Need for Speed: The Run

November 24th, 2011

Not many driving games see you start the race in 200th position. Then again, not many driving games see you start off with you hand’s gaffer taped to the steering wheel of a sports car being lowered into a car crusher (who knew the government would take their scrappage scheme so seriously?). Such is the scenario protagonist Jack Rourke finds himself in at the beginning of The Run, the eighteenth instalment in EA’s high octane racing series, having gotten on the wrong side of the mafia. A few QTEs later and you’re on the run from the mob in a dramatic opening that belies the genre’s normal peep, peep, go opening to races (indeed there isn’t a single static starting line in the entire game).

Pulling in some favours Jack meets an old flame named Sam in a restaurant in China town. She tells him that she can make his problems disappear if he enters and wins an epic illegal street race across the American continent from San Francisco to New York, against some of the best drivers around for a purse of 25 million dollars. And so, in the tradition of such classic films as Cannonball Run, you’re off on your high octane adventure. This is developer  Black Box’s latest attempt to inject a narrative into the long running series, and whilst things quickly settle into a groove of tackling stage after stage, the simple story does serve to string together the races into an overarching frame in a much more satisfying way than the plot of Undercover. It’s a shame that the load screens between races are so long as it would have been good to see the game capitalising on its structure,flowing one stage into another, in the same fluid manner Uncharted 2 achieved. It’s nice to see your grid position rise as the game progresses, but after you pass a stage there’s no way for you to drop down the grid anymore as the cars you previously passed, although apparently still in the race to New York, never seem to catch up. Although such a feature might have made this already challenging game insurmountable, it would have certainly added a further degree of dynamism to the game’s fictitious race.

In a bid to counter the criticisms of Need for Speed: Undercover being repetitious and easy, the developers have done quite a nice job of varying the individual challenges: in some stages you simply play catch up in a kind of time attack, whilst others see you required to claw your way up to a certain position, or take on specific cars, or simply outrun the cops. So too is the setting varied, from urban streets, to open freeway, winding mountain roads and nature reserves, and whilst the game doesn’t look anywhere near as good as Gran Turismo or Forza, DICE’s Frostbite engine is used to great effect to build a sense of speed that will keep adrenaline junkies happy throughout.

The game employs a simple experience system to reward you for your insane driving skills, and each level earned drip feeds you the game’s rewards and features. But to unlock the game’s myriad of cars you’ll have to leave the story mode and take on challenges set by the game’s ‘autolog’ system, which tracks your friend’s times and flags up particular tracks that you’re lagging behind on with the ultimate aim of being the fastest player to New York. Although multiplayer is a feature, it would have been nice to integrate something into story mode a little more – for instance if your friend happened to be racing the same section of the game as you it would have been interesting to have him replace one of the computer controlled cars. The autolog feature is a solid framework to add longevity to the game, but there is certainly more that can be done with it by the way of ad hoc encounters with real world rivals.

In short Need for Speed: The Run is a quality arcade racer with a good sense of pace, pretty graphics, a satisfying story mode, and a good deal of replayability thanks to autolog.

Words > Dean Bowman

Tags: Black Box, Electronic Arts, Need for Speed, Need for Speed: The Run, racing