Need for Speed Rivals (Xbox ONE)

Not often does a game get so on my tits to have me screaming at the TV but Need for Speed Rivals managed to succeed where lots of other games have failed. I cannot believe the amount of crap that I had to put up with during the game but I’ll get to that later. First, the ridiculous storyline.

You are a racer or a cop in some bizarre area of the USA where there is a snowy mountain, arid plains and seaside resort within 5 miles drive of each other. Why they couldn’t have had multiple locations is a mystery. Ignoring geography for the insane, as a racer you have to... race and avoid getting arrested while some voiceover guy talks about the importance of freedom and that obviously breaking the law is a really good way to show ‘the man’ that he isn’t going to keep you down. This is fair play in a world where you can’t kill anyone but having head on collisions is fine.

As a cop you have to bust the racers. But there’s more to it than that. It seems to be a personal vendetta between the police and the street racers which is probably why the game is called ‘Rivals.’ But it kind of undermines the whole ‘we are going to arrest you for breaking the law’ when even the cops treat it like a rivalry. It’s not like gang rivals where you actively compete with each for fame and acclaim. The cops should be taking out the racers because it’s their job – not to prove a bizarre point.

Basically the premise is wank.

The music is a-typical of the genre in that it portrays all racing types as listening to music that would be more at home in most clubs. Because everyone that drives fast is an 18 to 30 type who saves all their money for the season in Ibiza apparently? The music has revealed a new found hatred of Bastille through that stupid Pompeii song. I’m not sure it’s called singing during the first minute or so. The other issue with the music is that it restarts whenever you do anything and it’s not very good at mixing up its soundtrack meaning you often get the first two minutes of a song, then another one, then back to previous song, then another song, then the first song again, then Bastille five times. You get the drift.

Graphically, it is actually good. The cars look great, the environment looks great. The only issues are what happens in the world.

I’m going to start with the Kinect functionality. Apparently NFS Rivals has a built in voice Kinect capability. Who knew? Also, who knows what the commands are? Apparently there are voice commands (or hand action commands, who knows) that make you: look behind you when turning a corner; change into panoramic view when being chased by several police cars; reduce the in-game quick menu to include completely useless options and my personal favourite, leave an event. I only discovered the Kinect had been my Achilles’ heel when I got booted from an event, restarted and started verbally complaining about how it had made me leave the event. Apparently ‘fuck you, you fucking game’, ‘fuck off’, ‘what the fuck just happened?’ and ‘leave event’ are all voice commands for the same thing. Also, the back of the box, which I’ve only just read today, states that Kinect voice is optional. But the where the fuck was the option to turn this off in the first place!? It certainly wasn’t given to me as an option at the start of the game and definitely wasn’t made clear. I only got around it by physically turning off my Kinect.

The next stuff is all just standard bollocks from a racing game. A couple of standout issues I had was that my racing car, even when cranked up to the maximum strength level, was still made of wafers compared to the other racers. Also, apparently, if I crashed into to a wall and was being reloaded onto the road, more than often than not, the game would face me in the wrong direction. Another thing is that while you are being reloaded onto the road, if you are hit by another car, you still take that damage which is just ridiculously unfair when you can’t do it to NPCs and the fact that you have a wafer car.

Another thing on the general concept of the game – it involves you having to connect to a server to play with other people. This is the default option. Despite this running off of an EA server, there is a host migration which can cause your game to be interrupted quite frequently. You can avoid this issue by playing in a private room and I found this actually made my gameplay experience better... however, it completely counters the point of the game in the first place.

Achievements – 1,000 Points – 25 Achievements

All that stuff above makes the game fantastically more difficult than it should be, however it is still 90% grind, 10% skill. You basically have to get to level 60 with both racer and cop factions, both of which are sinfully boring after you’ve gone through one set of Speed Walls.

Everything else can be done by playing through the game and you will get them by the time you’ve got to the end of the rest of the achievements with potentially three exceptions. The first of these involves banking 500,000 points in one go. This can be easily be done by replaying an interceptor event near a repair shop once you have high level Electrostatic Field and Shockwave. There are a few events set up like this so it’s not an issue.

The other two involve playing with a friend. You have to win a race against a friend and bust a friend. I had a friend who was kind enough to do this with me but considering that the whole game is built around an online community style of play, it’s surprising that there are only two achievements that require you to play with other players.

Downloadable Content – N/A

I wouldn’t recommend playing this game or starting it now. The back of the box warns: EA may retire online features, online services and downloadable content after 30 days notice posted on www.ea.com/1/service.updates. Considering the age of the game, this could happen soon and it would effectively mean the end of the game in its entirety.