Need For Speed has infamously been a series with some games that are hits, while many others are misses. This is definitely a miss sadly.
The "Cannonball Run" concept in The Run, albeit neat, falls pretty flat here for a few reasons. Before that though, I should point out, that its concept is okay, and it kind of works, and is fun for the first few "levels", but quickly gets dull and repetitive.
Now, for the many ways it falls flat. Rather than go for a more open-world approach, like the Crew, when it comes to the US map... the route across the US is predetermined without much deviation. There are little shortcuts on each "level", but they only go off-road for a little bit before veering back to the main roadway after a short distance. Further, the way the game works is it's broken up into chunks, every so many miles would be a chunk, where each chunk has a starting point and a finish-line. Now, each chunk has a certain goal or objective... problem is, with so many chunks, and so few objectives, it won't be long before it's the same thing over and over and over again.
It'll start with "pass x-amount of opponents", so if "X" is 8, you have to pass 8 cars before the finish-line. This particular objective I saw a HUGE issue with, since the game has you thinking that you're trying to pass some 250 or so cars all the way across the US, and that you can improve your position by passing other cars... but here's the problem, on several "chunks", I'd pass the required amount of cars, be it 10, or 8, or whatever... and zip down the road, and there were NO OTHER RACERS to pass. This is where the linearity REALLY hurts... if you pass the 10/10 required, you should have an option to have other cars showing up before the finish-line for that "chunk" to better you position that much more, like 13/10 or 15/10... what this does, is MASSIVE scripted linearity, forcing you to be a specific position in the race at the end of each chunk. When you realize this, it takes 99% of player freedom away, and makes you realize you're playing more a progressive storyline than you are a racing game!
Other "chunks" have you "making up lost time" which boils down to get past 5, or however many, checkpoints within a given time and then cross the finish-line for that "chunk". Another is battle overtaking, or whatever they call it, where there'll be 3 cars that you have to overtake in a certain section of the current "chunk" within a certain time-limit, this one falls flat though, because even if you're ahead of that one car most the time, if it gets even an centimeter ahead of you by the time runs out, it resets and you have to overtake it again; then multiply that experience by 3 or however many cars they decide you have to overtake... once you overtake the number of "battle overtakes" requires, you then have to zip up, and again, cross a finish-line for that "chunk".
As you zip across the country, you will come across gas-stations where you can swap between cars... this concept is okay, so long as you don't swap to the wrong car for that "chunk", because gas-stations are few and far between, and unless you get reset, you're stuck with the car you swapped to, all the way through future "chunks", all the way up until you reach another gas-station.
They also went all-in on the "arcade racer" and give you "resets" per "chunk" that equate to "lives" in the old coin-operated arcade-games. So if you have 5 resets for a "chunk", you can only wreck, go off the road, or force-reset yourself back to the track 5 times, any more than that and you lose.
There's also XP that you gain to raise your driving-level, which unlocks other cars, profile backgrounds, profile images, etc... but it's a toss-away idea in this game, as you more than likely won't want to play this game more than once.
It should also be noted that this game has HORRIBLE rubber-banding AI... meaning, you'll pass a bunch of cars, those same cars will suddenly all overtake you even on a subtle hiccup or veering off the road a bit... they'll zip way up ahead, but suddenly for no apparent reason, all suddenly decide to slow down so that you can catch up and give you the illusion of struggling to pass the same cars you already passed before. And upon testing the various difficulties, there's some difference between difficulties but not much... so "easy" is only an eyelash below "normal" difficulty, making it more of a placebo-effect.
I honestly went into this game excited to try it and play it, and thinking that everybody just gave it a bad wrap (because at full-price, yeah they were ripped off, no arguing it)... thinking it'd be neat to be able to QTE a human-player through a storyline, to see the sights going across the US, like stopping off in Las Vegas, etc. The problem is the illusion of choice this game barely tries to give you... would have been better, even in "chunks" to allow us to pick between 3-5 different roads in each "chunk", with the ability to take a side-road to hop over to another road... along with the ability to pit-stop when you want to, rather than having everything so painfully scripted, even down to, again, the exact place in the race you'll have at the end of each "chunk:".
Ultimately, if you're morbidly curious or a die-hard fan of the "Cannonball Run" movie, this game might be a pick-up if you can find it in the bargain-bin... but otherwise, even on an extreme sale, this game is a hard pass as there's plenty of other better racers out there; best ones being open-world racers, but even for linear/non-sandbox racers, there's still tons better.
PS - Can't say whether or not this works with ReShade... I couldn't keep myself interested enough in this title to even bother tinkering with it to find out... but it is worth noting, at least that's one thing that's okay about the game... the graphics are decent even on their own, even without the use of ReShade.
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