Need for Speed Rivals' AllDrive — a feature that seamlessly turns the game's single-player campaign into a multiplayer mode — will allow players to get creative with how they race, according to a demo of the game Polygon recently played.
When players enter AllDrive with their friends, they will drive in the same world and share the same roads as each other. Events, which serve as missions and challenges, are scattered across the game map, and players can take part in them by driving to an event location. When the event begins, players can unleash their creativity.
In the demo we played, we were able to approach each event with a different style of play. In one race, we chose to be aggressive, which led to us equipping our cars with weapons and using them against each other in a time trial event. The weapons ranged from the Turbo, which gives your car a boost but also makes it difficult to control; a stunning ability, which has an airburst effect so that anything around you — whether it be rivals or cops — will be pushed away; and stun mines, which can be dropped onto the road to stun any vehicles that drive over them.
Alternatively, racers can team up and use the weapons against cops, or devise their own strategies for how they want to complete events. In another event we played, we decided to approach it co-operatively. Our racer took on the role of a "blocker," which meant we cleared the path for the person we were AllDriving with. Our primary task was to keep the cops at bay — dropping stun mines and letting them tail us before activating the stunning shockwave ability — so that our fellow driver could focus on completing the event in the shortest amount of time possible.
Then there's the option of one player taking on the role of a racer while the other plays as a cop, which led to a frantic cat and mouse chase across the city.
In an interview with Polygon in October, Need for Speed Rivals' executive producer Marcus Nilsson describe AllDrive as offering "controlled chaos" that led to unexpected gameplay.
"When you mix people together ... you can take educated choices that make my game experience more interesting," he said. "So I think the human element is really giving you a lot more flavor in the experience."
Polygon's full interview with Nilsson and preview of the game can be read here.