5.0
Need For Speed: The Run Review
Site Score
3.0 Good: The Graphics
Bad: Ridiculous story mode that's over way too quickly
User Score
0 (0 votes)
Click to vote
Need For Speed: The Run is a mess. It has a great presentation, an intriguing story and it plays well for the most part, but the short story mode, unwieldy menu system and unfairly rubber banded A.I. are what ultimately let it down.
My emotions, they are conflicted. Need For Speed: The Run has a story mode with a unique premise that, in theory, could have been something amazing, but the developers have instead settled for a campaign that, whilst fun, is extremely short and is filled with quick time events that could have easily been un-interactive cut scenes. When it comes to replayability, The Run has it, but it’s all hidden behind convoluted menu’s that never explain where to go or how to do what you’re trying to do. After Criterion’s highly amazing Hot Pursuit put the series back on the map, The Run has gone and smudged the ink. It’s a “kind-of alright” dissapointment.
The premise of Need For Speed: The Run is very simple. Some dude named Jack owes the mob some money, so when a hot redhead named Sam comes along (played by hot redhead Christina Hendricks) and offers him the opportunity to win a tonne of money, he takes it. To win the money he needs to drive from one side of the US to the other in one long race. It’s a neat idea that’s never been attempted in videogames before. The ‘story’ is ultimately made redundant though as you’re never told anything about the characters involved, beyond the original setup and single loading screens with a small blurb about certain rivals that you’re racing against.
The game takes place across 10 different sections of the USA, Starting in San Francisco, moving through the desert to Vegas, through some snowy mountains to Chicago and onto New York for the finale. There’s a nice selection of different environments available, but at just over 2 hours of race time, this impossibly long race becomes the shortest story mode in a major release that I’ve played in some time, and if you take the cutscenes and load times into account it still only equals up to around 3 hours. Luckily, it’s a (mostly) fun three hours.
The driving takes a little getting used to, but once you figure it out it’s a blast to control. The A.I. on the other hand is terrible and the heavy rubber banding is more evident than ever due to the tightly scripted story that the main mode follows. The difficulty suddenly ramps up in the last third of the game, which is a cheap move on Black Box’s part, as it feels like they’re just trying to extend your play time through difficulty rather than adding more races.
The Autolog mode from Hot Pursuit makes a comeback, but where Criterion built their game around Autolog, it feels like an afterthought in The Run. The major problem is the user unfriendly menu system, as it will tell you that you can compare your times with your friends on the leaderboards and will recommend which tracks your friends have better times on, but if you don’t have any friends with the game then you need to go find some friends. To find ‘friends’ you need to look at the ‘friend recommendations’ list where the game (in theory) suggests people to add to your friends list, but there was no one on my list the first time I went there. It wasn’t until I actually played against people in the Multiplayer that the game recommended some friends. It’s a terrible system that needs to be patched or something, because it’s bordering on a joke right now.
There’s one section where The Run actually does excel and that’s in the visuals. Built on the Frostbite 2 engine — the same engine running Battlefield 3 — the visuals have a lot going for them. The way that the lighting changes during each of the 10 legs of the race and the overall artistic design of each section is quite amazing. There are a few times during the game where some crazy over-the-top things happen during races — like a snow avalanche or a sand storm — and these are a real treat for the eyes. I played through the PC version of the game, so I can’t say off hand just how well the consoles handle all of this visual prowess, but it ran quite well on my mid-range PC on highest settings.
Need For Speed: The Run is a mess. It has a great presentation, an intriguing story and it plays well for the most part, but the short story mode, unwieldy menu system and unfairly rubber banded A.I. are what ultimately let it down. If you find the game for cheap or want to rent it for a weekend then I’d recommend it, but as an $80 product to keep forever? I’d say skip it.
Related Items
2 Comments
Leave a Reply
You must be logged in to post a comment.
Its a racing game and ur telling us to skip it for the story mode! Go elsewhere with your dumb comments and these waste of time articles please. At least they made a story mode and theres ALOT of races, like 4 to 5 races a level. In 10 lvls, thats like 40 to 50 greatly entertaining races to be enjoyed single player to multiplayer. You people judge games out of your butt , seriously. You base a racing game with your status ” terrible “ because of its story mode. Unbelievable. The graphics blew my mind away. After getting used to the driving, it was very smooth. Replay value is great. What else do you people want from a RACING GAME. THIS ISNT JAMES BOND or something! People seriously need to get fired so they can be replaced by people with brains.
You want me to get fired from my own website? For having an opinion that’s different to yours? Yeah, ok… Thanks for commenting!