Need for Speed: Rivals

Well, I have to say I'm pretty much done with Rivals. At its core, it is a better game than the abyssmal Most Wanted 2012 (It was a retextured Paradise). However, the game has so many glitches it becomes unplayable, such as falling through the road and falling through the sea as road textures fail to load. However, these are the things I liked and didn't like about Rivals:

+ Aggressive cops
+ Great car selection
+ Massive amount of events
+ Customisation is back in NFS
+ Frostbite 3 produces the best looking racer on the market today

- Criterion Drifting- it is stupid and makes it seems like a game you would play at the seafront.
- Criterion Crashing- why this got inot NFS I've no idea. The only role it serves is to watch the AI drivers zoom past you, sealing your fate in the race as being a loser.
- Bugs, Crashes, glitches etc- no explanation, if you've played Rivals you know what I mean.
- Limited progression
- Small map (not as big as say TDU2- and that was last gen).
- Performance upgrades as pointless
- No player to player interaction online
- Tacked on online component
- Repetitive gameplay
- Awkward story "I am not you. I am the life you were too scared to live. I am a catalyst, the 15 minutes you'll never have"- Need I elaborate more, this is the actual dialogue in Rivals!
- Map is consisted of straight roads and drifting corners.
- Scam DLC prices.

So Rivals overall is a worse game than MW. I hope to dear god that Ghost bring out their big guns for NFS 2014 because this time they have competition in the form of The Crew, Driveclub, Forza Horizon 2 and Project CARS. All of the aforementioned are headed where NFS once were before Criterion decided to pull a U-Turn to drive NFS into Burnout territory. E3 2014 will be the decider this year, if Ghost roll out Rivals 2 or another Cops vs. Racers game, it is pretty safe to assume NFS will be run off the map fully this year.
 
Bit of a bump, but...

darren200cook
- Awkward story "I am not you. I am the life you were too scared to live. I am a catalyst, the 15 minutes you'll never have"- Need I elaborate more, this is the actual dialogue in Rivals!
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Feel free to complain about the delivery, but that's actually a pretty great line there. I wish more games had crazy-sounding yet totally solid lines like that.
 
I gave this game a go on my friend's PS4 (gotta' have this piece of hardware in my life), albeit hangover, and I noticed that there was slight and rather annoying input lag. Besides that and the occasional drop in framerate, Redview County felt dead and way too lifeless to me. Don't even get me started on the endless police chases which I had no intention getting into in the first place. I just want to free roam.

Either way, the game is beautiful graphically, but unfortunately nowhere near the fun I was expecting it to be a lá Hot Pursuit.
 
Hyland
I gave this game a go on my friend's PS4 (gotta' have this piece of hardware in my life), albeit hangover, and I noticed that there was slight and rather annoying input lag. Besides that and the occasional drop in framerate, Redview County felt dead and way too lifeless to me. Don't even get me started on the endless police chases which I had no intention getting into in the first place. I just want to free roam.

Either way, the game is beautiful graphically, but unfortunately nowhere near the fun I was expecting it to be a lá Hot Pursuit.
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Agreed with this part. The police even have the tendency to pawn/repawn in areas after escaping from them as well.
 
I've noticed this as well. I'm not sure if I have said this here before, but I've been busting simply for going for a cruise in a 918 Spyder. And those police chases seem almost impossible to properly evade. It might seem cheap, but I should hang around a repair shop and just go on a rampage to get my revenge on the RCPD...
 
This is a completely different type of gameplay compared to previous NFS games. Whereas before the game revolved around casually driving around and free-roaming, now it feels like a massive game of bulldog, diving from safehouse to safehouse (at least as a racer) while angering the police and racking up points on the way. Not relaxing at all but very quickfire which is great if you're busy, like me...
 
The movie pack, for sure. Simply because it has the best and most interesting cars. Also, those cars are the stars of the movie, which I loved, so yeah. Definetely this pack.
 
Still trying the urge to complete the game and get plat, but I find it harder and harder to play it.
 
I think the last video is a bit harsh–Im really enjoying Rivals. However with the new media released showing off
The Crew I do wonder how EA will push the IP further. The Crew looks to set the bar higher (in terms of scale and customization) than anything NFS has done lately. Im not expecting a NFS this year. I think EA will show what Criteron has been up to regardless of it being a non-racing game. I would rather wait on NFS give Ghost a proper 2 year development cycle and just give us Rivals DLC for the time being.
 
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I think the last video is a bit harsh–Im really enjoying Rivals. However with the new media released showing off
The Crew I do wonder how EA will push the IP further. The Crew looks to set the bar higher (in terms of scale and customization) than anything NFS has done lately. Im not expecting a NFS this year. I think EA will show what Criteron has been up to regardless of it being a non-racing game. I would rather wait on NFS give Ghost a proper 2 year development cycle and just give us Rivals DLC for the time being.
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The video was merely intended as a comedy video, however at the same time it did tell the honest truth to people who watched it. Prime of those being that the drifting that made Burnout so fun has no place in Need For Speed. The two franchises simply don't mix and when they are mixed the end result is a deformed embodiment of two franchises. It is like mixing Chocolate (Need for Speed) with Jam (Burnout), two very nice foodstuffs but when you mix them together it just wouldn't be any good.

And let us not forget the Roots video Stig posted above. I seriously cannot believe that some people believe that HP3 and Rivals were a return to the "roots", when they weren't at all. Hot Pursuit 2 for example, didn't have Mario Kart style weapons that were utilised in HP3/Rivals. Nor the drifting. Nor the crashing. If those people wanted roots, they would get a game like this:



I hope next year we get the game we have been clamouring for, out-lined rather excellently by Youtuber BlackPanthaa:

 
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I think the last video is a bit harsh–Im really enjoying Rivals. However with the new media released showing off
The Crew I do wonder how EA will push the IP further. The Crew looks to set the bar higher (in terms of scale and customization) than anything NFS has done lately. Im not expecting a NFS this year. I think EA will show what Criteron has been up to regardless of it being a non-racing game. I would rather wait on NFS give Ghost a proper 2 year development cycle and just give us Rivals DLC for the time being.
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I'm 100% with ya although I hated the Hotpursuit 2010 Remake with a passion!, MW2012 was Ok offline maybe a tad less buggy but the online was utterly pointless unless you created your own playlist of tracks to Race! which was literally a pita. NFS Rivals online ****z all over it except, for bugs/lag and the fact if your extremely good as either racer or cop nobody wants to play with ya, they either wanna hide or wreck because they suck! other than that I really like the handling in rivals this time. I've seen alot less of the wreckout cutscenes than I ever did in either previous vers. since crapterian took over, I feel robbed over the exclusion of the La Ferrari, but I love the Carlist so far I just wished they would have added an expansion to the map. + I'm Really lookin forward to the Crew Although the Test Drive Unlimited ppl have there hands all over it and the sequel to TDU was an utter disaster and handling was suspect on both games, any promise in the arcade/sim blend driving model in TDU was totally ruined by TDU2, I'd love to see Handling Model that combined the best driving elements of Driver San Francisco, Midnight Club LA, and Need for Speed Underground 2 would be brilliant! I fear we won't get that...
 
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darren200cook
And let us not forget the Roots video Stig posted above. I seriously cannot believe that some people believe that HP3 and Rivals were a return to the "roots", when they weren't at all.
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I think it was a return to the roots in the sense that it was exotic cars; rural countryside and high speed, open road racing. While the handling became a lot different ("DRIFTING! DRIFTING"), it still brought me back to the races that I played on Hot Pursuit 2, or High Stakes. The Underground Era games (as well as MW2012) were different, having a more Fast and Furious feel to them. Still fun has hell, just a different type of gameplay.
 

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