and include tech like EMP blasts, spikes and so on. It’s a great catalogue of cars to choose and customise, I was impressed with just how much you can customise…providing you have enough points to do so, but it’s worth it to see a sweet car handle like a dream.
Fortunately, there are only 2 multiplayer trophies this time around and they are nice and easy to earn, the rest come strictly from the single player career and are pretty reasonable, not super-easy but certainly easier than in past games. Visually, Rivals looks superb on PS3 and almost looks like a next-gen title in its own right, it has a solid framerate while the car models and open world of Redview County look stunning. The music isn’t too bad either with a great selection of tracks to listen to.
The Verdict
While it doesn’t shake up the racing genre, Need For Speed: Rivals surpasses its predecessors with a great open world and blurring the lines between single player and multiplayer, add that with some killer graphics and smooth controls and you have one hell of a racing game.
