unr3al

You're welcome, I hope you continue to enjoy it.

You can all probably look forward to more updates in the future (unless GTA V gets in the way), but a version update and public release needed to be done. It has been a long wait but I think it's well worth it, and it should now be easier to convert over to GTA V if there is indeed a PC release some day.

You can play it entirely in single player with AI only, if you want. That's what I did for the racer campaign so I could get my feet wet and have a fully upgraded car before I go out and try to compete.

Depends on if you like shooting or racing more. I chose Battlefield 4 for a reason when I was only able to pick up one game at full price, and it was because the multiplayer for Battlefield 4 is going to hold my interest for much longer and there will be constant expansion pack releases for it. NFS Rivals might get a few more car updates and that's about it. I love both games, and I'm completely satisfied with my purchase of Rivals, but in another month, I'll likely have my focus on other games and maybe boot up Rivals if I want to do a quick car race.

With the STEAM and Origin Holiday Sales comes a tide of high profile games at budget title prices. This allows for us folks with day jobs to get their hands on some games they had to pass up due to our month to month expenses, and I'm no exception. I bought a few titles, some of which I may be writing reviews for later, but that's another story. This story is about a game called Need For Speed Rivals. Believe it or not, this is the 23rd Need For Speed game. You heard right. This is undoubtedly one of the longest video game franchises ever, and much of it has been based around street racing with exotic cars against cops with similar muscle. No matter how unrealistic that scenario may seem to you, there's no denying that is has a huge audience, and anybody who enjoys racing or disobeying the law in video games won't get tired of games like this. You can't wait to climb inside. But there is a flip side to the cops & robbers coin. In addition to being a law breaking racer, this game (among a few others in the series) also allows you to be a cop yourself, working with equally powerful cars attempting to stop your rival racers by any means necessary. You could argue, logically, that the police in this sort of scenario might be just as bad, if not worse than the racers, and that is a brief, but valid point that you'll even find in the game's story line. But enough of the descriptions, let's get down to the game. Story: Unfortunately there isn't much of one. You are not given any information as to who your character actually is, other than his pseudonym 'Zephyr'. You don't learn how he got into racing, why he started disobeying the law, and if/when he actually steals cars himself. There is brief mention that the racers don't pay for their cars, but there is no info as to whether they steal them on their own, or have someone else do it for them, or how they conceal the source of their cars, or how after banging up a 1.3 million dollar super car they can get it fixed without anybody noticing. Anyway, moving on... Zephyr describes his being at odds with the cops a rivalry, hence the game's title. Which at the end of the day, is true. He races, they race against him in retaliation, he smashes up other cars, the cops smash up his car in retaliation, etc. The game has cut scenes with generic stock CGI of some in-game cars racing with a dull narrative voice-over that describes the "plot". At the end of the day, the story he tells doesn't really matter, since the objective is always the same: Win races, piss off the cops, don't get caught. Nothing to see here folks, just another useless cut scene wasting 2 minutes of your life. The cop story line is equally dull, if not worse, since a police officer doesn't really need a background story as to why he chases cars down. It's his job. So you're not even really curious about his origins in the first place. All told, I think I can honestly say that the developers (Ghost Games) probably made a good move by not bothering to put emphasis on a story, because every Need For Speed story line has been awfully executed. You don't get attached to any characters, you want the cut scenes to be over with, you just want to get back on the road. NFS Rivals is no different. I think if they hired a writer with some talent and took an extra 6 months to a year to develop the game, you could indeed make a good story out of the subject matter. Hell, there will have been over a half dozen Fast & The Furious movies by the time the newest one drops in 2014. Score: 4/10 Graphics: Absolutely stunning. I've found every Need For Speed game I've ever played to be a technical marvel when it comes to car detail. The sun gives the cars paint jobs a wonderful glow, rain beads off of them, they get caked with layers of dust or dirt if you drive off road, and even when clean, the cars seem to be dripping with "sweat", as IGN.com so eloquently put it. An Ferrari so exotically hot that it produces sweat. This is the Ferrari 458, an automotive masterpiece Ambient effects are very good, but some are hard to notice because some of the cars can travel upwards of 200mph, making the scenery a blur. Trees and grasses could be better if you look at them while not moving, but any extra detail they could put in would likely slow the frame rate to a crawl, making the game unplayable. On the subject of frame rate, I do want to point out that this game is capped at 30fps. I haven't found out a specific reason as to why that is, but many players are outraged. I in particular, don't care, because the gameplay is consistently smooth at max details. The last Need For Speed game I played, Most Wanted (the reboot by Criterion) wasn't playable with all details maxed out. I had to reduce draw distance, some car detail and FSAA/FSAF to make everything smooth. It didn't make a huge impact on visual impressiveness, but I was let down. NFS Rivals can deliver great details at steady frame rates. There is a work around for the FPS cap, if you absolutely must have more than 30fps. In the NFS directory, there is supposedly some kind of an editable .ini file where you can modify a value that changes the FPS cap from 30 to 60. However, there is a major glitch with this. If your PC cannot constantly produce 60fps or more, and the 60fps value is set, the game speed itself will actually double. This side effect will only fail to show up if you can constantly keep that frame rate matching or better. I don't have enough faith in my computer, or any, really, that I'll always have 60fps in this or any game. There are scenarios where a video card can bog down, like with high intensity lighting or smoke effects for only a few seconds, but if your car doubles its speed from 200mph to 400mph and you ram into a guard rail, your racing is over and you lose all of your points, which I will talk about shortly. Score 9/10 Sound: The music is a hefty dose of modern electronic music that compliments fast action. I don't dislike it, but it's not my preferred genre. More importantly, I want to be able to hear the important things in the game. Things like the police scanner, if a pursuit gadget has been activated, and your engine revs. These are all audio cues that can help you win a race, so my music is completely disabled. As for sound effects, engine noises are spot on, but lack the theatrical punch you'd find in a movie or if you put the microphone right next to the transmission. They're good and more authentic than other games with casual driving like Grand Theft Auto, APB or Saints Row. I don't think they're on par with Forza Motorsport or Grand Turismo, but they're good enough for me. That engine roar is the only soundtrack I need. Police radio chatter you hear on both sides of the law gets repetitive pretty quickly, and I can only remember hearing 'One Lincoln Six' as a unit name. I thought I'd hear a half dozen or so. Nope; only one that I can recall. Again though, with the high speeds you'll be traveling at, you won't really have time to concentrate on that because you'll need to constantly tend to your car, the other racers, and what traps lie ahead that have been set up by your rivals. Score: 7/10 Gameplay & Lasting Appeal As I said earlier in the review, the Need For Speed series has had a very simple, and very consistent formula through its lifespan. But it works, and like the Call of Duty, Counter Strike or Battlefield games of today, they are following the method of 'Keep doing it until it stops working'. They're going to keep up this game play style until people stop buying their games. And for me, that's not a bad thing. Running from the police at higher "heat" levels is genuinely adrenaline pumping because you'll constantly have near misses with oncoming traffic, come inches away from hitting spike strips or road blocks, or desperately attempt to get yourself to a repair shop before your car can't continue being beaten up anymore. The racers themselves eventually start getting violent with you and losing by a matter of feet or inches can get you genuinely frustrated. A game that invokes emotion through playing it is a success in my book and Need For Speed Rivals delivers that in spades. Beyond the generic single player story line and AI racers, Rivals offers an immersive online method of playing, where you can join in 1 on 1 or group races at the drop of a hat with real players if you're an outlaw, or give you an opportunity to cruise the streets or lie in wait for a speeder as a cop. And because there will be several members of each faction, this gives players the opportunity to help or hurt each other during the games events which is something unique to this racing series. This helps lasting appeal quite a bit, but it of course will taper off after a while, especially when the next game in the series comes out. Lag is present here and there which is noticeable compared to single player, and a tad more annoying than lag you'd find in shooters (since inaccuracy at high speeds will spell disaster), but is much more manageable than it was years ago in previous NFS games. The game has a certain level of customization to satisfy people who like to mod their cars, but even so, the cars remain pretty true to the way they're sold. No giant body kids, or ridiculous rims with bling all over them, no custom exhausts or massive tires. I for one like this. Games like Need for Speed Underground had their appeal, but Need For Speed Rivals gets back to the roots of NFS by giving you the keys to European exotics and home grown American sports cars. And I like that. Cars are fairly easy to earn, all you need to do is complete a list of challenges and you unlock the next one. Cops get them for free, racers need to spend "speed points" on the cars and upgrades which are earned by driving recklessly, pissing off the police and winning races. The cars go up in performance and rarity as your levels fly by. You start off with easy to get domestic muscle or "drivers" cars, such as the Mustang GT which is unrealistically easy to drive and move up to genuine sports cars such as BMW's and Mercedes coupes, after which you advance to genuine super cars such as the Ferrari F12, the Mercedes SLS, the Koenigsegg Agera and the Bugatti Veyron. "Pursuit tech" are little gadgets used to help you and/or hurt the cops and racers alike so you can win your races under difficult circumstances. Nearly all of it is unrealistic but there are a couple of things that do/will exist in real life pursuit scenarios such as automatically deploying spike strips and EMP area bursts to disrupt a cars electronics. You again use your points to purchase these. Higher levels of this "pursuit tech" can make them more potent and faster to recharge. Performance upgrades can be an alternative to buying new cars. I tried to buy up as many cars as I could, but as a repercussion, if I wanted to blow through my levels and get to the end of the game fast, I had to choose only a couple to upgrade to the point where I can comfortably take on a swarm of cops or a bunch of racers in my way to the finish line. I can't remember all the cars I bought as a racer, but I started with the Mustang GT, moved up to an Aston Martin, then to a Corvette Stingray, then to a Ferrari 458, and eventually I ended up playing most of the rest of the game with a Ferrari 599 GTO that I upgraded as much as possible. But I ended the game with the coveted Pagani Huayra. The last assignment you get is extremely challenging, forcing you to put all your cat like reflexes to work and constantly deploy your pursuit tech to keep the cops off of your back while you race at over 200mph on a consistent basis. The coveted Pagani Huayra Bottom line, while it won't last forever, I'm addicted. Score: 9/10 Overall: 7.25 In my heart I feel this game deserves more than a 7.25, but to be fair to other games I review, I need to give the story portion of the game a low rating. Just because I feel it's not important doesn't mean that other people think so too, but I'm convinced that the way this game is designed, story takes a back seat to everything else so you can get back to the action faster. I'm a big NFS fan, and this is one of the best games in the entire series. The Good: -Great graphics with smooth frame rate. -Exciting racing action and thrilling police escapes. -Funny and/or entertaining crashes. -Great car selection. -Inspired online element. The Bad: -Story is awful/non-existent. -Much lower selection of cars on the 'Racer' faction. -The game is short, even if you do all the races available. -AI can be downright unfair during pursuits. -The large map feels small due to the constant 200+mph driving. **All screenshots shown were taken by myself.**

Rumbler sirens might help, since it gently shakes your car to get your attention. Some departments are trying them out.

Ask an actual military sniper about bullet properties some day if you ever meet one. They'll confirm that once a bullet hits glass, it's trajectory is no longer straight, and it is in fact randomized as to where it goes (left, right, up, down, etc). This is especially true of a moving target such as a helicopter or a vehicle. That being said, I've been lucky and I've been able to bolt action snipe helicopter pilots through their windows in game before. Depends on the thickness of the wall and/or what it's made of. You'll generally kill people in houses made of wood or sheet metal, but not concrete. I never said anything about ping. If you go re-read my section, I explain packet loss and network smoothing which is a setting you should try to fiddle with to improve your hit boxes and latency. Weapons in this game are not faction dependent. In BF4, you can use any gun in any army, so long as you're the same class. It's the same way in Call of Duty. The AK12 is a starter gun, it's not going to be the strongest. You have to earn the better ones. The AK-12 isn't all that bad though, I earned weapons after the AK-12 that I liked less. I prefer either the AEK-971 the new IMI Galil (the last weapon you earn, it's called something else, I forget what) and the M416. The AK-12 behaves in this game pretty similarly to what it would act like in real life. AK's aren't for ham-fisted players who hold down the left mouse button and figure it will kill someone if they hold it down long enough. They have larger rounds that produce a lot of recoil, so they need to be fired in short bursts, and are better at close range. The M416 or the IMI Galil sequel would probably be better for you if you need to hold down the trigger. Or better yet, play support instead and use the M249 SAW, which is a gun you get for free after finishing single player. That works fine without bursting. Regarding the AK-12, the Chinese very well could use it. Russia is a former communist country, and is still a large producer of arms for 2nd and 3rd world countries all over the globe. China is still under communist rule, and is actually better "friends" with them than they are with us. So beyond producing their own weapons, it is conceivable they could order AK-12's for their military if they're good enough. You won't see the U.S. using them, though. No problem, I'm glad you gave it some more time. Assessments nay-sayers are giving on here are somewhat fair. But websites like IGN or Gamespot put a decent chunk of time into a game before putting our a review so they can get a genuine feel for the game and be fair in judging its content. BF4 has frustrated me before too, almost to the point of me saying I'd never play shooters again. Other times it's a blast. And it was those good times that have made me purchase Premium for it. I like the formula they have going, no way around it.

You'd be a terrible video game reviewer, I'm glad you're not in that line of work. Put some actual time into the game. You can easily get your ass kicked in a public server 3 times, so it would be easy to blame the weapons or mechanics or whatever other excuse you want to come up with. You're not qualified to judge anything based on three multiplayer matches and without even finishing the simple 6 hours single player. The single player is short, but it's like that with all big name shooters now. And BF3 was a good formula so they simply followed it and improved it slightly. Call of Duty does the same thing every year, and they break sales records each time. EA's doing what comes natural to game publishers. Following up on their hits.

Co-op, easily. MP is unbalanced since both sides don't have the same "classes", so you'll probably never catch me playing that.

You might want to level up a bit before writing something like this. Modern military shooters (both Battlefield and Call of Duty) require you to start off with a few base weapons all factions can use, then as you level up the class you play, you unlock new ones. I unlocked every assault rifle very swiftly by leveling up my Medic class. I'm using the AEK-971 for most games, no matter my faction which is a Russian prototype weapon. The AK-12 is just what you start with, so it sounds like you have some leveling to do. You're probably experiencing issues with 'Network Smoothing' which is designed to smooth otherwise laggy game play by having your computer add in its own calculations for where your character is and what he's supposed to be doing on the map whenever packets drop. As such, you might be able to escape from someone shooting you by going around a corner on your screen, but you end up dying as if you weren't behind any cover. Turn down network smoothing. I'd say 30% is about right. Some people shut it off entirely. Toy with it and see what setting you like. And FYI you can indeed shoot through walls, it just depends on what they are made of. That has nothing to do with the netcode. You're playing on softcore mode where only headshots are one shot kills with sniper rifles. It does 85 damage max if you hit someone in the chest. If you wan't to kill people with one shot in the chest using a bolt action rifle, switch to hardcore mode and you'll get the results you want. That was a glitch that they had at the beginning of the game that they've supposedly since patched out. It's a game, bro. Call of Duty, Team Fortress 2, Counter Strike, take your pick. They all have their realism issues, and its for the sake of balancing. There are no .50 cal snipers in the game because DICE would have no choice but to make them one shot kills even in softcore mode. So they are excluded for balancing reasons. The M16A3 from Battlefield 3 was changed to the M16A4 in Battlefield 4 because the M16A3 was a nearly perfect gun. Very low recoil, high fire rate, tight bullet spread. The M16A4 is a burst fire which reduces suppression and makes the rate of fire lower, making it harder to kill people with. Guns will even have their own properties changed over the course of the next couple of years. The AEK 971 was a perfect gun before the M16A3 was in Battlefield 3 because it had all the same properties, but almost no recoil and an even faster fire rate, so they had to nerf it to balance things out. Now it kicks like a mule. It's not realistic compared to its real life counterpart, but it needs to be done to be fair to people. If you want realism, buy a simulator like ARMA. Switching to Call of Duty wont help you either. It's like going to Burger King instead of McDonalds. Battlefield 4 is far from perfect, but it's a great game when you get the hang of it. I'd be willing to bet you haven't even put in 50 hours yet. I've only been able to put in 34 hours due to my work load with my real job and beta testing LCPDFR, but I know the mechanics very well since I spent over 456 hours in Battlefield 3 (rank 71 Col.), and I have the feeling you haven't spent enough time with it. If I'm wrong, that's fine. This franchise just isn't for you, then. I'd suggest you spend some more time with it and try some of the suggestions I made above.

Yes you do, unless the game is old or can run on very low spec hardware. Depends on your definition of "grand". Probably. My hardware was purchased in April and better parts have come out since, which have made mine, and ones like it cheaper. So yes, you can get a similar or the same computer for less money than what I paid. It's called depreciation. It happens over time. Around $950 or so. Hope that helps.

Just modify a current font. Use something close, type out 'Boston Police', italicize it, convert it to a layer, and then you can make the cut outs using the eraser tool or the selection tool or whatever.

It's irritating, but it's usually only an hour wait before I can start playing, which isn't so bad if you think about it. It'd take me about an hour or more to drive to the mall, pick up a game, drive back and install it anyway. And while I download it here I can do whatever I want and not have to worry about spending gas money or keeping my eyes on the road while I jam out to some speed metal.

That doesn't effect STEAM's download speed much. It's capped on their end to be fair to everyone else. I have a 50mbps connection and I usually hit a ceiling of around 2mbps.

Any graphical mods. ELS, high polygon count cars, ENB or ICEnhancer mods, etc.

You nailed it. Far Cry 3 finally finished. Gonna download Max Payne 3 while I sleep.

That's amazing.

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I used to think like that, then I discovered that STEAM sells games that cost $40 at a local GameStop for $7. I hate to bring that old meme back, but: "I used to be a physical box gamer like you, then I took a STEAM sale in the knee."

Right now my gifts are making me sad because I can't even download them. The STEAM servers are so overcrowded, my average download speed of my Far Cry 3 install is 94kb/s, and it sometimes stops dead and I have to pause and resume it. Talk about your holiday shopping woes.

Way too much... Battlefield 4 Premium Upgrade (Origin) Need For Speed Rivals Digital Deluxe (Origin) Far Cry 3 w/ all base DLC (STEAM) Max Payne 3 w/ all DLC (STEAM) Dead Island 1 & 2 w/ all DLC (STEAM) As stated in another thread, I wanted Metro Last Light, but I'm buying way too much stuff as it is.

I already bought the game years ago. lol I guess it must be a way to promote themselves, like they did with the free Portal download.

I broke down and bought more stuff: I was gonna get Metro Last Light too but I've already bought a lot of stuff. STEAM sales are addicting. lol

Yes. You'll probably have lag at medium settings if you install any visual mods.

I don't play MP.