I grew up with the Need for Speed franchise, first experiencing the racing series with the stunning NFS 5: Porsche Unleashed. After that, I didn’t miss any entry in the series. Sadly, as much as I enjoyed titles like Underground 1 and 2, not to mention the stunning Most Wanted, the newer iterations, like the ill-fated Pro Street or the cheesy Undercover, almost made me abandon the franchise completely.
Thankfully, Electronic Arts managed to avoid sending the long running series down the drain, and allowed new studios longer development times and more creative freedom, which resulted in the franchise taking some rather interesting turns, like with Shift 1 or 2, made by Slightly Mad Studios, or last year’s Hot Pursuit, made by Criterion Games.
Now, the old Black Box studio, which was responsible for many of the older NFS games, is back, with Need for Speed: The Run, a return to story-based experiences that’s using a brand new engine already seen in Battlefield 3, called Frostbite 2, and promises to deliver an adrenaline-filled narrative as well as the same arcade racing experience that made the series a classic.
So, is Need for Speed: The Run miles ahead of its competition or should it pull over to let other games pass? Let’s find out.
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| You play as the boring Jack ... | ... and go through all sorts of great adventures |
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Story
I absolutely loved the last three games in the NFS series, Shift 1, Hot Pursuit and Shift 2, largely because they focused just on the pure driving experience, letting you forge your own professional career, in the Shift titles, or explore your cop and racer talents, in Hot Pursuit.
Still, with The Run promising to deliver a pretty interesting story of an illegal race across the U.S. in the vein of the 1980s Cannonball Run movies, the game seemed to at least try and add something meaningful to the series and offer some reason for all the racing you’ll do during its actual stages.
Sadly, The Run falls drastically short when it comes to its narrative. While there are quite a lot of intense moments and stunning set piece moments, especially once you’re in the final stages of The Run, the characters are extremely forgettable.
You play as Jack, a guy who’s in some sort of trouble with the mob, and needs money fast. Luckily, his old time partner Sam, played by Christina Hendricks, offers him the chance to enter The Run, an illegal race from San Francisco to New York.
While it’s a straightforward plot for a racing game, the characters feel lifeless, we don’t find out anything interesting about either Jack or Sam, and, even worse, Jack comes across as a bit of arrogant guy, so you might even end up rooting for the mob until the story ends.
Sadly, not even the bad guys or Jack’s competitors in The Run are detailed, save for a few loading screens with bits of text right before you go up against them in special duels. In case you don’t pay attention, you’re not losing anything significant as most of them are walking, or should I say driving stereotypes, with the likes of spoiled rich girls looking for thrills, former professional racing drivers looking to prove their worth, or a mob guy that just wants to take Jack out of the race permanently.
I don’t want a story like Mass Effect or Skyrim in a NFS game, but The Run tries to amp up its action movie plot while forgetting that its characters have the personalities of cardboard cutouts.
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