Games, Reviews 

Need for Speed: The Run Review

November 28, 2011

Its Novem­ber again, and we all know what that means for rac­ing fans; another Need for Speed. This year we got some­thing just a bit dif­fer­ent. Last year, Cri­te­rion gave us a superb game in Need for Speed: Hot Pur­suit. A sim­ple racer full of speed and cop chases that hit you pri­mal rac­ing instincts while mak­ing you smile every time you hit the turbo but­ton. EA Black Box finally gets to take the NFS reins again after the hor­rid NFS Under­cover. Could EA Black Box redeem itself with The Run or will we get some­thing more mis­er­able and bro­ken than Under­cover? The answer is yes, but not an enthu­si­as­tic yes.

Need for Speed: The Run is an unusual exper­i­ment. Mix one third action movie, one third racer, and one third action game, bake, and what you have is some­thing that is fun but feels awk­ward. When was the last time you had quick time events in a rac­ing game? I can’t think of one. What EA Black Box has done is taken the cop chases and rac­ing from Hot Pur­suit added a paper thin story, and then laid a few Bat­tle­field 3 quick time events for good mea­sure and you have a game that suf­fers from an iden­tity cri­sis. But let’s talk about what it gets right.

The Run’s rac­ing is great. The cars han­dle like they should, the mus­cle cars back ends swing out, the AWD super­cars han­dle like but­ter. The sense of speed is there, but could be bet­ter. The cop chases are fun with wild crashes involved. The visu­als are bril­liant. The game runs on Frost­bite 2, which makes the vista and canons of the good old US of A absolutely beau­ti­ful. The only com­plaint I have with the visu­als is the same that I have had with the Frost­bite engine since its incep­tion; the washed out col­ors. The orches­trated score gets the heart pound­ing and keeps the ten­sion up despite the razor thin story ele­ments. Despite the story there are some really out­stand­ing set pieces espe­cially the last leg of the race in New York. As much as it frus­trated me I must com­mend Black Box for the over­all designed. The career mode is designed like an action game. You have resets that act as lives, the police road blocks are scripted, you will deal with tad bit of QTE’s and you can only change cars at gas sta­tions spread out over the race, but still at heart it’s a rac­ing game just like any other game in the genre. The car list is impres­sive but most require a hand­ful of chal­lenges to unlock which can be a pain; and there will be pain.

The first pain to come across is the story. You take con­trol of Jack Rourke a slightly cocky douche that has a debt with some mob and you some­how get pulled into a race across the coun­try for some amount of money to do some­thing andzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz, yea you see where I am going with this. In a game where it’s being sold as a racer with a story, the story shouldn’t suck; which it does. The cam­era sucks, but this is just a per­sonal gripe. I nor­mally play rac­ers with the cam­era far­thest from the car; this game doesn’t give me that option. We get two bumper cams and an out of car cam that has me eat­ing the bumper at every turn. Despite hav­ing some excit­ing set pieces half of the game con­sist of rid­ing through some foothills “mak­ing up time” which trans­fers to time tri­als or in other words, filler. Even with the filler it comes to another prob­lem, it’s short; Call of Duty short. Now this is just the story, there are chal­lenges to keep you going and unlock­ing cars, but wasn’t the game sell­ing itself on the con­cept of a story dri­ven racer? So if the length is rub­bish and the story is rub­bish what are you left with? Some great look­ing vis­tas and a good racer that has this crap­tac­u­lar story façade hang­ing over its head. The mul­ti­player could have taken some hints from Hot Pur­suit as well because The Run is about as fun as hav­ing the runs. You get into a lobby with 8 other peo­ple and race a series of point to point races; that’s it. Where are the cop chases, excit­ing one on one rac­ing from the story, and where is does all this lag come from; shoddy mul­ti­player design that’s where. There is attack heli­copters shoot­ing at you dur­ing the story, there is Porsche SUVs with gun tot­ing mob thugs hang­ing out of them dur­ing the story that shoot at you, there is the infa­mous red tint around the screen show­ing your health dur­ing these chases and none of this can be shared with any­one. One last gripe and we shall trot on is the reset sys­tem. I like the idea of a story racer where each race is designed to be a level and within that level you only have some many tries to get through it; that is what we call pro­gres­sion and I am a fan of it. What I don’t like is when after your glo­ri­ous death sequence involv­ing your super­car crush­ing itself against some $15,000 Dodge hatch­back and metal, plas­tic, and glass shards are thrown through­out the air like con­fetti, you have to wait at least 5–10 sec­onds at a black screen with a puls­ing rewind but­ton break­ing the action of your high speed metal twist­ing car­nage. You have enough time to down a 12 oz. can of Moun­tain Dew so that you won’t fall asleep at what is essen­tially a load screen because some­one at Black Box took the day off and failed to keep any sense of immersion.

Now, despite my gripes, I did really enjoy the game. The dri­ving was fun, I never had to did­dle with cus­tomiz­ing cars and mak­ing them look “pimp” (I hate pop cul­ture), and there was a real sense of excite­ment dri­ving at 150+ while heli­copters are shoot­ing at you while cops are in pur­suit only to switch to a QTE. There is gen­uine fun to be had with The Run, but the fun is dabbed into the story instead of the story bathing in it. This is worlds bet­ter and much cleaner than Black Boxes last effort but my com­plaints are out­weigh­ing the pos­i­tives. The game is worth play­ing if you can get it at a good price or even give it a few days rental. The story dri­ven racer is a unique take on a genre that really hasn’t seen inno­va­tion in quite some time. It’s a unique exper­i­ment that resulted in a stink bomb rather than a crip­pling explo­sion. With a few tweaks, a proper title update, and some worth­while DLC this could be a title I could return to in the future. It’s not a bad game by any means, it just needed less time between the excite­ment, a story that won’t be blown away by a slight breeze, and a fleshed out multiplayer.

+ QTE’s don’t get in the way of the racing

+ There are some truly excit­ing set pieces

+ The games visual pre­sen­ta­tion is top notch

+ Mix­ing a story ele­ment into an arcade racer and mak­ing it work

- Reset time is irritating

- The story is paper thin

- The main char­ac­ter is flat and annoy­ingly smug

- The main char­ac­ter wasn’t crushed at the begin­ning of the game

- Call of Duty like length