By Jeremy Hannaford (Contributor) – Email
Print Edition: November 27, 2013
The Need for Speed series has always been present in gaming even if EA doesn’t see that the world doesn’t really care for it anymore. While the previous two installments have really brought the series back from obscurity, they don’t shake the feeling of dull familiarity.
My first experience with series was back in 1998 with Need for Speed 3: Hot Pursuit. While I liked the driving mechanics and the cars, nothing was as interesting to me as being the cop. Whether it was a young child’s ambition to be a police officer or the idea of being the hunter I’ll never truly know, but I played as the police officer for hours on end.
After Hot Pursuit 2, the role of the police officer faded away as Black Box Games turned to street racing. The Need for Speed: Underground (one and two) paved the way for one of the best games in the series, Most Wanted. Ironically, I enjoyed being chased by the cops most of all in this game as I would try to set records with friends for longest chase and most destroyed cop vehicles.
But then the series took a fall it almost did not recover from.
Black Box was making a new Need for Speed game each year for five years straight. EA’s CEO at the time John Riccitiello even stated that “we literally had them on a death march.” After Carbon (a tuner-biased version of Most Wanted), Pro Street (a commercial failure), and Undercover (just a poorly made game), the series was almost canned.
Then Slightly Mad Studios came and saved the series with Shift. An intense simulator comparable to Gran Turismo but with a dash of arcade speed to make it fun and challenging, the game was successful and hailed as one of the best in the series. The series, recovered, was about to almost top itself.
Criterion Games (makers of the Burnout series) was tasked with bringing back the cop vs. racer aspect with a reboot of Hot Pursuit. After almost eight years, I was finally able to chase street racers down once again. With high-octane chases, amazing crash effects, and track designs that, while simple, let the cars bring everything they had to it, Hot Pursuit was highly acclaimed and received several awards. But with success, soon came failure.
Shift 2 was released with good reviews but lacking sales, resulting in the sub-series’ cancellation. Then Black Box threw itself into its own grave with the abysmal Need for Speed: The Run. The studio that had produced some of the best racing titles of the early 2000s was shut down and the series was handed over to Criterion. They continued with a Most Wanted reboot, but it lacked the long tracks and arcade-like speed of Hot Pursuit.
Now comes Rivals developed by Ghost Games (a large percentage of whose staff consists of past Criterion employees) which is a general mix of the last two games. It retains the open-world aspect of Most Wanted while staying to the long straightaways and intense speeds of Hot Pursuit. It feels like a half effort. It doesn’t push the speed limit or offer as much change as one would want. But it does offer something else.
When you enter a game, you ‘re placed with five other players who are carrying out careers as cops or racers. The constant connectivity of free-roam events keeps the action always flowing. You can play with them or, as I did often, play against them. I played in five separate rooms and almost no one was ever the cop. I enjoyed the free reign to hunt these players down while they were in the middle of their races to foil their plans of victory.
While this experience felt similar to Hot Pursuit, it felt slightly darker. In Hot Pursuit, it was a match. The point was to run from the hunted. But in Rivals, the risk is always present even if they are just driving around. And this made me like it even more.
While I found my time hunting racers enjoyable, it became mundane very quickly. I switched to racer and found it even more so, and only had a thrill when another player was hunting me and not the CPUs. After a few hours, I popped Criterion’s Hot Pursuit back in and instantly remembered everything I loved about it.
The Need for Speed series is the racing equivalent of Call of Duty. Need for Speed is one of the oldest racing titles in gaming and is recognized for lasting so long. But someone at EA should see that a new title every year is only chipping away at the title’s good name. If a team were to work on a new game for more than three years, I know it could be extraordinary. But that will probably never happen.
