Taking down an real-life racer is far more entertaining than it’s CPU counter-part. When you get three cops and three racers controlled by humans all on one stretch of road Rivals truly comes into its own. The All-Drive world that you race (or patrol) in is live with other human players roaming your streets. All of the games added extras are bought with speed points, these are tallied up as you race, though be warned if you’re busted or your car becomes unserviceable, you lose everything, so it’s always a good idea to bank your winnings at the earliest opportunity. As you can imagine, you cannot customise your police car, though you can purchase Spike Strips, EMP’s and Shockwaves to help you in your quest to take down the racing world. In which case you get the chance to takedown racers in interceptor mode, pursuit, and you can even find yourself embroiled in another police chases. On the other hand you may want to be on the right side of the law and be a cop.
You can also upgrade your vehicles with decals, engine upgrades and most importantly your defensive weapons such as mines. If you choose to play as a racer you can participate in races, head-to-heads and pursuits. This leads me nicely onto the main way the game plays out, in that you can choose to either be a racer or a cop (rivals, get it?). Be it the Lamborghini Murcielago for your illegal street racing days or a Mustang Enforcer for those times when you fancy being the hand of the law. The main aim or goal of your time on Rivals is to unlock new vehicles. Ultimately would the end product elevate the gaming community’s view of one of EA’s most popular franchises, or would the release of Rivals leave a black stain on the new developer’s rather blank resume?Īs with a number of previous titles there is a plot, but in all honesty it has no bearing on the game and very little thought has gone into it. Having played pretty much every single NFS that’s hit our consoles (Hot Pursuit & Underground being my favourites) it intrigued me to see what way Ghost Games would go with NFS: Rivals. This year we find ourselves picking up another iteration designed by an entirely new developer, Ghost Games. The first one released way back in 1994 on the 3DO, it has gone through numerous changes, plot re-writes and been designed by a host of different companies. Need for Speed is one of the most storied franchises within the EA library.