As a long-time fan of the Need For Speed series, I was excited to see a return to a story-driven game with Need for Speed: The Run. I have no love for the Shift games and as good as Hot Pursuit was last year Need For Speed to me is all about combining arcade racing with an interesting story. We saw this with the excellent NFS Most Wanted and was a glimpse of goodness in NFS Undercover, which was another great idea, but the gameplay wasn’t up to par. As I played The Run something became prevalent for me, I wanted desperately to love this game as it has all the potential in the world, but the more I played it the more I realized that it falls short of my expectations.
The premise of The Run is centred around a high stakes, high speed car race across the USA. Starting in San Francisco, players race East across the country to New York. This sets the table for a wide array of environments and situations to race through. It’s a lot like The Cannonball Run, but with a lot less Burt Reynolds. The story picks up with your character having run afoul of some mob-type players and in order to clear your name you must win The Run.
Before I get into the gameplay I have to make one point about the story. It has so much potential; maybe the most potential of any of the NFS games going back to Most Wanted, yet it misses the mark for a couple key reasons. The introductory cut scene sets things up for what could be a really great narrative and then the rest of the game does absolutely nothing with it! Apart from that introduction, there rarely is any storytelling at all. You are literally introduced to rival characters in a loading screen before racing against them with zero context! There’s obviously a back-story here, but why in the hell EA doesn’t share it with the player is beyond me. Take Most Wanted for example, by the time you near the end of that game you truly knew how much of a douchebag Razor was. I realize the gameplay counts but The Run could have been a truly amazing experience had the story been fleshed out more. The more I think about this the more I get frustrated by this. This is the game’s biggest flaw.
The Run plays more like a traditional NFS game than it does last year’s Hot Pursuit. I found Hot Pursuit to be a brilliant combination of Burnout and NFS, but this one plays more like Most Wanted, which is not a bad thing at all. While definitely arcade feeling, The Run has tighter handling than Hot Pursuit. As you progress through the typical NFS driver levels, new abilities such as drafting, more boost, and getting bonuses for things like driving in oncoming traffic are unlocked. This is a bit of a departure from past games that unlocked new cars and upgrades instead. In The Run you have a stable of cars that you buy and upgrade and there are gas stations along the race route that allow you to change your vehicle. There’s no cash system in play, just a choice of cars. Gas stations are typically located at the beginning and end of each race. For those that just want to play this is a good thing, but it might turn off those that enjoyed the tuner aspect of previous games. If you want to unlock new cars, you have to play through the Challenge series.
Separate from the main The Run mode, Challenges are series of events that are unlocked as you progress through the main story. Each Challenge is based on sections from the main campaign mode in the game. There is not a ton of reason to go back and play through the main story mode once complete so this is where you will find the bulk of the replayability in this game. Each event has different time goals that, when beat, earn you medals. This in turn unlocks new cars that you can drive. The Challenge series is good a way to showcase EA’s Autolog feature, but it also appears to me as a way of EA making you play the full stable of cars they have to offer. I’m not a big fan of American muscle cars and the first few events that you unlock are focused solely on these high powered, tail happy vehicles that don’t do well in the corners. It’s a personal preference and I’ll admit that it turned me off a little bit. If you’re a completionist you are not going to be able to best the times to earn the top medals for sometime as you will need to play this mode for a while to unlock some of the more powerful cars.
When it comes to the AI in The Run there is a noticeable amount of rubber banding. If this were a sim-oriented game I’d be concerned, even critical, but in a game like The Run it almost fits. As our PC review pointed out, it is completely unrealistic to see an opponent wipe out to a standstill and then catch right back up to you while you’re still doing 170+ MPH. What the rubber banding does do though is keep the gameplay tense. There was the odd time that I would get a 5-10 second lead, but for the most part your opponents are always a threat. I kind of liken it to Mario Kart. It appears that the rubber banding works both ways. If you start out slow the AI does appear to give you a chance to get back into the race before the end.
Second to my frustration with the lack of storytelling is my frustration with some insanely hard races that seem to come out of nowhere. No matter at what point of the game you are at, you might be cruising along and finishing races with maybe a restart or two, or have used a few rewinds, when suddenly you will be hit with a race that you have to repeat over and over and over again to get through. I consider myself as more than a competent enough racer and this just feels cheap. Part of this has to do with a inconsistency of when you can go off the track and when you cannot. Sometimes you can only go off the track a few feet before being reset while other times you can go clear through a corn field. It just doesn’t make any sense. When you do crash, the reset can often put you back in a situation where you are just going to crash again. Far too often for my liking I was reset beside an opponent who was bent on getting to a shortcut route and they would immediately crash me out not just once, but several times. I just had to restart the race all over again. I play games to be entertained, not to be frustrated by stuff like this.
When it was first introduced to the public, much of the buzz around The Run was the introduction of Quick Time Events, which are button pressing mini games that take the player out of the car and onto the feet of the main character. A big deal made about this addition to the NFS gameplay but surprisingly there is very little of it in the game. These mini-games added little value to the game for me. I’d just as well enjoy watching a cut scene for what it is and not having to focus on what button to press next.
The Limited Edition of The Run gets you a number of exclusive cars and its own set of Challenge events. I’m not sure how limited this Limited Edition is because it appears to be the only version of the game for Xbox 360 you can buy in the stores that I’ve seen to date.
For a NFS game, The Run looks really good. It isn’t going to compete with Forza 4 or Dirt 3, but it is a different game and I don’t really feel that comparison is all that relevant. The Run moves at a steady 30fps which is more than adequate for the arcade style racing you’re doing here. The cars are well detailed and the damage modelling is pretty decent.
In regards to the tracks, whether it is long desert stretches of road, rainy forests, or windy snowy routes, the environments that you race through are fantastic. The environments don’t just look pretty either as they actually play into some levels and looks great doing so. Racing a rival down an icy mountain road while avalanche control is being conducted is amazing to see. Overall The Run is a very nice looking game.
As good as The Run looks I think it sounds even better. If this were a sim game I would be concerned about accuracy of engine notes and things like that. Although this still matters, and they do sound fine and tires squeal with a wicked sound effect that I haven’t heard since The Road Warrior, the auditory experience in The Run can best be described as cinematic. I’m not normally a guy that likes music playing while I race but here the musical soundtrack perfectly complements the action on screen. Certain music and sounds are isolated and enhanced at key points of races to add to the drama. It’s all really, really well done and you’d be missing out if you turn the music off.
I realize this review might come across as overly critical, but that’s because I am a fan of the series, and as I stated up front, I really wanted to love this game. While it is the standard NFS formula, the bulk of the gameplay is strong and the story has all the potential in the world to make this a truly great experience. For some crazy reason, the promise of the story is never realized though and you are left with a point-to-point racing game that becomes tedious and frustrating in the last half of the game. Sure, The Run looks and sounds great but great presentation value isn’t enough. Beyond the main campaign there are some mild thrills in a set of challenges and decent set of online options that help to add some replayability to the game but the frustration of some cheap gameplay elements and poor design outweighs any entertainment value.. It is all a real shame because this one could have been so amazing.
