Need for Speed - SuperCheats Top Five of the Game Series
Two: Need for Speed: Rivals (2013)
Considering the often meandering course that the series has taken, from simulation to arcade to a fusion of both, and the way that its focus seemed to constantly change from the police-chase focused rip-roaring street-racing outlaw adventure that the fans clearly loved to include the lawbreaker-punishing play-as-a-cop law-and-order approach, and then with the next title suddenly changed atmosphere again, well...
It is fair to say that over the course of the past ten years the world of Need for Speed got to a point where the faithful fans started to worry that the developers at EA were smoking whatever substance that it was that had infiltrated the development floors over at Square Enix, that was responsible for made the creative swings on the Final Fantasy series team -- a substance that is largely believed to be responsible for the stumble through its lengthy identity crisis!
Seriously - we are not saying that seeking the creative muse that whatever the substance was offered to the coders of Final Fantasy (hey those were some of the best games to emerge from SE at the time) -- we just hoped that whatever it was was not contagious!
When Rivals was first announced there was a genuine worry among NFS fans that it would end up being the series' introduction title for the Next Gen consoles, leaving the traditional platforms wanting. Happily that was not to be the case, as the game not only released on Xbox One and PS4, but it also launched on Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and that was not all.
Far from being the next experiment in Need for Speed, Rivals turned out to be something of a reboot!
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The well-loved even trade-off system of racers and cops that was first introduced in Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit is the foundation for the game, as is the light story structure that players can either fully embrace, or simply ignore!
When we say that Rivals is more like a reboot than a sequel we mean just that. For the past few games both the fans and the critics have criticized NFS for failing to retain elements that the players grew to like and respect in the games. They had a point after all -- considering that the fan base was very vocal about what it liked and what it disliked, the decisions to deviate from that proven strategy were just that: decisions.
The highly desired features included the focus upon street racing, the amazingly rendered world with its scenic drives, exotic cars, and car customization, and the ability to very quickly get right into the racing action without first being forced to play through a lengthy cinematic introduction just to cover a few points, though we have to admit that we sort of miss the movie-voice and its commentary about the course or region -- or the challenges -- we are about to face. Yeah, that could return...
It seems that the dev's were pretty much paying attention anyway -- because the heart of the series has returned, along with what was very clearly a cherry-picking tour of the best features of the past half-dozen games, with a few bits taken here and there from earlier titles.
There are a few flies in the ointment -- the player's career in the game has elements of persistent reality at least on the Xbox One in that, once a career is started there is no do-over and no way to start over. That small inconvenience aside, there is also the matter of the game requiring online connectivity as it placed the player inside a multi-player game automatically unless the player specifically configures it not to.
That can be a bit frustrating should you find yourself thrust into a game in which the teenage players that seem to dominate the game are present in numbers. Players who seem to think this is really a game that is all about wrecking the other players more so than racing them.
When things go right on the other hand -- specifically when you end up in a game with other like-minded and serious racers, or even better yet, you end up in a game that is packed with your mates and players you have played with in the past, well the that is when the new matching system truly shines.
Need for Speed: Rivals offers a mixture of the old and some new, and a partial reboot that may be just enough, and at the right time, in place of the average experience of too little, too late.
Only time will tell, but the difficulty we have experienced in trying to stop playing is a good sign -- and part of the reason why Rivals secured the Number Two spot!
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