Need for Speed: The Run Review

Formats: PS3 (Tested) | Xbox 360 | PC
Developer: Black Box
Publisher: EA
Release Date: 18th November 2011 (Out Now)

There was a time in the mid-noughties when it would be unthinkable to suggest that the annual Need for Speed game wouldn’t be at or challenging for the Christmas number 1 spot. In recent years, however, success has been hard to come by for EA’s once proud racing franchise. Case in point, The Run didn’t even manage to make the Top 10 in its release week this year, having to settle for 11th place instead, a position that it stuck to following its first full seven day sale period.

You could argue that the gaming public are suffering from NFS overkill, especially as little more than 7 months have passed since Shift 2 hit shelves. Then you might claim that the Call of Duty hype has left gamers with a new mainstream favourite to turn their attention to. But one of the biggest reasons is that in recent years, the games simply haven’t been up to scratch. The Run is no exception.

That’s not to say it doesn’t have an intriguing concept. The idea of the game being one big race from San Francisco to New York is a great one. However, its execution soon boils down to a series of repetitive events featuring irritating, rubber-band or scripted AI, and a hideous checkpoint and reset system. Oh, and the occasional quick-time event too. Well, it’s the Frostbite 2 engine after all. Clearly it was decided internally that we wouldn’t have had enough of them in Battlefield 3.

The Run’s main story mode begins with your character, Jack Rourke, about to be crushed to death in a car compactor. After making his escape via QTE (they don’t hang about in introducing them), Rourke must escape the attentions of mob drivers, who will be trying to gun him down in his stolen vehicle. Once clear of the baddies, Rourke meets with Sam Harper, who offers him a proposition. Successfully win a cross country race consisting of over 200 competitors, and she’ll pay off his debt to the mob from the $25 million prize fund.

So begins a near-3000-mile journey across the United States of America, although naturally this doesn’t place in real time, nor do you experience the full 3000 miles. Instead, the journey is split into 10 stages, each consisting of several shorter segments on varying terrain. You soon come to realise that these segments are basically sprint races in everything but name.

For example, you’ll have several segments where you’re asked to make up x amount of places in the overall race. It might be something as small as three places, it could potentially go up to ten. The thing is though, it’s not just a case of overtaking the set number of opponents, you then have to stay ahead of them until you reach a set location. A finish line, if you will. You can’t get ahead of yourself by overtaking more than the requested number, because they’re not there, nor can you get away with missing out by one or two spots and setting a handicap for yourself in the next segment – it’s all or nothing in The Run.

When not in the aforementioned disguised races, you might be asked to “make up time”, which boils down to basic checkpoint races, or battling with opponents, whereby you’re asked to catch up to, overtake and stay ahead of an opponent within a short time limit, usually between 30 and 60 seconds. All different segment types are occasionally spiced up by the arrival of cop cars, who will attempt to ram you off course or set-up road blocks to stop you in your tracks. Later stages also see the return of the mob, who will attempt to gun you off the road, leading to some dangerous swerving and weaving through non-race traffic.

Unlike your standard racing game, The Run incorporates checkpoints into its segments. Should you wipe out your car, you’ll get a Burnout style cut-scene, before being reset to the last checkpoint you hit to continue onwards. The trouble is, the same can apply if you stray off-road, sometimes forcing back to an earlier position even if you’ve only gone slightly off course and are in the process of pulling yourself back on.

While the latter situation may seem just slightly awkward, especially as opponent positions are also reset, it should be pointed out that you only have a limited number of resets per segment. Run out of them, and you’ll have to go back to the start of it. In addition to this, if you reach the end of a segment and haven’t fulfilled the objective, you’ll also be sent back to the start, regardless of how many checkpoint resets you have left.

You can’t even manually use up one of your resets, the closest you can do to this is simply crash your car on purpose (or apparently, you can, with a quick press of Select / Back – so why not add an option to the pause menu as well?). To add to the annoyance, there will occasionally be instances where your brief, post-reset immunity sees you flying straight off the main course and having to use up another reset straight away. With handling slightly more sluggish during these periods, the frustration just keeps on adding up.

After each segment, you’re rewarded with experience points. These can be gained for passing opponents, with more awarded for a clean pass than for a dirty one (determined by whether or not you made contact with the opponent when overtaking), taking down cops, passing roadblocks, and for any checkpoint resets that you didn’t use. Get through a segment without using any of them, and you’ll also gain 500 bonus experience points.

Herein lies another issue though, as throughout each segment it flashes up on-screen when you’ve done something that warrants the earning of experience points, but unless you successfully complete your set objective, you won’t actually receive these points. With that in mind, it just winds up as something of an annoying tease when you’ve fulfilled certain goals, only to have the rewards for them snatched away just because some cheating AI decided to slingshot you on the finishing straight.

With experience comes levelling up, which in turn gives you access to extra cars and other perks, such as faster nitrous recharging, drafting abilities, etc. For the most part, you’ll work with set cars during the story, although you can occasionally pull into a gas station to change your vehicle if your current one doesn’t seem to be working out.

When you go back to the apparent 3000-mile length of The Run, you’ll no doubt be miffed to discover that what you actually play amounts to less than 2 and a half hours of action. Admittedly, when you factor in resets, restarts and general moments spent on pause while you punch the controller, it’ll wind up taking a fair bit longer than that. But ultimately, when you’re telling your players that they’ve finished the main meat in less than three hours, it’s not going to do you any favours. Especially when one of the criticisms labelled at Black Box’s last NFS title, Undercover, was that the single player story was too short. This time, they’ve made it even shorter.

Aside from the story, The Run also offers up the Challenge Series for single players. Unlocked as you complete each of the 10 stages of the story, these offer segments similar to those you’ll have already played, only this time without the pretence of them being part of one big race. To give that added element of spice, you’ll also be racing against the clock, with Bronze, Silver, Gold and Platinum medals up for grabs if you can beat the target times. In addition to these targets, you can enjoy friendly competition with your friends as you compare and contrast times via the returning Autolog social feature.

Multiplayer modes have you racing in short, multi-race playlists featuring different terrains or vehicles, with the added bonus of a series of objectives to complete on each one, both solo and group-based. Beating the races helps to unlock new playlists, while completing the objectives will assist in opening up new vehicles for use in all modes. While it’s unlikely to keep you regularly coming back for more, at least you don’t have to put up with the cheap resets and even cheaper AI when you’re stepping online.

The Run incorporates many different staples that will be familiar from previous Need for Speed games, but never manages to better any of them. What’s more, it takes out features that so many could get simple, basic enjoyment from, such as the free roam. Even with its roots in arcade-style racing, Hot Pursuit still offered up the ability to freely drive around without a goal. Now, it’s all about racing, entirely about winning, and in doing so it’s full of multiple annoyances. Somewhere down the line, the fun got forgotten.