Review | Need for Speed: The Run

Black Box is back! After spending a couple of years of the diversions of the stonking Skate games, the preeminent Need for Speed developer returns to its roots and the racing genre with The Run, a game which has been in development for over three years and looks to keep the franchise at the head of the arcade racing class.

With some of the best iterations of the decade long series behind them (including fan favourites Most Wanted and Underground), Black Box was the perfect developer to take the Need for Speed series into the stratosphere and with a longer development time than ever before, few would have been willing to bet against them.

Need for Speed The Run is more story based than most games in the series with the narrative focusing on the misadventures of Jack Rourke, on The Run (get it) from a shadowy and powerful criminal organization that will stop at nothing to get their revenge on poor Jackie boy.

Owing money he can’t possibly hope to repay, Jack turns to a highly illegal but highly lucrative race across America, attempting to beat 200 other drivers to New York and claim a cool $25 Million in prize money.

The Run features a number of features new to the series. The first, and most obviously pushed in early marketing, are “out-of-car” sequences. These sequences see Jack take part in various quick time events, God of War style and are spaced sporadically throughout The Run’s breakneck trip to New York, providing variations on the standard racing and chases that dominate the game.

While these quick time events do provide variation alright, they just don’t really fit in with the aesthetic and actually end up detracting from the game as Black Box can’t really make the game look all that good outside the car, with clunky textures and plain ugly environments at perfect opposition to the in-race visuals. Luckily these events are few and far between and are minor annoyances rather than the stop signs they could have been.

Happily the second addition to the Need for Speed canon iis much more successful. For the first time in the series, The Run introduces real-world locales, cities and highways, even if they are massively modified in some cases. Perhaps the strongest aspect of the game, the actual run across America is made incredibly compelling by the dynamic environments and the stunningly detailed world provides the player with a literal progression while also helping drive the game forward.

Despite being a game firmly set in the arcade style, The Run can get bogged down by too much scripting and a little too much AI, ahem, cheating. The story does sometimes get in the way, forcing players into particular situations during races that happen no matter what you do. A little more randomness with game world would have done wonders and made police chases or position racing all that more compelling.

As you move through the campaign (and that’s what this feels like), autolog will track your racing and level up your in-game avatar accordingly. The higher your level the more bonus abilities you unlock and the more points you can garner for your skills. The most obvious and handy of these is nitrous, which can make all the difference in the world.

Need for Speed The Run might not hit the same heights as Hot Pursuit or come anywhere near the legendary Burnout Paradise, but it is a polished, preened and passable way of spending your Xmas holidays.   [7.5]