NFS Rivals - Redview County's Most Wanted

Need For Speed: Rivals has everything a belligerent motorhead wants: a great selection of cars, gadgets, head-to-head races, high-speed chases, a questionable resentment of authority and, of course, free roam. However if you’re a guy like me who has never invested in NFS until this iteration, fans will probably scoff at your enthusiasm for this title and say you’re 4 years late, since Hot Pursuit is essentially the same concept. This being a sequel however, there are a few differences.

For starters, the game is always online. I’m not sure why any dev or publisher thinks this is ever a good idea, because it’s not, and it never will be. As reliant as the world is on the Internet these days, we still need to acknowledge that it is a technology created by humans, meaning that at one point or another it’s going to fuck up. Nothing in this game is worse than being tailed by five cops as you’re flying down the highway dodging every car, tree and blade of grass that’ll cause a serious collision, and your adrenaline-induced trance is abruptly halted by host migration. Majority of the time other players aren’t even necessary; there’s always far more AI opponents than humans. So why is this game always online? I’m not sure, but this is EA we’re dealing with, so not much sense should be expected here.

On the other hand, the new multiplier system is pretty sweet. Typically in a game like this you’d earn cash to buy your way through everything, but instead there’s an extra twist that rewards being the ballsiest bastard of Redview County. The more challenges you complete as a racer, the more points you rack up and increase your multiplier, which will make acquiring more points easier, but it comes at a price; your heat level increases along with it, meaning cops will come down that much harder on you in a chase. The only way to keep these points is to make it to a hideout and bank them for later use. It’s an excellent concept of risk vs. reward that takes an already exuberant premise and pumps two kegs of NOS up your nostrils; extreme, but heartbreaking once you know the feel of losing 200,000 points. Or in the case of the previous analogy, your life.

As a racer you have to be the best of the best to make it in Redview County. So what’s the purpose of playing as a cop, you ask? To completely wreck every racer you see, and that’s pretty much it. While a simple and repetitive objective, it just never gets old; there’s always a great sense of pride in taking out a racer who thinks he/she is the bees knees and you crush their aspirations with your superior driving skills. Cops also don’t have to buy their cars, which is a plus, though renders accumulative points a bit arbitrary since they don't incorporate performance upgrades and gadgets never cost that much.

NFS: Rivals is a few things: cheesy, thrilling, maddening, and somewhat misguided – but if you’re a fan of arcade racers you can’t go wrong with picking up a copy.

No Arrows To The Knee, Please.

Normally I don’t give Bethesda much praise because I find their games icky, particularly in the combat department. It’s incredibly difficult for me to stop playing Dark Souls II and talk about a game from 3 years ago that everyone already likes, especially when the transition of swordplay is like going from a European super car to a shopping cart trolly with a broken front wheel.

But if I could describe Skyrim in one sentence it would be this; it’s an RPG where a bunch of stuff happens.  However if I were to leave it at that I’d be doing it a great disservice, because what it has been able to accomplish is quite a bit, and I don’t think anyone in his or her right mind can deny that it’s an impressive technical feat, at the very least. The sheer volume of the game is staggering, and the fact that I had found myself quite indulged in the cruel landscape and unfolding events can only further prove the game’s merit. You stop seeing things as goals and objectives, and start seeing them as adventures. Capturing the child-like wonder and curiosity that’s dormant within all of us and managing to keep it alive for hundreds of hours on end is a truly amazing quality that it has, and is something that other RPGs probably only dream of having.

To make it simple, you are the Dragonborn, slayer of dragons and the country’s key to peace, since they’re causing a bit of a ruckus. There’s also a civil war going on, buuut that tends to be something that gives way to, say, everything else, which is infinitely more interesting and promises great reward. And guess what? If you see that your objective marker lies halfway across the map, nothing is to stop you from going in the exact opposite direction and explore to your heart’s content. Since the game is so huge, there are so many quests, events, items, and oddities that you’ll acquire and experience no matter where your journey may take you. Whether you’re raiding bandit hideouts, exploring abandoned forts and caves, fighting dragons, trading with a passerby, or hunting wildlife; Skyrim always has something to keep you occupied, and to keep you looking for more.  Everything about the experience is completely organic as well, so a hike from one town to the next can, and usually is, an escapade filled with laughs and surrealism. I remember one time I was walking along a river and found a hut, where a huntress told me about her state of affairs. A few minutes later, I see her upstream, and a bear mauled the poor lady. I didn’t even catch her name, bless her soul.

Of course this being an RPG, there is plenty of variety to suit any kind of play style. You can play as an assassin to a thief, a mage to a warrior, and anything found in between, thanks to many different skill trees that the game provides for you.  However, due to the nature and vastness of Skyrim, you’ll reach a point where you realize that your endeavors to upgrade certain skills were all for naught. I just certainly hope you didn’t put much effort into lock picking, hah.

Despite what Skyrim has created – a beautiful, vast open world for you to explore – the magnitude of it is its ultimate downfall. Not only is a game this big incredibly hard to balance, many aspects of it are horridly broken.

So expect to experience many bugs, glitches and crashes, while also finding plenty of game-breaking exploits. Just through messing around, I had figured out multiple ways to get my sneak skill to level 100 in less than 15 minutes. Enchanting and Smithing are also skills that are ridiculously easy to reach legendary status, and frankly the fault lies within the game’s design; leveling up is not determined by gathering any form of experience points, no sir. You simply level up a skill the more you use it. Want to become a master blacksmith? Iron daggers. A lot of them. Want to get that armor skill to 100? Well, you’re going to have to be patient since it only increases with every hit you withstand.

So yes, the game is far from perfect. Sometimes during a quest, you’ll see that the dragon you slain just disappeared, by clipping right through the ground. Sometimes, you will even clip through the ground, forcing you load your last save. And depending on whether you play in third or first person, these unusual glitches will strike nerves a bit harder. Imagine going through the effort to free a prisoner, only to see him walk through the wall right before your very eyes after you bid farewell. It's the kind of thing that is immersion breaking and positively maddening all at the same time, and I can guarantee that is not the first or last time something of such nature will happen to you. Sometimes, a quest will be impossible to complete altogether because of various bugs that will have you browsing the internet to fix.

In the end however, you forgive Skyrim. For it is greatly ambitious, well varied, good to look at, and has a very, very big heart.

Scores? Ranks? Ratings? They're all bunk. (Very Scientific)

Ever been watching TV and suddenly a suspenseful, action-packed/emotionally driven cinematic trailer unfolds before you, accompanied by miscellaneous words, phrases and numbers like:

“AMAZING. 5/5” – GamerPoop

“ABSOLUTELY MIND-BLOWING. 9.5/10” – PPGames

“A MUST-BUY. 98/100” – DrippyButtNetwork

Your heart starts to race. Your palms are sweaty. Your pupils dilate to the size of golf balls – and at this point you think to yourself;

“Goddamn, I NEED DIS!”

It’s your embedded desire to consume a product that, well, consumes you. You rush over to your local games store and snag the first copy you see, wide-eyed and eager to play. On the way home you can’t stop thinking about how awesome the experience is going to be.

…Then, you finally open your front door, run to your beloved gaming system, pop the disc in, and lo-and-behold…turns out YOU CAN’T STAND THE FUCKING THING!

“What is this!? I don’t like this at all! NINE-POINT-FIVE out of TEN!? This has to be a joke! How dare these gaming media outlets lie to me! ” – Your Brain

Though fear not, it isn’t your fault; you simply fell for a tactic that gets so many of us to buy things we don’t want, need, or even particularly like - and I’d be lying to you if I said I haven’t been suckered by advertising either. So if you’re like me and have experienced this situation multiple times, let me explain to you why scores don’t mean a goddamn thing when it comes to the most significant factor contributing to fanboy wars; opinions.

I have to be honest here, scores aren’t completely bunk, they’re just terribly misleading and cause people to believe in certain principles that just aren’t true. Due to the various types of rating systems out there, there’s a widely perceived and upheld notion that is represented by the following scientific graph:

As you can probably tell, this graph makes no sense and rightfully so; this depicts the type of thinking that you’ll find everywhere on the internet – YouTube, game forums, critic sites with user communities – you name it. I’m sure if you’re an avid gamer you own/have played games you’ve genuinely enjoyed with a rating of a 7 or an 8, but according to the graph above, 8 and below is a turd that isn’t worth your time (and you’re also dumb for playing it). I’m sure you’d disagree, not only with the sentiment attached to the rating but as well as the blatant insulting of your intelligence.

If anything, scores are an indicator of which games are much more likely to appeal to you as opposed to being an objective, universal judgment of a title’s quality (hence why they always vary between outlets). Though it’s also important to know that a score is also affected by the context of the genre. This is why there’s almost always a review attached to any score published by an outlet; they’re essentially glorified disclaimers.

Here’s another scientific graph, this time showing what a score system really implies:

Amazing difference, right? Though just like in real science, fake science also has its anomalies; there are popular games out there that many think are lackluster or flat-out bad (Dynasty Warriors), good games that never reach commercial success (indie titles that neither you or I have ever heard of, or ever will), cult classics (Lost Planet), and titles that drove sales purely off of hype (E.T.). There’s an entire spectrum of variables that renders that number out of ten completely void, so critical (though subjective) reviews really are the only things that can give you some sort of idea as to whether or not you’ll enjoy a certain game.

Though at the heart of it, the real issue is this; opinions are complex constructions of the human psyche and differ greatly between each person. An opinion on a game (or anything) can present conflicting ideas, a slew of mechanics mixed with an interpretation of a story, and other factors like fandom, preferences of button layouts, music, character qualities and many others also become attributes in forming said opinion. Hoping to fully represent that with a number is completely foolish in it’s own right and should never be a concept to exist in the first place – but we do need it to get things to sell, that’s for certain.