And it all seemed so great...
Need For Speed: The Run was supposed to give a new sort of life to the Need For Speed series. It should return the series to it's roots while still retaining a sense of something new.
This has indeed been acheived. The game feels like the old NFS series games. There are cops, there are supercars all over the place, and you have to go really fast on public roads to win, just as it should be. So far, so good.
[Story]
Well... I don't really know about the story. Was there even one? I got that you owed the mob money and could win a lot of money doing The Run, but what else? It seemed to me like a bad attempt at putting in a story. The game would have been a lot better off without one or with one at least as detailed as the one of NFSMW. The story mode is unfortunately also completed in around 3½ hours, which is too little.
[Gameplay]
Let's start out with what's alright: The racing.
The racing feels like a NFS, and it works just fine. It's as it should be, it feels fast and it feels dangerous. I have absolutely no complaints about that. I would recommend doing the non-story mode racing more than the story mode, but you have to do the story mode to get these races first.
Then comes the car chases. Excuse me? What is going on here? Just driving around being shot at by no-name mob in Porsche Cayennes blowing stuff up while being told to avoid gunfire? It's just... No. I don't get it. It's very impressive graphically, but gameplay-wise I felt like it was all just on rails and I had to go along. The car chases did not work at all, and that is a disappointment to me.
The worst disappointment, though, is the "press-key-to-not-die" cutscenes. This is such a horrible addition to the gameplay. It is nothing but annoying. Had the cutscenes been cutscenes, they would have been great, but I don't want to keep my attention fixed on hitting the right key at the right time here, I am playing to race.
[Graphics]
The graphics are stunning. What else would you expect from the Frostbite2 engine? It is simply an amazing game to look at. Black Box has done a great job with the modelling of cars as well as making a customization system that will not mean you are forced to doing hours of putting vinyls in place like you had to do on NFS ProStreet. The landscapes are great as well. Unfortunately, I do not live in the USA, not do I have any experience driving on the used roads, but it felt like the real roads had indeed been modelled rather than just created in a theme suiting the state or city.
If there was something I was missing, it was a driver's seat viewpoint. It's 2012, and you should be able to see the cabin of the car you are driving.
[Sound]
The sounds were great. The cars sounded like they were the real deal, and the music was great. Hearing "On the road again" by Canned Heat while driving through the farmlands was excellent.
[Overall]
The game is mediocre. It looks and sounds great, and as long as you're racing, it feels like a Need For Speed-title. The "press-key-to-not-die"-cutscenes and the poor attempt at giving the game a story are some bad ideas though, and the car chases are horrible. Putting Limited Edition cars in the game for "regular" users to see and be forced to buy to get access to is a dirty marketing trick to me as well.
Once again, EA games has made a game that could be so great but ended up being bad because it seems too rushed and not so well thought out. Half a year extra working on gameplay and story would have made this one of the best car games in recent years.
6.5/10 from me.
-Rolf