Hardware: Rivals
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Critics Recommend
Critic Reviews for Hardware: Rivals
The novelty of driving around in this tiny selection of tanks and buggies while shooting at other players wears thin pretty quickly. The lack of any original modes or meaningful progression prevents Hardware: Rivals from having any chance at longevity. Aside from the awkward controls, everything works well enough, but nothing is memorable or satisfying.
Hardware: Rivals is a throwback to a different era of multiplayer, though it's a little too modest to properly pull it off.
Hardware Rivals is poor fun: few cars and a weak variety of matches are thrown in the mix of a game that doesn't excite and that makes even driving and shooting something really not that amazing.
Review in Italian | Read full review
Bringing back such an obsucre franchise is one thing but stranger still is that so little passion has been expended in reinventing this listless vehicular combat game.
Hardware: Rivals has a good core concept and engine, but it needs some work around the edges. A lot of little things added up for me the more I played it in an increasingly annoying fashion, most of which can be fixed with proper updates.
The development team has a lot of work to do before Hardware: Rivals could be considered a great game that has any longevity. There are more maps and vehicles on the way, but what is really needed are more modes, a better party system, useful hit feedback, and the scrapping of the daily salvage limit. While Hardware Rivals is fun to play in chunks it gets repetitive quickly, and its great visual design isn't enough to cover the cracks.
It's colorful and quite ridiculous; it's simple, accessible and well populated. Hardware: Rivals has most of the ingredients present to cook up a fantastic arcade experience, but it's missing a vital ingredient: fun. The sluggish pace that permeates everything from movement and destruction to respawning and leveling up constantly holds it back. Even unlocks are few in number and, being mostly cosmetic, carry little to no incentive in the first place. If someone hooked Hardware: Rivals up to an espresso drip, then we'd certainly have an entirely different game. Alas, there's a solid mound of squandered potential here, below a deceptively enticing facade.
You can see what SCE Connected Content Group was aiming for with Hardware: Rivals, as the car combat genre has long needed a decent revival from somewhere. Unfortunately, far too many of Hardware's ideas are poorly executed for it to be the saviour it might have been. It doesn't do it any favours to see it presented in such a generally unenthusiastic, haphazard fashion. With variety sorely lacking and balancing currently an issue, there's little to suggest a long-term future for Hardware: Rivals in the heaving ball pit that is online-only gaming.
