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Out there somewhere is a warehouse home to all the forgotten follies that once followed in the wake of unloved hardware, where EyeToy: Groove shares shelf space with Kinect Adventures (its name, most likely, is CEX.) It's where you'd find Hardware: Online Arena, an early companion for the PlayStation 2's network adaptor and, when it launched in 2002, one of the console's very first online games. For some reason that's hard to parse, it's now the subject of a reboot in the shape of PlayStation 4 exclusive Hardware: Rivals. Maybe it's something to do with the recent vogue for knockabout multiplayers, and the runaway success of Psyonix' Rocket League last year. Hardware: Rivals, developed by a new internal team within Sony Computer Entertainment on Unreal Engine 4, certainly looks towards Rocket League's lurid energy, even if it struggles to match that game's anarchy and inventiveness. Perhaps it's more to do with a certain strand of nostalgia: it's highly unlikely you'll remember Hardware: Online Arena, but Hardware: Rivals isn't fussy about the specifics. Instead this is a modest return to a brand of multiplayer that you're unlikely to have seen since last checking your Hotmail account.
Hardware: Rivals puts forward a particularly soft form of vehicular combat: think Twisted Metal swapping its spiky-shouldered leather jacket for a purple fleece, or the original PlayStation's Rogue Trip taking its vacation in a low rent design agency rather than Middle America. It's approachable even if it is slightly anonymous, its flat colours and cartoon cars washing over you without every establishing much of an identity for themselves.
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