For one moment, the gap between playing a game on PC and on console seemed razor-thin. I played Need for Speed Rivals on both PC and PS4 and the two versions of EA’s upcoming racing game were virtually indistinguishable. What I saw was impressive no matter what machine it was running on.
There are caveats, of course. The footage above was captured from a hands-on demo I played when EA brought Rivals to town last week. It’s from a PC build of the game that was running side-by-side with PS4 builds. (Note that I’m not the one behind the wheel there. The driving in the clip is being done by EA’s Marcus Nilsson. I am in the session, though, playing on PC with a PS4 controller under the Rivals_Whisky username.) There was no Xbox One version on hand at the demo session. And you should keep in mind that specs for the PC version weren't available and I have no way of knowing if Rivals was running on Ultra settings.
For the most part, though, the two looked essentially the same. Take in the videos in this post and you’ll see the kinds of reflective surfaces, chaotic particle effects and dynamic lighting that serve as hallmarks of cutting-edge game-making. The team making the game is made up of creators from the DICE and Criterion shops, meaning that they’ve worked on Battlefield and Burnout games in the past.
