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After watching the first trailer of Need for Speed Rivals my first thought was I was seeing Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2010 with Ferraris. It was surprising to see how much the two games look alike: the environments, cops, weapons, game modes... At Gamescom I got to play the game and that's when things got interesting.

It's understandable why the games look so much alike, the developer behind it is Ghost Games, a brand new studio based in Sweden that got quite a few of the veterans that worked on the previous titles in the series including creative director Craig Sullivan, who worked on Hot Pursuit 2010. But the technology underneath is brand new as the game is powered by Frostbite 3.0 engine. And here comes the biggest difference, Rivals' handling feels much more like 2011's The Run than Hot Pursuit. The handling of cars is still arcade like, but the drifting physics are completely gone. Sure, you can still easily initiate drifts, but it's not something that will take you through the corner the fastest. Another big change brought by the new engine are the visuals, which are really stunning in this game. I played it on a PC with full HD resolution and I have to say I was impressed: it ran smoothly, cars are incredibly good looking, environments just as well and the weather effects are the cherry on the top.

The environment itself is again like in Hot Pursuit 2010 one large area with 4 distinct regions: coastal, city, desert and mountains. All seamlessly connected together with over 100 miles of roads. There are straights, hairpin turns, everything you'd expect from an NFS game. The main difference is that you're constantly free-roaming and you can start races simply by stopping and hitting a button, or picking them from the map. In the demo we actually played online free roam, but since the world is pretty big, live opponents were replaced by AI cars when nobody was around. That meant that you constantly had action, regardless of where other players were racing. Scoring in the demo was based on completing various tasks like drifting, winning a race, using EMP on a racer and similar activities which all added up to your speed points. After a certain time the race ended and the winner was the person with the most speed points.

Career itself will be divided into two separate parts, the racer and the cop side, each lasting about 6 hours. There should be be a story to guide you through the races with several cut scenes. Throughout the gameplay you'll also be able to customize your car, although that part is really limited as you can only apply paint to body and rims and one type of vinyl which ranges from decals to full body. In both cases, the position and size are preset and cannot be changed. Car selection should be really large with dozens of cars (didn't get a specific number) and all of them should be upgradable. But performance upgrades are basically just a selection between 5 different types of upgrades - speed, acceleration, handling and armor. Additionally you can also buy different types of weapons to help you escape cop chases (for racers) or help you bust racers (for cops). Turbos and EMPs for racers and spike strips and the like for cops, adding a strategic element to the gameplay. Unlike in Most Wanted, the police chases were actually fun again.

In the end I have to say that the game has potential to be a very decent racer as it uses the same core concepts that made Hot Pursuit fun like stunning environments, cop battles, sense of speed, great cars. And the big change on how the cars handle will appeal to everyone who didn't like the extremely arcade approach of Hot Pursuit. This year's entry to the series is not revolution but more of a collection of best things from the past games. And it has Ferraris!

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