Last night I got advance screening tickets for the new Need for Speed movie.  At the same time, I ‘m currently playing the Need for Speed Rivals game for PS4, so I saw this as a great chance to review both platforms. I must start this off with I’m not a big car guy at all, in fact, I am defiantly not that friend you call for car advice.  Luckily in my family, my wife is the mechanic.  So, going into the movie, having never seen really any of the Fast and Furious movies or even knowing what over half the cars was, I was prepared fully to try to make it out of the movie without falling asleep.   Not only that, but I’m not a fan of Breaking Bad, so I didn’t know much of the lead actor who also played Jessie on the show.

That was my first mistake.  This movie is going to be a blockbuster.  I was simply amazed as I found out before the movie started that no CGI was being used in the movie, and then I found out that all the actors participated in their own stunts.  Aaron Paul sold me that he was Tobey Marshall, a mechanic/racer who is talented behind the wheel and also is his own man that does things his own way.   Kid Cudi who plays a support role of a helicopter Pilot is hilarious throughout the movie.  I was amazed how much I enjoyed his character. Even the villain played by Dominic Cooper made me believe that he really was a horrible person.  Also, we got to see Batman (Michael Keaton) playing an interesting support role in this movie.

If you are a fan of Fords, this is the movie for you, it displayed an amazing Ford Mustang Shelby GT5000.  This car is a dream.  Silver with Blue strips going right down the middle.  Without providing any kind of spoilers about the movie, the car in itself is also a star in this movie. Overall, on a 1-10 scale, I would rate this movie at a 9.  I enjoyed this movie more than I did the Hobbit and other movies that are normally up my ally.  It’s a great movie that I actually plan on going out and seeing again when it comes out. I honestly think this could become a big series like the Fast and Furious.

Lots of other cars were on display as well in this movie. From Lamborghini to McLaren, if you are into cars, this is the movie for you. I was quite impress with the display of the different cars and how awesome it was to watch them all street race while being chased by the cops.  My inner child remembered watching “Smokey And the Bandit” and this movie put me back in the entertainment of a Cannonball movie.

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Now, we are to the video game review, I started playing the game, Need for Speed Rivals about a month ago.  When you start the game, you get tutorials on how to play the game, not only as a street racer but also as a police officer. On the Street Racer side, you have 3 different objectives and the same on the police side.  These objectives depend on if you are a into Racing, doing Hot Pursuits, or if you want to attack the police as a renegade, purposely attacking the police.  I chose the Renegade option on the Racer and played through the game for this option but you do have the ability at any time to switch between these options and also cars that you have unlocked. Some cars you have suited up are better for assault type missions while others suited up with nitrous are better for breaking speed barriers and racing.

Like in GTA, you are in a huge open world trying to complete objectives, at the same time, other online races are trying to complete theirs as well and at at times, you could be on opposite sides of the law.  The concept is once you have completed an objective, as a Racer, you must make it back to your garage to bank your Speed Points.  Speed Points are how you are able to upgrade your car or also how you are able to armor your car with assault weapons to take on your Rivals. If you don’t make it back to your hideout after completing the objective, you lose those points, which makes it important that you don’t just smash up your car and crash/get busted. I can not tell you how many times I had accumulated a lot of speed points then lost them because I could not get back to the garage before I was busted.

The game is real big on drifting so it’s not going to be a smash the gas button the whole time, it does require you knowing when to use your brake compared to your emergency brake and power sliding.  This is used throughout the game as in some turns in the game, you can only make them by power sliding completely or doing a turn and making a 180 slide.

Based again on my ranking scale, I would give the game an 8 out of 10, although probably so far one best graphic game I have played on New Gen, it loses some points because some of the missions are repetitive and I notice that within the missions, it doesn’t force you to do the harder difficulty so if you know how to trick the system, you could just keep doing easy missions on the harder levels, less Speed Points, but you beat the missions faster and could potentially beat the game without ever taking on the harder races.