EA is constantly trying to find a reason to lift $60 from your wallet year in and year out with their annual release of a Need for Speed game, heck they've even infected Hollywood with their sense of greed and we're now getting a Need For Speed movie. But more to the point, EA's new reason to get you excited to drop $60 on Rivals comes in the form of the AllDrive.
Sounding like something out of a Transformers film, the AllDrive, a multiplayer-based matchmaking system that keys players into the experience as they race, drive and get their car's tires to make love to the road at nearly 200 miles per hour.
The video is a slick collage of moments formed from the forge of intensity and hewn into a string of unmistakably sexy close-calls of road-filled destruction and highway hijinks that would make George Miller take a tinkle in his trousers.
Thankfully, someone at EA realized that ridiculous, over-the-top trailers are out and in-game, actual footage of play sessions is what's in. Marketing a game to an audience that lives and breathes for every inch of excitement from their interactive entertainment experiences is a no brainer: make sure they know that all the cool stuff in the trailer is stuff they can actually do in the game. Better yet, it just makes sense to let be known that everything in the trailer is the game.
With the advent of emergent titles taking over the marketplace (and with the exceptions of your Call of Duties and Grand Theft Autos, they really have taken over) it's smart of EA to start bridging the experiences of their AAA titles closer to that emergent factor. In other words: promoting games as intense moments that you encounter with friends and rivals alike with stories you mold and shape through your gameplay experiences.
I have no idea if Need for Speed Rivals will be the NFS that lands on the market and doesn't suck, doesn't blow, doesn't spit or swallow, but it does at least seem to be going for something bigger and more ambitious than previous titles... sort of.
I still kind of wish EA would just kind of get a basic principle foundation and just build and grow the experience the way Bohemia does it with Arma or the way Nintendo does it with Mario Kart, where old fan-favorite features like body-mods and customization are still available as well as things like previous tracks from the older games.
Nevertheless, if Need for Speed Rivals seems like the multiplayer experience to tickle your console-gaming fancy, you can feel free to grab the game when it launches as a cross-generation title this November for the geriatric beasts of the seventh generation and the new apex predators of the eighth generation. The game is skipping a release on the Wii U because EA is still butthurt Nintendo didn't want to use Origin to power the Nintendo Network.
For more information feel free to pay a visit to the game's official website.
