Back to the Tool Shed | Hardware: Rivals Review

Vehicular combat is a genre that just isn’t what it used to be, and the makers of Hardware Rivals want to change that. Hardware: Rivals looks to take the vehicular combat to the next generation. Using a brighter color palate over a dark and gritty or more realistic one, Hardware: Rivals sets itself apart from a lot of other games, but is that enough? Is Hardware: Rivals the next successor in the vehicular combat genre, or should this be sent to the scrapyard? Hold your fire, it’s time for the review.

Tanks for the memories

The formula of Hardware: Rivals is quite simple. You as the player go through a the standard variety of multiplayer modes, such as deathmatch, team deathmatch, team domination, and team elimination. Special timed events also add to gameplay but nothing that really stood out. Though limited in the amount of actual modes in the game, some challenges are thrown in as an attempt to add to gameplay. The lack of overall features make it simple to get into a game. Most modes can hold up to 10 people for each mode. Those looking to play any type of single-player campaign will be disappointed, as the only sign of one is in the tutorial.

Hardware: Rivals plays as the traditional third person, vehicular combat game with some slight differences. Most notably, the game has only four vehicles to choose from. Two tanks and two Jeep-type buggies play differently, but they are balanced as success can be had with either vehicle. The buggies are a bit faster in terms of movement and rate of fire with their main guns but they take less damage. Tanks, while more durable, handle like barges and offer a slower but more powerful rate of fire with their main guns.

Secondary weapons are the weapons picked up around the map in the game. While effective at doing more damage, the major drawback is that the player can only pick up one kind of weapon at a time. This means the player can’t hoard up a stock of different weapons should they get into a firefight with an opposing player. This kind of goes against a lot of other games where you can hoard weapons to get into and out of sticky situations. Also, the lack of a turbo or speed boost to catch up to or run away from an enemy is greatly needed.

Lock, load, and fire at will.

There’s also a third super weapon that triggers a cutscene eliminating everyone in the danger zone. Each super weapon is unique to each map. Players can avoid the super weapons by hiding underground, finding higher ground, or going airborne at the right time. The latter is extremely difficult, which makes things feel a bit unfair, where the other ones make it more of a scramble to get to certain areas of the map.

All this makes gameplay fairly simple to pick up and play. However, the lack of overall features and the lack of making every mode or game feel different doesn’t keep the player engaged for extended periods of time. Upgrades to each vehicle are only cosmetic, which is nice for beginners, but as stated said before, there’s nothing that keeps the player around. The same can be said for the variety of skins available for each of the characters and vehicles. Though, initially starting out with four skins per vehicle and character, players can eventually unlock them by leveling up. Vehicle decorations can be bought with the in-game currency system set up when players take part in gameplay, but those don’t add anything to the firepower in the game.

Although the game lacks overall depth, the style of the game does make it stand out. The maps are brightly colored and vibrant. Each map is very different from the other; however, as with the theme of the game, there are only a handful of maps available. Often times, it’s a random drawing on which map you’ll see while playing. Adding that with the fact there are only a handful of maps anyway, things get repetitive quickly.

Shoot to Fill Time

For better or worse, Hardware: Rivals seems like it was given the formula of a free-to-play game with the limited number of items in the game, without relying on microtransactions to unlock other items. Personally, paying for the entire game at once is the better approach, but without much to unlock there isn’t much keeping me around for the long haul. The vibrant colors of maps and vehicles are a welcome change from the dark and gritty games grounded in more realism, as are the handful of secondary weapons that make things interesting at times. The best way to put it is that Hardware: Rivals is a safe game that just doesn’t stand out amongst its competitors or predecessors.

A lot of comparisons will be drawn to Twisted Metal, but the lack of a single player campaign and the overall lack of personality is what’s missing from Hardware: Rivals…Among other things. Though Hardware: Rivals executed well on a technical level, what’s left for the player lacks anything to keep them engaged for the long haul. Even in short gaming sessions, there isn’t much to offer. Where some games can succeed with a minimal approach, Hardware: Rivals needs more to work done to make every game feel different to break up the monotony.

Final Verdict: Hardware Rivals gets 5 exploding tanks out of 10.

This review was based on a retail copy of Hardware: Rivals for the PlayStation 4 developed by Sony Computer Entertainment Connected Content Group and published by Sony Computer Entertainment.