Need for Speed Rivals Review

Twenty titles in a single franchise… Think about that for a minute. Could you imagine Uncharted 20, or twenty iterations of anything other than a sports related game? How do you keep a franchise fresh and new when you already have nineteen games in the franchise? Here are a few hints: new cars, new maps, new challenges, upgraded graphics.

The Need for Speed franchise started out back in 1994 while some of our readers weren’t even born yet, and here we are 19 years later, with a brand new generation of consoles and a brand new installment to the long-lived and fast-paced franchise. Developer Ghost Games, with help from Criterion, took a lot of elements from previous titles, added in some cool new features, and created a game suited to kick off the next generation in style.

The game gives you two full careers to race through, as it lets you play as both a cop and a mysterious racer named Zephyr. These are two separate and unique experiences, with their own cars (for the most part), their own game types, and each with their own progression and career level. Swapping between careers is as simple as getting to a hideout or a command post and selecting the opposite career from your menu. Playing through the tutorial for both before completely diving into one or the other is the best way to understand how to play the game and can help you get into the mindset of your opponent, AI or otherwise.

New cars are unlocked by completing a set of objectives called speedlists, and completing these speedlists earns you—wait for it—speedpoints. While new cars are given to the cops once they are unlocked, racers must use speedpoints to purchase cars once they unlock them. While that doesn’t exactly seem fair, we must assume that the taxpayers of Redview County are footing the bill, which in essence means it’s the racers that are helping the cops get better and faster cars (if they do happen to pay taxes).

NFS games can generally be split into two types of gameplay: simulation or arcade. Need for Speed Rivals is clearly an arcade racer when it comes to driving, but looks more like a sim when you check out the modeling, details and designs of the cars. These are real world machines with names like Bugatti, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, and the return of Ferrari, to name just a few. Now I’m not exactly sure how any police department in any country could afford a Bugatti Veyron cruiser, but the Redwood County PD seems to have figured out how to snag one. I’m thinking it must have been a drug related forfeiture.