Need for Speed: Rivals

At $60, it might not be worth buying right away for those who didn’t enjoy either Hot Pursuit or Most Wanted, but if you liked it, you’ll definitely get your money’s worth out of it.

The bottom line on Need for Speed Rivals for the Xbox One is that it's a gorgeous world that is pushing the hardware to its limit. Gameplay, however, is as close to the same as its Xbox 360 predecessor. For those who have the Xbox 360 version, it isn't a must buy.

A competent arcade racer that is sure to get the heart rate up with some real ‘edge of your seat’ cops vs racers action.

Rivals has managed to slip neatly into the middle ground between hardcore and arcade, offering brilliant gameplay mechanics and shameless thrills.

There’s plenty to do, but be prepared for some mild annoyance.

Still, as an alternative to the likes of Forza Motorsport 5, Need for Speed Rivals offers a deep, extensive and enjoyable racing experience that seamlessly flits between single and multiplayer.

Few will be utterly blown away by it, given the abiding similarities to Need for Speed: Hot Pursuit and Most Wanted, but anybody who can't get through the day without buckling a few fenders should consider this an essential purchase.

Low on innovation but high on spectacle, as the cumulation of the last several years of Need For Speed games the first entry on the next gen is already one of the best.

It has some of the best car chases around, and they’ve never looked so chaotically beautiful as they do on PlayStation 4 and Xbox One.

Obviously the best-looking the series has been, thanks to the advent of new console hardware, but it's not definitively the best-feeling game in the series. It'll be tough to weather another pre-race lobby in other driving games after experiencing Rivals' seamless single-player/multiplayer mix, but it comes at the expense of a cohesive career mode, which might be slightly too chaotic for some.

Rivals is a solid racing game. It doesn't matter if you just want to finish the campaign, level up or compete with your friends, you won't be able to drop the controller. On the other hand, AllDrive is a great feature that takes the whole experience to a complete new level.

A fun, engaging arcade racer with thrills, spills, explosions and crashes aplenty, Need for Speed: Rivals is let down by the largely pointless AllDrive and a lack of race types. A mixed bag.

NFS Rivals presents some good ideas, with a good enemy AI and bright visuals, but it gets partially ruined by an unstable frame rate and a general sense of repetitiveness in the game structure.

I advise anybody picking the game up on Xbox One to turn Kinect off in settings before playing it. You can’t switch off Kinect commands in-game, and if you like to chat with friends while playing, you’re in trouble. Many times Rivals mistook my conversation for commands to change view, look behind and look around, leading me to scream obscenities and lose thousands of SP.

I don’t know if this is the road that EA should follow when it comes to Need for Speed. An interesting concept suffers from technical faults like bad AI or abysmal online features. And of course the fact that other games like Forza Horizon or NfS Most Wanted are plain and simple more fun to play.

Unfortunately, the game doesn't do enough to bring players together, resulting in an online game that feels empty, cold, and lifeless.