When last I wrote about the new Need for Speed it was a bit messy—rubberband AI and stuttering made racing frustrating and the in-game cell phone was annoying as hell. With today’s “Legends” game update, all of my major gripes have been addressed.
This is why we can’t have nice things.
There are several aspects of EA and Ghost Games’ dark and rainy Need for Speed reboot that I enjoy immensely. Due to regular gameplay hiccups, racing just doesn’t happen to be one of them.
Think back. Can you remember a year when there wasn't a Need for Speed game? The long-running racing series has punched in at least once every twelve months. It's a bit of a surprise, then, that calendar year 2014 will come and go without a Need for Speed entry.
Y'know, the collective chatter amongst Kotaku writers has unofficially dubbed Need for Speed Rivals as the best next-gen game so far. Several among us have raved about the way it draws you in and entices you to keep playing. But, man, the lines coming out of the characters' mouths in this racing game are terrible.
Look, it's pretty clear that the Need for Speed movie is trying to draft off the success of the Fast & Furious films. But the upcoming Dreamworks feature needs, like, 1000% more crazy.
Everyone in this year's Need For Speed—racers and cops both—is an asshole. Neither side is likable. Thank God. It's incredibly freeing to be a total, speed-obsessed jerk, especially when it's accompanied by amazing visuals and intense velocity. Way to welcome us to next-gen, Need For Speed Rivals.
For one moment, the gap between playing a game on PC and on console seemed razor-thin. I played Need for Speed Rivals on both PC and PS4 and the two versions of EA’s upcoming racing game were virtually indistinguishable. What I saw was impressive no matter what machine it was running on.
New video game hardware is coming down the pike and those machines are going to need showpieces, games that show off why the PS4 and Xbox One are a significant step ahead of their predecessors. The guys making Need For Speed Rivals—the next installment of the long-running racing series–believe that they’re making one…
