 You never escape the law. The racers have gotten out of control and are constantly threatening civilian lives. The police have decided to call in the big guns, disregarding the safety of civilians in the process. The police have a huge budget, fast cars, and nearly unlimited resources. The racers have...
1. Gameplay
I am not the king of racing games. I’m decent. I can hold my own, avoid hitting walls, dish out some damage, and come in first on occasion. But Need for Speed: Rivals is the first racing game where I feel genuinely cheated out of forward progression. I understand the decision behind the design of the game but the schizophrenic difficulty level and punishingly unfair racer campaign made this one of the few games where I didn’t bother to finish the campaign.  Crash, check. Burn, in progress. I want that to be absolutely clear. I have suffered through games that were so buggy they were nearly unplayable, games with stories so laughable I was in hysterics in what should have been serious chapters, games so boring that I actually felt like I was wasting my time playing them. And yet I finished them. Need for Speed: Rivals is one of the worst games that I have ever played simply because I find the racer campaign unplayable. When the player starts this game they will choose to either play as a cop or play as a racer. Each player can switch off between the two at any time, but it’s more likely that the player will stick to one until the end and then switch over. I started out as a cop. The cop campaign played out a bit how I expected. There are three event types and the cop gets points for busting racers and completing events. Cops don’t earn many points, but they only have to spend points on “pursuit tech”. So as long as the player sticks to a few cars and doesn’t try to buy everything for every car, points shouldn’t ever really be an issue.  You're going up against the budget of the Fed, after all. The cop campaign was too easy though. I always got a gold medal in every event the first time I tried it. The racers I was trying to bust would slow down so I could hit them. They would almost never use pursuit tech against me. Sometimes they would be so slow that I would have to turn around and retrace my steps just to find out where they were. The final race was so short that I was able to complete it three times in about ten or fifteen minutes, which includes the sometimes ridiculously long load times. The racer campaign was the exact opposite. Points are relatively easy to get, and each racer has a point multiplier that significantly increases the amount of points earned. But cops are everywhere, and they are extremely difficult to lose. I actually tested the mechanics and the cops are magnetically attracted to the player. Where a human cop would lose sight of the player around a corner or hiding in an alley, computer cops follow me no matter where I go. If they see me for even a millisecond, the pursuit continues. This could lead to pursuits that last longer than 15 minutes.  If I had a dollar for every time I saw that message. In that time, I can’t do anything. I can’t begin other events during a pursuit, so I can’t engage in the various races until I either get to a hideout or get busted, which significantly reduced the number of events that I was able to try. When I was in an event, the racers were all much faster than I was. The few times when I managed to squeeze out a silver or gold were because the other racers crashed into a wall or another car. I never felt like I earned a victory, instead feeling like the other racers gave it to me because of their inability to see a corner or some weird problem with their pathfinding ability. If a racer is busted by the cops, he loses all of the points he gained. Everything. If it isn’t “in the bank”, which it isn’t until the racer returns to a hideout, it’s fair game. This lead to me losing millions of points because of one pursuit where I couldn’t break the cops before I wrecked myself. Yes, I wrecked myself. The cops never wrecked me. I would either hit a wall at the wrong moment or use a stun mine on myself (loads of fun, trust me) or some other form of momentary incompetence that every gamer has now and then. And this would cost me 20 to 30 minutes worth of work. One time I was literally right in front of a repair shop when I dropped a stun mine, which hit a cop right behind me, and the blast wrecked me instantly. And poof, 300,000 points were instantly burned.  I hate traffic. And that doesn’t even begin to touch on the online portion. Other human racers and cops can roam around the world in real time. This is fun at times, since racers can participate in events with each other and then get chased by human cops. Human players are much smarter than the AI, which can lead to some pretty hectic chases. Except this causes so many additional problems. The player can’t pause the game ever. This seems like a “no big deal” thing, but think about the last time you played a game for a few hours without pausing once. Now think about how much time you can dedicate to gaming knowing that you’ll be unable to stop for anything during that time. And you can’t just jump out of the game whenever you want. You have to drive to a hideout first in order to have your points save. During a high-speed pursuit, finding a hideout can be problematic. You know they’re there, but you have no idea where. And while the GPS may guide you to the exact location, getting there without wrecking is another problem.  A serious problem. That also doesn’t include the fact that all of the human cops will be dozens of levels above the human racers. You might have just finished a race in first place, earning a bunch of points for your effort, and then out of nowhere get jumped by a level 50 human cop who steals those points from you in two seconds. He didn’t earn the points, he simply took advantage of the fact that you were at half health with no pursuit tech left and the nearest repair station was 2 miles away. You can still level up without earning points, but points are everything in this game. You can’t buy new cars as a racer without points. You can’t upgrade the cars you have, a vital part of staying alive, without points. You can’t buy pursuit tech, a vital part of fighting back and winning races, without points. So when you spend hours of time working at a game to get better, only to have that entire effort erased by a cop 30 levels above you, you being to question whether a game is entertainment or work. Oh, and for $10 you can have all of the racer cars fully upgraded.
I spent about 10 hours playing this game. That was enough time to complete the entire cop campaign once and complete a few chapters of the racer campaign. I could have played for at least another 12 hours attempting to complete all of the cop challenges, but it seems a bit hollow when there was no variety and no real reward. As my above rant should suggest, there is little purpose to attempting the racer campaign. I can see the campaign being beatable in around 10 hours, depending on how efficient (and lucky) a player was, but I don’t recommend attempting to work through the frustration.
The lengthy monologue in the “Overall Fun” section should give more than enough information about the frustration level of this game. 2. Parental Notices
Violence in this game is extremely mild. Players will use their cars to damage other cars. Damage will show on the cars, but the worst that happens is a car might be temporarily shocked or have its tires popped. There is no blood of any kind at any point.  It's just a scratch. He'll roll it off.
Sexuality is not a factor in this game.
Substances are not a factor in this game.
Gambling in the traditional sense is not a factor in this game. 3. Other Factors
There are no modding tools available for this game.
Religion is not a factor in this game.
Anti-law is a major factor in this game. Every element of both the racer and cop campaigns involves high-speed, dangerous racing along busy freeways and highways. Racers will use force against police personnel in an attempt to escape pursuits. If a racer is pinned or wrecked during a pursuit, that racer will be “busted”. While being busted often has severe in-game ramifications, they are nothing compared to the real-world consequences for similar actions.  Ferrari vs. BMW police car? Just another day on the streets. The police aren’t much better though. The campaign makes it clear that the police force are essentially vigilantes, going out purely as a show of force rather than for any real form of justice. I’m not sure why the developers chose to make the police seem darker and more “morally chaotic” than previous Need for Speed games, but that was definitely the design decision in this game.
Here’s the confusing thing. Despite the fact that the multiplayer in this game is so brokenly one-sided that it’s nearly impossible for racers to be competitive, that doesn’t significantly impact the online community. I couldn’t get mad at certain individuals for busting me while I was racing because they were simply taking advantage of the mechanics that were included in the game. I was on both sides of the equation a number of times. For every time I was busted as a racer, I busted more than my fair share.  Target acquired. Time to go hunting. If anything, my time as a racer made me feel for those who would struggle with the racer campaign. So once in a while, if I saw that I was near a racer who was in an event, I would try to bust the computer racers that he was competing against. I would still get a healthy amount of points for the busts and I know that the racer would get points for winning his race. I wish that the game had turned that into a more prominent mechanic. Instead of emphasizing the competitive “cop vs. racer” elements, find some way to emphasize the cooperative elements, especially when friends are playing in the same worldspace. Still, I expect that while my actions may be rare, they aren’t an isolated incident.
This game is all about high speed races along highways and freeways. Civilian cars are obstacles to wind around and through. If a racer or cop crashes into a civilian car, the player is more likely to be annoyed that the car was there rather than feel any sort of remorse for their actions. Speeds over 150 mph are common and frequently encouraged.  I'm only going 166 mph? I need to pick it up! The game gives players points for performing extreme actions. While racers earn more points for actions like getting airborne than cops, the police do get points for drifting, “near misses” on civilian cars, and other dangerous actions. This game would not exist without extreme sports.
Magic is not a factor in this game.
There are no additional factors in this game.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
Like what we do? Want to see more? Donate to the site using the button below!
Not sure what a term means? Read the definitions!
Not sure what a review section is about? Find out more information!
|
RSS Feed