Need For Speed: The Run Review

It seemed quite apt that Hollywood director Michael Bay took control of one of the trailers for EA's latest driving fest as it seems they've missed the point, just like Michael Bay missed the point when he made Pearl Harbour, as noted in the Team America OST.

Now let me explain as to why I feel this opening statement is appropriate for the game. Need for Speed: The Run is meant to be some cinematic adrenaline fuelled racing fest where you have to race from one side of America to another in some sort of Cannonball Run-esque event, sans Burt Reynold's moustache, in order to win some ridiculous amount of cash to clear a mafia debt that's on your head.

To kick off the game you're taped to the steering wheel of your car and have to perform some quick time event in order to escape your imminent doom then go steal a car and drive off to save your bacon for the night. These quick time events are there in order to provide some cinematic experience while in reality they detract from what this game was supposed to be, a driving game.

The driving isn't that great either as we're limited in the number of camera views; chase, bonnet and bumper cams, no interior view at all. The handling of the cars are in the realms of laughable even for an arcade title while finally artificially limiting the performance of the cars you drive shattering the final strands of realism that were once clinging onto the title.

Allow me to regale you with a tale explaining this. On one mission where I had to overtake X amount of cars in order to progress to the next stage I pulled into a garage in order to change car. Having picked Nissan's latest supercar destroyer, the GT-R, I merrily went about my business of passing cars. Now here comes my gripe, I'm in a car that has performance figures that will embarrass most offerings from the likes of Porsche etc with 0-60 times of around 3.5 secs and flooding the senses all the way past 190mph. Yet here I am in the game struggling to accelerate past 130mph, barely overtaking a Ford Focus, sorry but just WHAT THE F**K are devs thinking?

In what conceivable way is this "Entertaining"? It frustrated the life out of me, yet on the next stage with the same car I'm able to keep on the tail of an Aston Martin with ease, what dribbling buffoon thought it would be a good idea to limit the performance of your car on every single stage you race on?

This level of limiting frustrated me even more on the first rival race you come across. You have to pass two bints in their Datsun 370z's which in the real world would be a trivial task for the GT-R, but no, the game had to be a killjoy and say "woah there buddy, lets keep you to 140mph max and make you fight for the win". If you intended to have the racing close and challenging, don't give the players the option of 190mph+ cars right at the start, give them something that is appropriate for the level of opposition you face up against.

The campaign wants you to feel that you're in some action packed battle for your life, yet feels more like you're drowning in a sea of mediocrity, hampered by the games ability to be a c**t and just limit your car. Not enjoyable at all.

Visually, the game holds weight against the current wave of driving games such as Forza and Gran Turismo. While not being as detailed as the latter offerings the cars and environments do look very nice indeed, especially as they are being powered from an unexpected source. EA and Black Box have acquired usage of the Frostbite 2 engine, the same engine that is powering Battlefield 3.

Yes that's right, an engine built by a team known for first person shooters is now powering a racing title. I guess it's good to know the flexibility of their new engine as this presents future licensing options for their engine, for example the Cryengine that you would associate with FPS romp Crysis is actually powering the popular MMORPG Aion, so we could potentially see anything from the more than capable Frostbite 2 engine.

All the cars are officially licensed as you would expect and are damn good representations of their real world counterparts, though engine notes on some leave a little to be desired, I'm not entirely sure they mapped the engine notes of all the cars in the game.

The now obligatory Autolog also makes an appearance in which your friends can gloat when they beat your time on a stage, encouraging you to revisit old races in order to best their efforts, but all this is essentially padding out a fairly hollow title. The multiplayer component doesn't fair much better either with you just racing against your opponents online. Yes you may increase your level this way too to unlock driver perks but there is still not enough core content to keep a player satisfied in my opinion.

There are gripes with the flashback system too, in which you may have a slight accident which you feel is recoverable yet the game would automatically use up one of your stored flashbacks to rewind time for you. Just let the player decide when to use these, surely the best judge of when to use such an "oh s**t" button would be the player him/herself.

While there are some very nice elements to the game such as the mountain pass in the snow where the mountain explodes under rocket fire to cause an avalanche, and that it tries to do something different with the genre, it just frustrates you more than entertains you and in all honesty, feels too much like Hot Pursuit which is a more enjoyable title with more core content available for the player.

You can drive like a loon or enforce the law, you have toys to play with, the multiplayer is infinitely more fun and is a shedload cheaper than this new title. Overall Need for Speed: The Run is a fairly forgettable title with little replay value or longevity to make it a viable purchase.