Easy Drive is still here and you go through a full campaign as either a racer or a cop – similar to Hot Pursuit. It’s called the AllDrive system, but what it really amounts to is just always being online without needing to press right on the d-pad to access the Easy Drive option for it. The big hook of the game is being able to race online with others at anytime.

Normally, there would be some kind of big catch, but there isn’t much of one here. In theory, this results in one of the best racing experiences you can have, and in execution, it surprisingly winds up that way. Rivals can best be described as something that brings together the open world of Most Wanted’s reboot with the Hot Pursuit reboot’s racing polish and greater sense of focus. Fortunately, it also comes from Criterion and Ghost, who have an outstanding pedigree for crafting high-quaity racing games. Need For Speed Rivals finds itself in the unenviable position of being a between-generation game that needs to be good enough to look next gen, but also not be so advanced that a version of it can’t be released for the 360 and PS3.

Game need for speed rivals