Need for Speed: The Run
Step on it
Review Releasing a driving game into an already congested market is a risky endeavour for any developer. So it follows that releasing two within six months could be considered careless. But to release three within a year, as EA has now done, seems at best illogical and, at worst, pure cannibalistic folly.
Downhill tussle
EA's justification for foisting three separate Need for Speeds on gamers in 12 months seems to be that we're all individuals. I might prefer the cat-and-mouse frivolity of Hot Pursuit and you the claustrophobic tussles and vertebrae-shattering physics of Shift 2, so it stands to good reason that a third game might prefer a more cinematic, narrative-injected racer.
First impressions of The Run lend credence to that logic. An interesting – if derivative – premise places you in the driving seat as Jack Rourke, a marked man racing for survival.
Ice to beat you
A compulsive gambler, Jack owes a life-shortening debt to the mob. The only way to avoid sleeping with the fishes is to compete in 'The Run', a Gumball Rally-style street race from San Francisco to New York.
Finish first, and you'll not only pick up a slice of the $25m purse from your backers, they'll also help get the mob off your back. Finish anywhere else and all you'll win is a pair of concrete slippers and a long walk off a short pier.
Driving up the dirty pass
Delivered through cinematic cut-scenes - and, oddly, a couple of woeful QTE foot chases - the story is intended to appeal to gamers unmotivated by split times and chequered flags alone. But while the narrative wrapper superficially distinguishes The Run from its Need for Speed stablemates, it soon proves mere window dressing for the game's generic event types.
Next page: Whacky races
COMMENTS
Still chavvy?
I was put of the N4S franchise a decade ago - I liked the driving but the whole chav vibe of pimping my car really annoyed me.
Is this still the background to the games, or have they grown up and the N4S name is more a brand than anything else?
Need for Speed Porsche Unleashed
came out around 2000, it had *really* accurate physics, and a bunch of Porsches from the 356 on. This is what I want out of a car racing game, one where the cars drive like cars. Out of the cars it had, I found the 944 the easiest to drive fast (actually due to it having *less* power -- the 911 is real easy to break the tires lose on a turn, then really easy for it to go *really* out of control after that ... the 944, you have a wide range of throttle to control that with.)
Although I must admit to having enjoyed NFS3: Hot Pursuit. It's amazing how car tech has advanced since then, it had some grade A muscle from that era and it'd just about top out at 130.
More crap from EA
Yet more arcade crap from EA. Can i have my Porsche's back where they are deserved now? i.e. Forza 4.
Kthxbye.
I was actually looking forward to this game
I had last read about not long after they had announced it, so I have been somewhat dismayed by the reviews and comments that this has been picking up. Which is a shame because I've always felt that a racing game based around the simple act of racing from one side of a country to the other while avoiding the police and other road traffic would make for a very good game. I imagine a starting point where one has a number of serious of cars to pick from, say 50, all well programmed and designed to fully accentuate their real world differences. From there, there is the case of choosing the route, with say just a few jokers allowed to be played for changing this in the course of the game. Of course we would have to plan fuel stops, oil changes, tyre changes etc as well. With a unified start and finish point and a minimum distance to be covered and a well reproduced game world you could really have some fun with this. And then you're off! With say a maximum of 18 cars per race and if you kept it so that one type of car could only be used by two racers maximum it would ensure a very mixed grid and range of opponents
I imagine that you could play persistent online races as well, where a group of say 3 to 12 could compete in the same race with all progress saved between stages and the race only continued when all the competitors were online and available. And yes the same limitations on the number and types of cars would be carried over from the single game.
Obviously a lot of this is going to be against the clock, but sooner or later the cars are going to passing down the same road at the same time and so the racing against others would possible. Maybe for some parts of the route all cars could follow the same route and then the stages could run like the Tour de France with points awarded for "sprint winners". Once one country was finished then it would be off to the next! Racing across Russia from East to West would be fun!
The game must make the distances true though, of course, otherwise the whole point of the game would be lost!
Mine is the green anorak with the map covered with fuel economy figures in inside pocket.
Count me out
Yet another "driving" game where the AI opponents magically suffer none of the issues the player is confronted with, and the player has to succeed perfectly in every aspect if he is to have a chance to win.
And they call that a GAME ?
Sorry guys, for me a game is something that amuses me. Constant frustration does not amuse me, and it seems this title has it in spades.
So I'll stick with NFS Porsche 2000, thank you. It's graphics may be dated, but it seems that its gameplay remains best-of-breed.
