“Efficient” isn’t a word typically used to describe a Need for Speed game, but it struck me as the best way to interpret the four hours I spent playing Need for Speed Rivals. Whereas 2010’s Hot Pursuit revived the spirit of cops against racers and 2012’s Most Wanted took us back to the open-world bliss of Burnout Paradise, Rivals feels like a careful arrangement of the best ideas from those two games (and carefully ignores 2011’s The Run as a curious outlier). Coming from a new studio, Ghost, comprised largely of former Criterion folk, that’s no surprise. The revelation comes in how well their past harmonizes with their daring vision of the future.
Narrative has always felt a little impractical in the Need for Speed series. While we can all sit back and chuckle at Razor Callahan’s mid-aughts shenanigans and the goofy premise surrounding The Run it became clear saying less was doing quite a bit more. Rather than an outlined narrative, Rivals obeys its past and opts for a theme; cops versus racers. Brief voiceovers spliced in between player levels painted the racers as urban cowboys desperately glued to typically high-sensation seeking behavior. Cops, from the racer’s point of view, are portrayed as masters of excessive force and wrongful punishment, corrupt to their core. Cops, from their point of view, see the racers as pests that need to be extinguished and masters of public safety. It’s not entirely clear how these philosophies will play out in Rival’s dueling campaigns but one thing is immediately obvious; Rivals is less about good and evil and more about two disparate styles.
Risk is the element that binds cops and racers together. Rivals is built around an economy; Speed Points (SP). Engaging in assigned objectives or picking up spontaneous challenges in Rival’s Redview County contributes to SP, and doing it efficiently builds an SP multiplier. A higher multiplier presents a higher risk, and from the racer’s perspective Rivals became a game of seeing how much SP I could generate before I high-tailed it back to my hideout. Had I gotten busted by the cops, I would have had to kiss all of that SP and my multiplier goodbye. If I make it back all that SP gets banked for later use. As you may imagine, the barreling intensity at which I would do anything I could to make it back was empowering when done properly and equally instructive (and destructive) when I failed.
Both campaigns start the player at level one. From there you’re presented with three different series of objectives each with their own style, all on the way to a final tenth level. A racer, for example might find one series that sets objectives as side ramming a cop, rear-ramming a cop, and evading a cop. Another completely different series in the same level tasks the player to bronze or silver some of Rival’s more concrete, race-like objectives or successfully use Pursuit Tech (Rival’s label for offensive and defensive abilities) in a race. There’s always a choice, which not only helps break the sense of monotony that’s crippled other racers, but also allows a preferred play-style to emerge. More often than not, Rivals lets you do as you like.
Messing around in Redview County is an urge Rivals caters to, but it’s also loaded with more concrete objectives for both cops and racers. Racers can engage in Time Trials to and from two different points on the map, willfully engage with and escape from cops by pinging Interceptors, partake in good old fashioned multi-vehicle races, or seek out a Hot Pursuit for a one-on-one race. Hot Pursuits and Interceptors can also be initiated through other racers or random cops on the road, though there was something distinctly satisfying about seeking one out for the purpose of pure competition. While I spent far less time playing as a cop, their objectives were similar. Rapid Response contextually tests a cops ability to get somewhere under the stress of time, not entirely different, from a time attack objective, and there were plenty of opportunities to track down racers and bust their cars out of contention.
And then there are all those extras. Ripping a page out from Most Wanted’s Fairhaven City, Redview County is littered with tiny things to do. Speed Cameras return to measure how quickly you can pass a certain point on the map, while Speed Zones do something similar with attaining a high speed over a large stretch of road. Creating a high score earns SP – and beating your friends, whose times are posted in a leaderboard fashion at each instance, nets even more. This synchronous approach to non-simultaneous multiplayer has been the heart of Need for Speed’s Autolog since Hot Pursuit, and it returns true to form in Rivals. If it ain’t broke don’t fix it, really, as driving by a Speed Camera and seeing your buddy has just a slightly better time than you still lights the fire of competition. Multiply that by a half dozen friends and considerable number of Speed Cameras and Zones over a huge world and, well, Rivals isn’t short on competition.
Autolog, Criterion’s famed system of constantly comparing friend’s scores, solves offline multiplayer, but Rivals is also quick to make live competition an integral part of the experience. Dubbed AllDrive, it’s intended to further blur the line between solo and multiplayer gameplay. For example, after receiving an invite from a friend, a bunch of us joined his game. From there we could proceed normally, accomplishing the same set of goals we had been working toward, or we could find each other on the map via the pause menu, set a GPS course to each other’s location, and drive over to meet and accomplish goals together. SP gained during cooperative sessions is increased, encouraging everyone to interact with each other. It’s not quite as seamless as it was in Most Wanted, but there’s a good deal more freedom to the whole thing. It’s a laissez-faire approach to multiplayer, and I’m eager to see how it works out in a global environment.
Of course, there’s also plenty of room for spontaneous confrontation. Racers and cops, rivals eternal, are bound to get into a scuffle here and there. In my case that amounted to hounding a writer from Shacknews, performing a head on collision with him, and then engaging in a chase spanning half the map. As a racer my heat level rose and, as a cop, he was joined by other AI cops and the guy from GameTrailers who just happened to be passing through. My equipped Pursiot Tech granted me the ability to jam their devices and perform an EMP pulse, which I did in succession in an effort to escape their radar and dash away. The whole chase was wonderfully exhilarating, and at one point I was driving backwards with both of the other human players directly in front of me staring into my windshield. I tried quick 180’s, last-second swerves into oncoming traffic, and a ridiculous jump in an effort to break free. With the notice of my car not being able to sustain much damage and no repair shop in sight, I eventually crumbed and got arrested, but thrill of the chase was a reward enough on its own.
As mentioned previously, both cops and racers have a set of toys to play with. Pursuit Tech includes a Jammer that wipes out radar and protects it from an aggressor’s own Pursuit Tech. Electrostatic Field acts as a jamming device while also acting as a shock shield against other cars. A standard EMP may have been the most fun, requiring a persistent missile-lock type mechanics in order to fire one off. Pursuit Tech can also be upgraded, consuming SP to increase range and effectiveness. Pursuit Tech can be assigned to two slots, and regenerates (along with nitrous and car “health”) at repair shops scattered around Redview County. One catch is that each car, which also must be purchased with SP, has its own unique Pursuit Tech, meaning you’ll have to unlock new layers of Pursuit Tech with every single car you use. With the considerable amount of SP I was earning it didn’t present that much of a problem, but I’m still waiting to see how that particular facet of Rivals shakes out over either campaign.
Companion Apps are in style these days, and Rivals isn’t one to break that particular trend. Called Overwatch, it allows a person with a tablet (in our case, an iPad) to assist drivers in real time. Better, they can interact with anyone who’s a part of the current AllDrive group. At one point I was involved in a police chase as a cop, and the Overwatch player called in a helicopter for better radar support and later plopped a roadblock in front of the guy I was trying to catch. He even restored 20% of my damaged car. There are checks in balances in place keeping the Overwatch player from spamming racers and cops with attacks or bonuses, and Overwatch itself is game all its own, complete with experience and systems unique to its mission. Unfortunately I didn’t actually get to have hands-on with Overwatch, but details will surely arrive with our review of Rivals later this month.
Stylistically, Rivals shines. Part of that is undoubtedly to the fact that I played it on brand new hardware. The PlayStation 4 certainly does it plenty of favors, ensuring considerable detail at 1080p resolution. Leaves blew around in the wind, biplanes pass overhead seemingly at random, and the usual details of explosive exhaust pipes, terrifying sparks, and bone-crunching crashes were well in place. This seems to indicate the series has made a smooth transition to the Frostbite 3 engine, although since I literally have no idea what switching to new engines entails I can’t honestly speak to that. One thing’s for sure, Rivals certainly comes of better looking and playing on Frostbite 3 than The Run did on Frostbite 2.
Redview County’s natural landscapes seemed to exhibit a more laid-back appeal than Fairhaven City’s urban trappings. Winding roads and sprawling highways appeared to take inspiration from the Pacific Northwest, while more open dust-fields looked like they were pulled straight out of nowhere Kansas. Rest assured I still found plenty of monster jumps, concrete pipes, and at least one abandoned airfield to play around in, assuring Criterion’s usual playfulness has a home at Ghost as well.
While I didn’t have enough time under my belt to develop a conclusive opinion, feedback given through Rivals’ gameplay felt great. The typical progression of car unlocks lead me to Need for Speed mainstays including a rear-engine Porsche, bruising Charger, and the hulk-like power monster Corvette. It’s no sim, but there was enough variation between the cars to visually observe and haptically perceive a difference. If there’s any caveat it’s the weird, disorienting thing Rivals does after a particularly massive wreck. Your car reappears on screen pointing a seemingly random direction and for whatever reason the HUD goes AWOL for a few seconds. This lead to a couple instances where I was pointing in the wrong direction in the middle of a race. The justification of this is sound; “you screwed up, don’t screw up” and it sort of makes contextual sense. Or maybe it was a bug that hadn’t been squashed yet.
Again, aside from that minor squabble, the word I kept coming back to was efficient. Rivals looks to be a refinement of ideas and principles established over the last three years. Ideas that, in their time and place, served as a condensed interpretation of Need for Speed. Rivals acts as a natural step forward, lessons learned and amended properly. For an annual franchise to arrive harder, better faster and stronger than the previous version is no easy feat, but for Need for Speed it’s increasingly becoming part of the game.
