Once again, another Need For Speed has been released, titled The Run. How does it differ from previous games in the series and how good is it? Let's try to figure this out in our review.
Sloppy work
I don't know what EA BlackBox has been doing for the past three years, but it definitely wasn't working on the new installment of the famous Need For Speed series. Essentially, the guys from DICE did all the work for them with their Frostbite 2.0 engine. It's this engine that provides all the thrill we feel when getting behind the wheel of a car. The game itself is short, in terms of gameplay time (the pure time of each race) it can be completed in literally two hours, but if you add loading times and replays, you can spend up to six hours.
The racing tracks aren't very long, ranging from 7 to 14 kilometers. The developers created about a dozen diverse tracks, most of which repeat despite different locations (the attempt to disguise the same track with day and night is especially "pleasing"). So if anyone thought about truly driving all four thousand five hundred something kilometers from San Francisco to New York — forget it. At most, the game has 500-600 km of roads.
Nitrous Oxide
The gameplay mechanics are almost entirely copied from the already familiar Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit — we still race from point A to point B at high speed, dodging road traffic and police. Speaking of the police. The developers abandoned spikes, helicopters, and EMP strikes. Despite this, the police behave aggressively and can sometimes seriously complicate the race. Nitrous oxide also grows according to the same principles as in Hot Pursuit.
An undeniable plus is the destructibility of objects and cars in the game. Of course, game licenses do not allow cars to lose doors, have heavily deformed sides, or even lose parts, but nonetheless, visually, the damage to the car in a collision will be clearly visible, and the Need For Speed series hasn't pleased us with this for a long time.
The transition from dirt tracks to asphalt ones and the differences in handling a supercar and, for example, a muscle car are well implemented. Of course, The Run does not claim the laurels of a racing simulator, but it cannot be called entirely arcade (unlike Hot Pursuit).
New Engine
We certainly owe the destructibility in the game to Frostbite 2.0, which, besides this, draws a mediocre picture! The rendering of distant objects is as bad as it gets (at the 2005 level). As in Hot Pursuit, for some reason, there is no texture filtering and anti-aliasing, which also spoils the picture. We can only hope for a patch for the PC version that will fix these issues. The landscape design is very atmospheric — we were just in a hot desert, and now we're on ice trying to keep the car from skidding, and the rural landscapes change to urban ones before our eyes. Definitely, the landscapes of NFS: The Run can compete with those of Test Drive Unlimited 2.
The vast array of different cars is also pleasing: there are "ordinary" cars, supercars, concepts, and many others. The cars themselves are rendered very clearly and beautifully, surpassing the level of detail seen in Shift 2: Unleashed. There aren't many racing modes in the game: time trials with one or several opponents, checkpoint races also against opponents or for time. However, the familiar drift and circuit races from the Need For Speed series don't fit into the concept of this game.
Story and Gameplay
The game does have a storyline, and it's quite reasonable, so you can start playing right away — you won't regret it. Moreover, as you progress, it unlocks some rare cars. For those who have completed the main campaign, the developers offer Challenge Series — this is where the real space is! Many tracks from this series didn't make it into the main campaign, and completing them will be very interesting. Challenges are available for co-op play with friends online via the Autolog service, as well as solo. The interconnection of all races in the game is significant, and initially, the choice of cars is limited — all the supercars await you to complete the main tracks with simpler cars. Definitely, this provides additional motivation to strive to excel in each race. In any case, no race will leave you indifferent!
Maximum scripting — this is how each race in the game can be briefly characterized. Initially, when you go through a track for the first or second time, you don't notice it, but when trying to earn platinum medals, you see that every action in every race is scripted — the police act in a strictly defined manner, in a specific place. And the sports car that was racing a couple of hundred meters away from you the whole race will slow down at the finish line and graciously let you pass. Aggressive fighting on the track isn't the most reasonable action either, as our opponents can crash their cars as much as they want — they'll immediately continue the race, and the notorious "catch-up" will make them catch up with you in a couple of kilometers, despite all efforts to pull away.
***
Need For Speed: The Run is a very ambiguous game. On one hand, the laziness and sloppy work of the developers from EA BlackBox are clearly visible. On the other hand, its first playthrough strongly resembles those very first games in the Need For Speed series. But that's only for one time, after which you'll notice the scripts, triggers, catch-up, and other delights from EA Black Box programmers. When will they learn something new?
