Não sou um grande fã de jogos de corrida, mas este prendera minha atenção por um tempo. É um ótimo jogo daqueles para não se fazer nada, apenas ficar dirigindo pelo mapa, mas as
variadas missões também são boas e a rivalidade entre os dois lados (corredores e policiais) é bem interessante, lhe dando a liberdade de escolher um destes.

Apesar de ter poucos modelos de carros, todos são bem bonitos, e a quantidade é o suficiente para suprir a necessidade dos jogadores, que podem instalar complementos que o ajudarão em corridas e até em perseguições.

Os gráficos são bem bonitos até hoje, e o mapa com áreas variadas impede a jogatina de ficar monótona, pois você dirige por estradas entre florestas, pelo deserto e até próximo de montanhas congeladas, podendo correr sob um belíssimo nascer do sol digno de print ou enfrentar uma chuva pesada enquanto a polícia fica no seu encalço.

(Dica para joguinhos de corrida: um jeito de deixar sua jogatina ainda mais divertida é desabilitando a música do jogo e colocando uma playlist de sua escolha enquanto joga. Fica muito melhor com as músicas que você quer ouvir enquanto pisa fundo no acelerador. Admito que essa ideia foi o que me fez jogar esse NfS kkkk, mas o jogo é bem bom independente disso).

i dont even know how i would write a review of this game tbh. i thought the gameplay was somewhat fun but i couldnt really enjoy it cus of the amount of bugs i encountered so instead of writing an actual review ill just list all the issues i encountered during my playthrough:

-its locked to 30 fps for seemingly no reason
-i encountered a bug where i couldnt earn any speedpoints until i restarted the game
-it crashed on me about 10 times, give or take
-sometimes parts of the map would just disappear
-i got softlocked about 30 times. i would just be driving and then my car and all the other drivers would freeze. couldnt even open the menu to escape it
-starting an event would sometimes spawn less drivers than it should, making it impossible to get gold on police hot pursuit events
-the ai collectively share 2 braincells
-sometimes the respawn system will set you in front of a jump without the speed you need to clear it so you'll be stuck in a loop
-weapons are unbalanced as hell, its a death sentence even getting near a racer because they will most likely have the shockwave equipped, an instant fuck you button that damages and knocks back everyone in a 2 mile radius. the cops have something similar called the shock ram, which only hits in front of them but has more range than the shockwave does in the front and also deals more damage. kinda bullshit considering the cops already deal more damage by default. the stun mines are simply a better spike strip, being instantly armed as soon as you drop them. they dont pop tires but they slow you down a bit and they deal damage. then theres the electrostatic field. both sides have it and its complete bullshit. it doesnt shield you from hits but if some poor bastard barely even grazes you for even a second you'll lose half your health and get sent into the nearest wall at the speed of sound. the rest of them are absolute shit so the cops will typically run shock ram and esf while racers will run shockwave and esf.

I completed ‘Need For Speed: Rivals’ about 3-4 days ago and already the space it occupied in my head has been replaced with the next game in the series ‘Need For Speed (2015)’ but I will try my best to remember my experience along with the notes I took at the time.

If ‘Need for Speed: Most Wanted (2012)’ was a reboot of ‘Most Wanted (2005)’ then Rivals is a reboot of ‘Hot Pursuit’. EA took what they established in the Most Wanted reboot and improved on many aspects of the game, unfortunately not all of them though. The game starts immediately like previous games but there are so many dialogue boxes and tutorials for everything it stunts the pace a little bit. I do appreciate the tutorials though. As the previous games were online centric, this game is even more so. By default you’re connected to an online game with other people around the world. The first thing I did was set it to single player because I hate other people interfering with my game. The bigger downside of this is the fact you cannot pause the game at all, so if you start a race you’re committing yourself. Something which can be hard if you have other human commitments in your household. Once I stepped away from the game as my car was parked up and I came back after being arrested by the police.

Like ‘Hot Pursuit’, ‘Rivals’ allows you to pick either between being a Cop or a racer. I started off as a racer because to me that’s what I wanted out of the NFS games. As a racer though the cops are RELENTLESS. You’re constantly being chased by them and even if you hide down a side road for a bit of a breather or even to step away from the game for a bit they will start a pursuit out of nowhere and arrest you. One of my biggest moans about the NFS games is the prolonged “Crashed” cutscenes in this game. The cops are so aggressive you’ll be seeing this cutscene a lot. This mode was far too frustrating for me so I moved over to the Cop career.

The cop career is quite open for different playstyles, you don’t need to complete every race, just meet certain requirements such as complete X amount of different types of races or score a certain amount of points per session. I really liked this way of playing as it was more accessible, well, apart from having to complete hard races that was a bit of a pain at times.

This was the first of the Need For Speed games I played on PC due to a Steam sale and controller support. One thing that was very EA about this though was me being notified of a DLC pack (not on the sale) for £8 which allowed you to unlock all modifications straight away. Typical. Compared to the other PS3 and Xbox 360 NFS games I had played previously ‘Rivals’ looked incredible on PC.

The cars in ‘Rivals’ are solid, responsive and great fun to drive. I didn’t like the car selection screens though. There are so many cars that are similar and they are in no particular order so it is hard to compare different cars to pick the best one.

I did enjoy ‘Rivals’ more than the rest of the rebooted NFS games as it tried something new while still remaining fun and having remnants of the previous entries in the series. I do get the online features as I bet it could be so much fun to team up with friends and chase each other as racers and cops but baking it into the single player game is frustrating. Do you know what else is frustrating? They still have the flashing screen when going through speed cameras. It isn’t as bad as ‘Most Wanted (2012)’ but still a sensory overload.

No wonder this game was labeld as a greatest hit, now this was peak car game. The damage mechanics were as pristine as ever, the upgrading system was peak and the graphics still hold up well today. Kingfishers road was MY jam btw. I had a decked out Mustang GT with mad upgrades I used to jump distances, I even have some sorta rare achivement for getting wild air time with the Mustang. I also love the in-game house remixed tracks and revisit them sometimes because of how nostalgic they are. Other great songs I wouldn't have discoverd like Brick + Mortar or Lootin in London were also dug up through the OST.

Need for Speed Rivals makes a terrible first impression, with some of the worst dialogue ever put into a game right from the starting cutscene, always online DRM that makes you unable to even PAUSE THE FUCKING GAME, a useless navigation system that will have you looking at your minimap at all times, horrible visual clarity in shortcuts, instantly recovering all health and used items on gas stations eliminating any resource management or risk of dying, a good risk-reward currency system wasted on a store so bare bones that it might as well not even be there, spawning facing the wrong way after crashes in races, having to lose the cops if you ever want to restart an event they showed up in (something Most Wanted had the foresight of avoiding EIGHT years before) and the perfectly functional balance of Hot Pursuit's combat being tipped in favor of the police for reasons I can't comprehend.
This is enough to understand why this game is so divisive, but "Hot Pursuit but open world" and a diverse selection of challenges are enough to make this game fun. Even if the map is pretty tiny. And if most of the roads are claustrophobically thin. And even if having to lose the cops every five minumtes as a racer is the most annoying shit ever.
Okay yes this game has way too many problems but it also manages to not make me want to gouge my eyes out like the previous game so it's worth a play if you've already played every other good need for speed.

Need for Speed Retrospective #20

Booting up a new Need for Speed game really is like a box of chocolates. With its always-online mentality, glossy wet look and esoteric storytelling, Ghost's first outing is once again something completely different.

As for the MMO-like qualities, the game Rivals most reminded me of was Ubisoft's The Crew, which came out only one year later and is now sadly defunct. The cool thing about The Crew, though, was its vast, exciting and explorable world. Here, we get little more than a series of tunnels in which we sporadically meet other players minding their business. Even the series' own Need for Speed: World handled the open-world aspects much better.

To my great dislike, the racer/cop split from the Hot Pursuit subseries is back and once again amounts to little more than the necessity to do the same content twice, as perfectly exemplified by the two identical unskippable tutorials the game starts with.

Despite my personal hatred for authorities and the complete lack of visual customizability, the gameplay on the cops' side might actually be superior. On the racer side, the fact that I couldn't even pause the game combined with the cops on constant lookout for me made the game unnecessarily stressful. At each safehouse I took a deep breath of relief, evaluating if going back out there was even worth it at all. After a couple of hours I naturally decided it wasn't and never bothered with the game again.