Need for Speed: The Run Review
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The second best Need For Speed game of 2011!
In the time it's taken Black Box to make Need for Speed: The Run, we've had three other awesome NFS titles from other developers. While that's great for fans, it kind of spoiled Black Box's return to form. Need for Speed: The Run feels like a traditional NFS game, released after the franchise had already redefined itself.
What Need for Speed: The Run has going for it is that it feels more like an old-school NFS game than the last few "spinoff" titles have. Developer Black Box has been making NFS games for over a decade, and they bring a lot of that arcade style, nitrous fueled racing action back. Racing down snow and ice covered tracks, skidding along a turn and narrowly avoiding plummeting off the edge of a cliff face is exhilarating. Weaving through traffic on a crowded freeway feels tense and frightening.
Need for Speed: The Run Video Review
Throughout the campaign, the scenery and gameplay constantly change as you race from coast to coast. There's a good balance of different race types. You'll go from a standard eight car race, to a checkpoint time attack, to a one on one mountain drifting battle, to a cop chase. It's very rare that the same type of race repeats twice in a row. The driving can feel floaty at times, but the car classes perform differently, and getting a good time can largely depend on good car choice. On the Normal difficulty the racer AI is, well, kind of dumb. They'll crash into other cars, police will target only you, and they'll miss shortcuts, even if you enter one right in front of them.
The locales are definitely best part of this Need for Speed. In fact, The Run has some of the most gorgeous and interesting set pieces I've seen in a racing game. The Rockies, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, even the New Jersey Turnpike are all lifelike and well detailed. Which is why it's a shame that so many of the tracks in The Run are boring. To be fair, they mostly match up with the areas of the country that are boring, too (sorry, the Midwest). But even some tracks that should be amazing, like the final battle race in New York City, are entirely underwhelming.
More than that, though, my biggest problem with The Run is the lack of options. I don't just mean the inability to customize and upgrade cars (which I personally don't mind, but is a big concern for many fans), but more that I can't fine tune my racing experience. After the campaign there is a Challenge Series which offers additional gameplay, similar to Shift's challenges. However, there is no free race option at all in this game. Whether I'm playing by myself, or online, I have to choose from the preset Challenges with their car types and rules. Beyond the dumb story, the unintuitive way to switch cars, and any problems I have with the AI, it's these lack of features that turns The Run from my racing game of the holiday, to a weekend rental. I beat the challenges, I beat the story, and now I don't have a lot more to go through.
This is where I say something stupid like, "Don't try this at home, kids!"
Part of the problem stems from how scripted the campaign feels. There are cop chases where all your competitors get stopped by roadblocks. Survival races where you just have to not crash. And the final climactic race has multiple sections where it doesn't matter what you do, you get a scripted event. I can blaze ahead of the opponent, but suddenly he's at my side to show a cutscene and push me off the road. If there was an awesome story being told then maybe these would make more sense, but usually it feels like the game is holding your hand.
And it's a problem because otherwise the online is set up great. I like how I earn bonus XP for nearly everything I might do in a race. I love that AutoLog is back so I can constantly compare race times with my friends. The playlists work well and the racing was nearly lag free in my albeit limited exposure to it. But then I'm limited to picking between exotic sprints or a muscle car challenge and my interest wanes.
NYC Multiplayer Race
The story itself is rather baffling, too. The Run exists in a world where subway trains travel at 140 mph and every girl is a smoking hot maybe-lesbian. You play as Jack, a guy who got in trouble with the mob, so he enters a cross country race to get a bunch of money. That's pretty much all the story you get. The writers never extrapolate on why Jack is in trouble, or who the other racers are (aside from a couple superfluous loading screen bios). And it's all stuff that needs answers because Jack appears to be in some deep sh--.
Hey game, do you want to explain what Jack did to make the Chicago mob track him down in California, try to execute him, chase him all the way across the country, try to gun him down on a crowded freeway, get a helicopter to shoot him down (killing civilians and cops in the process), destroy an oil refinery, and send in a mob boss's son to finish the job? No? Ok then. Then why did you bother putting a story in here at all?
Closing Comments
Need for Speed: The Run has a good racer inside it. It can be exciting and visceral, and there were numerous times in the game where I stopped and said, “Sh--, that was cool.” But all this awesome racing action gets somewhat lost amid the nonexistent story, the dumb/scripted AI, the lack of options, and the overall shortness of the game. The Run is not a marathon racing game, it's a quick and ? drag race.
Presentation 4.0
This isn't a bad story, it's not a story at all. It's the loose workings of a plot without the necessary cast.
Graphics 8.0
The Run is not as pretty as Hot Pursuit, but the Frostbite 2 engine is well used.
Sound 7.5
A large soundtrack that is used effectively. The voice acting is too limited (you'll hear every cop say the same thing).
Gameplay 6.5
A fun, but flawed, arcade-style racing game. Too linear both in scope and tracks.
Lasting Appeal 6.5
The online mode is fun, but I grew tired from my lack of options and the need to unlock online races.
OVERALL 6.5 (Okay)
In the time it's taken Black Box to make Need for Speed: The Run, we've had three other awesome NFS titles from other developers. While that's great for fans, it kind of spoiled Black Box's return to form. Need for Speed: The Run feels like a traditional NFS game, released after the franchise had already redefined itself.
What Need for Speed: The Run has going for it is that it feels more like an old-school NFS game than the last few "spinoff" titles have. Developer Black Box has been making NFS games for over a decade, and they bring a lot of that arcade style, nitrous fueled racing action back. Racing down snow and ice covered tracks, skidding along a turn and narrowly avoiding plummeting off the edge of a cliff face is exhilarating. Weaving through traffic on a crowded freeway feels tense and frightening.
Need for Speed: The Run Video Review
Throughout the campaign, the scenery and gameplay constantly change as you race from coast to coast. There's a good balance of different race types. You'll go from a standard eight car race, to a checkpoint time attack, to a one on one mountain drifting battle, to a cop chase. It's very rare that the same type of race repeats twice in a row. The driving can feel floaty at times, but the car classes perform differently, and getting a good time can largely depend on good car choice. On the Normal difficulty the racer AI is, well, kind of dumb. They'll crash into other cars, police will target only you, and they'll miss shortcuts, even if you enter one right in front of them.
The locales are definitely best part of this Need for Speed. In fact, The Run has some of the most gorgeous and interesting set pieces I've seen in a racing game. The Rockies, Yosemite National Park, San Francisco, even the New Jersey Turnpike are all lifelike and well detailed. Which is why it's a shame that so many of the tracks in The Run are boring. To be fair, they mostly match up with the areas of the country that are boring, too (sorry, the Midwest). But even some tracks that should be amazing, like the final battle race in New York City, are entirely underwhelming.
More than that, though, my biggest problem with The Run is the lack of options. I don't just mean the inability to customize and upgrade cars (which I personally don't mind, but is a big concern for many fans), but more that I can't fine tune my racing experience. After the campaign there is a Challenge Series which offers additional gameplay, similar to Shift's challenges. However, there is no free race option at all in this game. Whether I'm playing by myself, or online, I have to choose from the preset Challenges with their car types and rules. Beyond the dumb story, the unintuitive way to switch cars, and any problems I have with the AI, it's these lack of features that turns The Run from my racing game of the holiday, to a weekend rental. I beat the challenges, I beat the story, and now I don't have a lot more to go through.
This is where I say something stupid like, "Don't try this at home, kids!"
Part of the problem stems from how scripted the campaign feels. There are cop chases where all your competitors get stopped by roadblocks. Survival races where you just have to not crash. And the final climactic race has multiple sections where it doesn't matter what you do, you get a scripted event. I can blaze ahead of the opponent, but suddenly he's at my side to show a cutscene and push me off the road. If there was an awesome story being told then maybe these would make more sense, but usually it feels like the game is holding your hand.
And it's a problem because otherwise the online is set up great. I like how I earn bonus XP for nearly everything I might do in a race. I love that AutoLog is back so I can constantly compare race times with my friends. The playlists work well and the racing was nearly lag free in my albeit limited exposure to it. But then I'm limited to picking between exotic sprints or a muscle car challenge and my interest wanes.
NYC Multiplayer Race
The story itself is rather baffling, too. The Run exists in a world where subway trains travel at 140 mph and every girl is a smoking hot maybe-lesbian. You play as Jack, a guy who got in trouble with the mob, so he enters a cross country race to get a bunch of money. That's pretty much all the story you get. The writers never extrapolate on why Jack is in trouble, or who the other racers are (aside from a couple superfluous loading screen bios). And it's all stuff that needs answers because Jack appears to be in some deep sh--.
Hey game, do you want to explain what Jack did to make the Chicago mob track him down in California, try to execute him, chase him all the way across the country, try to gun him down on a crowded freeway, get a helicopter to shoot him down (killing civilians and cops in the process), destroy an oil refinery, and send in a mob boss's son to finish the job? No? Ok then. Then why did you bother putting a story in here at all?
Closing Comments
Need for Speed: The Run has a good racer inside it. It can be exciting and visceral, and there were numerous times in the game where I stopped and said, “Sh--, that was cool.” But all this awesome racing action gets somewhat lost amid the nonexistent story, the dumb/scripted AI, the lack of options, and the overall shortness of the game. The Run is not a marathon racing game, it's a quick and ? drag race.
Presentation 4.0
This isn't a bad story, it's not a story at all. It's the loose workings of a plot without the necessary cast.
Graphics 8.0
The Run is not as pretty as Hot Pursuit, but the Frostbite 2 engine is well used.
Sound 7.5
A large soundtrack that is used effectively. The voice acting is too limited (you'll hear every cop say the same thing).
Gameplay 6.5
A fun, but flawed, arcade-style racing game. Too linear both in scope and tracks.
Lasting Appeal 6.5
The online mode is fun, but I grew tired from my lack of options and the need to unlock online races.
OVERALL 6.5 (Okay)