Need For Speed: The Run

Developed by: Black Box Studios
Published by: Electronic Arts
Platforms: Xbox 360 (reviewed on), PS3, Wii, Windows, Nintendo DS, Wii

You are Jackson "Jack" Rourke, a down-on-his-luck loser, who has but one talent - driving expensive cars to the very precipice of their performance threshold. Let's call him a vehicular vagabond. Inexplicably, a sassy, sultry woman steps into your life and enters you in 'The Run', a mysterious cross-country race that costs a quarter of a million dollars to enter, involving 211 well-heeled racers who must race across the USA from San Francisco to New York City.

This is a very pretty game. Utilising the Frostbite 2 engine – the amazing graphics and physics engine used in BattleField 3 – developer Black Box has produced some wonderful racing environments across the varied geography of the U.S.A.  The eye-candy is stunning as you tear across the USA at break-neck speeds, from cliff-hugging, avalanche devastated roads in the Rocky Mountains, to the tornado-ridden highways of the Great Plains and even some impressive urban locales, such as San Francisco and New York.

Played in stages of various lengths Jack finds himself in a number of situations or 'modes'. Usually the game will require Jack to pass a required number of opponents to progress, with the long term goal of being in a certain position by the time the race gets to an iconic town such as Las Vegas or Chicago.  It's a novel way of playing a racing game and is more progressive way to race, as opposed to completing lap after lap of a given circuit.
Other modes include checkpoint races and ‘rival’ match-ups.  The most interesting sections include hordes of cops with Blues Brothers-esque levels of chaotic enthusiasm to stop the racers. Racing variety is what you get with this game.

There is also a more freeform challenge of a gigantic cross-country road race, where the Hollywood-style plot line and story is ditched, giving virtual racers the iconic and varied landscape to lose themselves in.

Gameplay wise, NFS: The Run is all about exaggerated arcade physics - Forza or Gran Turismo this is not. The cars have the weight, responsiveness and speed to get the job done, with a big dose of grip and oversteer forgiveness to keep the supercars on the road but this lack of realism doesn't harm the game too much - it's still fun.

And if you do make a mistake, wreck your car or get busted by the law, Jack can always employ the useful "limited time rewind" feature.
There is a driver levelling/experience system seemingly thrown in because that's what is expected in today’s racing games, but it doesn’t add much to the enjoyment here. The Autolog feature, where stage times are compared to online friends, however, is a welcome continuation of a feature first found in NFS: Hot Pursuit.

Ultimately I found this game to be a bit of a let-down for the Need For Speed brand. It's not as enjoyable as the Need For Speed-branded SHIFT games - or Hot Pursuit - which injected enough white-knuckle adrenalin into the arcade style racing franchise to keep gamers glued to their screens long into the night.

In the end NFS: The Run will be confined to the more forgettable Need For Speed franchise releases, but with any luck EA and Black Box will realise there are some great ideas introduced here, and who knows - maybe they will create digital version of The Cannonball Run...

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