Need for Speed: The Run review

Need for Speed The Run is 8 or 80, love it or hate it for real! And the most interesting thing is that some of the things that may make you hate it may also please other players, even though in some respects the game might not even be considered a racing game, but look, I loved it anyway.
The game has no technical flaws, everything works nicely, good variety of cars, several quite varied locations, very good graphics (seriously, that part near the end with the road covered in yellow leaves is one of the most beautiful things I’ve seen in racing games), good gameplay that doesn’t disappoint those who like a good arcade racer.

The folks at Black Box brought back something I really liked in the first Most Wanted, which was the fact that nitro shifts the weight to the rear, gluing the car to the ground and helping a lot in the corners, totally unrealistic I know, but we’re talking about a totally arcade racing game, it fits the gameplay perfectly.
The soundtrack is another high point of the game, no famous artists or bands just for show, here all the songs seem to have been chosen very carefully to fit each situation, with many instrumental arrangements that convey the sense of frantic action the game keeps up most of the time, first-rate work! Anyway, technically speaking the game is very competent and that makes me even sadder about the end of Black Box, damn you EA!

The problems may start to appear when we look at the gameplay and the decisions made by the development team. I mean, “may appear”, because as I said, this may be exactly what will please many players.
The game seeks to mix a little story with racing. You control Jack Rourke, some jerk who pissed off some jerks in the mob and is now in deep trouble, and his salvation is Sam Harper, a hottie who knows the right people who can get Jack out of trouble as long as he does a little something for her: cross the USA, coast to coast, from San Francisco to New York beating another 200 racers.
Quite the cliché, especially considering this theme of crossing the USA in a no-rules race is very common, not only in games but also in movies like The Cannonball Run and Rat Race.

But that is where the game stands out. The scenery is very well made and varied, depicting not only the USA’s roads and their geographic and climatic conditions, but also small towns and metropolises. The soundtrack as I said helps a lot to get into the mood, gets you hyped to race on the limit, puts you in the shoes of the protagonist racing to save his life, not to mention the game delivers a really cool feeling of older games with the same premise like Cruis’n USA, Out Run or Zippy Race. It’s really, really cool FOR REAL!!

That is where the game gets a bit lost. If it were just the traditional racing stretches, where the fastest simply wins, with a few cutscenes between one stage and another, we would have had an instant classic, probably one of the best Need for Speed games ever made. But the guys at Black Box wanted more, they wanted cinematic chase scenes with helicopters, high-speed shootouts, cops with bloodshot eyes wanting to skin you alive.
They wanted to make a little movie! As I write this Kojima lets out a long, emotional sigh and a tear runs down David Cage’s face. There are even QTEs.

Believe it or not, in this game, that is not bad, at least not entirely; the more cinematic passages are very well made, over the top as hell it’s true, but well made. Anyone who likes movies like The Fast and the Furious or Transporter will even enjoy the thing, the problem is that to pull this stuff off they had to tinker with the gameplay: for a certain event to influence the race a controlled environment is needed. You need to reach a predetermined point of the game in a predetermined time, in a predetermined position, with no room for variation.
I never thought I would say this but this is a scripted racing game.

In fact, from a certain point of view, you can’t even call it a racing game, however absurd that may sound. A racing game is based on the premise that whoever is more skilled goes faster and whoever goes faster wins. In The Run that is almost irrelevant. You leave San Francisco in 200th position, and need to arrive in Las Vegas in at least 150th.
Fine, but what if I’m faster and arrive in 130th? Can’t, the game won’t let you.
If on a given stretch your mission is to pass 10 cars, you will only pass 10 cars, because even if you’re an ace behind the wheel, no more than ten poor souls will show up on that stretch of road.

On the last stage I managed to open a lead of more than 10 seconds on my rival, yet he was inexplicably waiting for me at a certain point on the route to shoot me, forcing me off the track and triggering the final, thrilling, adrenaline-filled part of the game, and shortly after, when I go back to chasing him, no matter how good I was at dodging the containers, whenever I got close he apparently pressed some red button on the gear stick and shot kilometers ahead. I don’t even need to say how frustrating this can be for some.

But wait, didn’t you say this wasn’t entirely bad, Murad? What the hell is this? This is terrible!
Yeah, but this characteristic of controlling exactly what the player can or can’t do is what lets the game’s most memorable and fun events happen. Going down a mountain road covered in ice while the North American highway department nutjobs blow up explosives all around, dropping blocks of snow the size of an elephant in the middle of the road while we try to dodge at over 200 km/h. Or the motherf***ing mobsters who send a goddamn helicopter to rain lead while we race through the inside of a building at over 200 km/h. Just imagine the most common action scenes in the movies and add the fact that we’re in a badass car at over 200 km/h! There’s no way it isn’t cool!
That is the game’s idea, it is an action game on wheels. For example, who says Driver is a racing game? Right, that’s the thing, it is much more of a Driver than a Need For Speed, and that is what may spoil many people’s expectations.
Luckily I was able to realize this, and as hooked on racing games as I am, I managed to enjoy this one a lot thanks to its setting and gameplay, however controlled and scripted it may be. I highly recommend it!