After what can only be described as an abysmal effort on Need for Speed: Undercover, developer EA Blackbox aims to take players for an unforgettable ride in Need for Speed: The Run. The game places you in the shoes of Jack, a man who gets in over his head with the sharks, and needs a way out of a sticky situation. He owes a king’s ransom to some seedy people, and the only way he can redeem himself is by racing from San Francisco to New York in an illicit street race called The Run. EA Blackbox touted it this last summer at E3 as a cinematic experience that would take the player from the cockpit of exotic supercars to heart-pounding foot-chases through grimy back alleys as police try to end Jack’s race for good. It’s a game that borrows heavily from cinema classics like Bullet, Cannonball Run and Gone in 60 Seconds, but does it stand on its own two feet thematically and, most importantly, mechanically?

Brace yourself; the run is coming

The answer is a resounding no, an emphatic no at that. I can’t recommend this game with a straight face as it would most likely call into question my journalistic integrity by the legions of internet whistleblowers. There is so much that is wrong with NFS: The Run that the aspects that do well enough cannot muster an ounce of spark to recoup this disaster of a game. Not one piece of the game can take all the blame, because nothing measures up in all areas. The graphics are a hodge-podge of lackluster car designs, muddy character models and effects that can bring the frame-rate down to a crawl. The story itself consists of thematic patches stapled together in the crudest manner possible. And the story itself is so non-existant that it can’t possibly be what EA envisioned for its cinematic racing opus that they proclaimed about at E3 ’11. It feels like an outright lie.

The single-player campaign is a quick run-through of the United States rife with repeated stages, incoherent geography and an infuriating amount of rubberband AI. The only redeeming factor of the campaign is that some of the landscapes are quite beautiful and breathtaking at times, but these can produce inconsistant framerates. Some of the best stages take place in Colorado, South Dakota and Pennsylvania, but each of these stages present their own problems that sully whatever good qualities they present.

Racing teeters between an average arcade experience and purely broken design choices. For example, the designers included a rewind feature that sets your car at the beginning of a checkpoint if you crash or if you want to manually reset. It’s an okay idea at first until it becomes apparent that the game will reset you automatically for whatever reason it deems appropriate. There were countless instances where I would be bumped off the road and into the outer boundaries. Even if I was in no danger of crashing, the game would reset my vehicle at the start of the checkpoint. For being an “illicit street race” The Run is sure stringent about forcing you to race the way it wants you to race. It’s a broken system that soils the normal difficulty and makes a potential attempt at the extreme difficulty almost laughable.

Typically the stage designs are supposed to suit different types of cars. Open highways are made for supercars; urban areas call for the nimble sport cars, and technical tracks require exotics for their quick acceleration and handling capabilities. Gas stations (used to swap vehicles) litter the stages throughout The Run, but their placements are inconsistent and essentially defeat the purpose of switching cars. For instance, a gas station would appear on a stage best suited for supercars, however, the next stage caters better to the sport or exotic cars. Let’s just say that no matter how powerful the Porsche 918 RSR is, it will always get its license plate handed to it against a less powerful Nissan 370Z on an uphill chase complete with hairpin and crest turns that will surely send that Porsche to a fiery grave if the driver isn’t cautious. That particular scenario happens in this game, and any racing enthusiast knows that is a lose-lose situation. Those not familiar with this would be best off to watch the anime series, Initial D for some perspective. (Although, as a cool nod to the series, the AE 86 Trueno is included in this game’s car roster.)

Don’t stand so close to me

Along with the inconsistent stage design and terrible car restrictions are the awful AI drivers. This is the kind of racing game that doesn’t test your mettle so much as it tests your patience. Every race is a battle of attrition, and a win most often comes with a stroke of luck. Don’t be surprised to see cop SUVs take 90 degree turns going 170 mph, and the same can be said about the mob vehicles that also fire bullets at you. The game is more interested in trolling your efforts against the mobsters as it will boldly tell you to avoid the bullets, which is a ridiculous request since the mob cars will stick with you constantly.

The challenge portions of NFS: The Run are passable at best with the lack of the story line, and the selection of cars are at least appropriate for the level at hand. Challenge races will test drivers with certain criteria, and XP and vehicles are awarded when certain goals are met. However, you’re still dealing with the AI, and that is still a terrible downside. On the other hand, the online mode is the only saving grace for the game. The resets still apply in this mode, but EA Blackbox found ways to break this even further. Online opponents will race extra dirty since the resets are terribly inconsistent. Sometimes the reset will occur at, before or after the point of the crash, so races essentially come down to who’s better at bumper cars.

A magnificent troll of a game

Then there is the problem with the elite racers, characters that race in specially tuned cars with more aggression (see: scripting AI from hell). These particular races are usually 1-on-1 affairs save for a couple that include partner AI opponents, but these groups are kept very small. However, there’s a very confusing logic to EA Blackbox’s approach with these races. There are 205 opponents in The Run, and you will end up racing a few of these elite racers two different times. It makes absolutely no sense having passed these racers before only to face three of them again toward the end. It’s as if The Run allowed them a second go at you for kicks and giggles.

Each of these elite racers have their own backstory, but there’s literally no dialog between them and Jack. There’s no character progression, and their motives for joining The Run can barely fit in a fortune cookie. EA Blackbox also had the foresight to include the most base racial stereotypes to fit these characters from the mexican cholo to the black boxer to the white people who are in the race since they’ve nothing better to do. It’s all very amateurish, and I’d be surprised if they didn’t outsource the story work to a white high-school sophomore in Connecticut whose cultural exposure consists of every terrible action movie ever made.

The bottom line

EA Blackbox exhibited amateur hour at its finest with Need for Speed: The Run, a game hardly deserving of the NFS moniker  I can’t rightly say this is worth a rental, because Criterion’s year-old Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit is miles ahead of this game. Even Most Wanted would be a kinder proposition. Perhaps EA should leave their racing series in the capable hands of Criterion Slightly and Mad Studios (NFS: Shift).

This is a banner game for poor design and lackluster execution. The “cinematic sequences” that EA gloated about are nothing more than shoddy button-mashing sessions of uninteresting action set-pieces. If there’s one game to steer clear of this holiday season, Need for Speed: The Run is that game.

Review Statement: Reviewed on Xbox 360. A retail copy of this game was provided to VGW by the publisher. 

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