Need for Speed: The Run [Review]

FULL REVIEW

It’s hard to start talking about Need for Speed without sounding like a cackling old man, reminiscing about the past when the word “gay” actually meant happy. Remember those good old days when it used to leave jaws dropped permanently, floors wet with the ensuing drool? With the exception of last year’s Hot Pursuit, the NFS brand is on shaky ground. An acronym that is synonymous with balls to the wall exotic racing. Does Need for Speed: The Run take the baton from Hot Pursuit and push the series further, or does it just get the runs?

NFSTR opens with a bang as your main character Jack Rourke is in hot water with the mob. So he has to run away from them, very fast, and make a tonne of money on the way. So he’s convinced by a friend Sam Harper to join in on a illegal high stakes race starting at San Fransisco and ending at New York. Over 3000 kilometers to cover coast to coast, this race is known as “The Run”.

The entire Cannonball Run premise of the game is a complete rush, as these series of events propel you behind the wheel of a car. Which is quite refreshing from the done to death Fast and the Furious racing concepts, with garages and endless options for customisation. This is simple, race, and race along linear paths.



Thrown into the mix are Quick Time Events. Just like in God of War, where you have to frantically jab various buttions to get out of tight spots on the various on food areas, or you have to make it to a certain checkpoint at a certain time, before a speeding train smashes you into smitheereens. These events make break the racing monotony a lot. There are pure race portions where you have to pass a certain number of opponents to finish at a certain level. There’s drift sections, as well as sections where you have to race against the clock to reach a checkpoint. There’s boss battles in the form of one on one races against rivals to the finish.

It would not be an NFS without lots of exotic cars to drive. The car models look extremely good and handle well across the varied tracks across the American landscape. Beautiful vistas flow by as you wrestle you car to pole position hurtling through checkpoints. The Frostbite 2 engine does a fantastic job here.

All of this to some extent on paper makes a fantastic combination for a great game. Yet, somehow, with such excellent robust game concepts in hand, The Run runs out of Viagra quickly in terms of story and content, and just decides to go the easy route and dump in as many of the same race types as before. Chalk this one up again to EA’s insane development times, which sadly is now even more focussing on quantity rather than quality.



The track races are repeated and the story elements just dwindle away. They are still there, but it could have been much stronger. Not only that you can only change up cars at designated areas, so there’s no way of knowing the terrarin in front of you so more often than not, you're stuck with a heavy fast car on drift sections, and light drifty cars on straights where bone-crunching speed is needed.

Fortunately, the excellent sound, graphics make up for the experience and keep you glued to the screen. The tracks especially are varied and modelled around real world locations of various cities, countryside of the US along with it’s natural anomalies. So you’ll be facing dust storms, heavy rain and to top that off the car AI. The voice acting is quite good, as EA has employed quite a bit of Hollywood talent, most notably the voice of Christina Hendricks, from Mad Men.

One notable feature worth mentioning is the enemy car AI. Which is quite challenging, as they weave and prevent you from overtaking. You sometimes have to employ some pretty devious tactics to get you out of tight spots. However, at times the AI is a bit of a cheat, especially in the drifting sections where they seem to just float on through the turns on paths.

Multiplayer is native to the Frostbite 2 engine, looking at what Battlefield 3 is capable of. The Run is not one to be left behind featuring some intense 16 player multiplayer races. All your stats are collated through the Autolog which is your multiplayer hub.



NFS: The Run is like a blockbuster, where after the establishment of an interesting premise, everything is thrown out so that the explosions can take up prime space. The Run is not a bad game, its a very good racing game at heart that’s tried to do something different. A superb concept and a blast of a start that's just squandered off in later levels. A great ride nonetheless.