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As Ghost Games' debut racer, Need for Speed: Rivals is a curious beast - a game of highway tag that replicates the handling of Criterion's efforts to an uncanny degree, despite the move to the Frostbite 3 engine. This isn't our first look at the game of course - we were lucky enough to gain extended access to Rivals during EA's recent multiplayer press event, but the PC version was nowhere to be seen. Regardless, during our testing, we were surprised to see the PS4 and Xbox One versions of the game delivering near like-for-like visuals too, albeit with more refined effects-work appearing on Sony's side. However, frame-pacing issues affected performance on both, and with promises of an imminent fix, a question mark lingers over the state of the final release - and how the end result stands up to PC.For a quick recap, both next-gen versions produce stunning 1920x1080 native images with perceptibly identical lighting, textures and geometry across the board. This remains the case for the final release here too, though the PS4 retains its stronghold in the effects category. While shadows aren't filtered to the same quality as the PC version on ultra settings, Sony's platform matches it with a refined bokeh depth-of-field effect that goes entirely missing on Xbox One - where it appears as a more simple blur filter instead.
Based on direct confirmation from Ghost Studios' rendering engineer, Andreas Brinck, the PS4 also gives us the more accurate horizon-based ambient occlusion (HBAO), as seen on the PC's maximum settings. By comparison, the Xbox One relies on an approximate measure with its screen-space approach to shading (SSAO), producing a prominent silhouette around each car's exterior, plus a persistent shade under spoilers during a race. For the final build, all of this does indeed remain the same - leaving the PS4 with a respectable, if not spectacular, advantage in the visual stakes.
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