Review: Need For Speed: The Run

Need For Speed games have always been about racing – finding the best cars to tear up the streets and reap the rewards. Players wandered the streets, looking for races and competing in challenges.

Need For Speed: The Run brings a little Burt Reynolds into the series.

Well, not Reynolds himself, exactly. Moreso the movie The Cannonball Run that starred the actor back in the ’70s.

In the classic movie, a group of competitors raced cars across the country, with the winner claiming a prize.

In Need For Speed: The Run, you play a street racer who is forced to compete in a San Francisco to New York race against over 200 competitors. You’re in debt to the mob and a mysterious woman offers you this chance to wipe it out.

The race is broken up into stages, with each stage having several segments. With each segment of the race, you must meet certain goals. Often it is to pass a specific number of competitors, but it can also be a timed race (either pass one driver at a time within a time limit or meet certain checkpoints before time expires) or a head-to-head battle against a fellow racer.

The segments – in keeping with the actual terrain represented – offer straight stretches across deserts and plains, congested city areas and treacherous winding mountain roads. If you crash or leave the course or get stopped by the police, you must reset. Each segment is allowed 10 resets before it has to be re-run from the start.

Along the way, police departments who frown on street racing do what they can to impede your progress. Also opposing your ambitions is the mob, using everything up to a machine-gun-armed helicopter to prevent you from finishing. These are also gas stations scattered here and there where you can pull in and change cars.

Breaking up the driving action are somes on foot. These are mostly just quick time events, where the player is required to press a certain button or trigger when it is displayed onscreen. Failing to do so in a timely matter causes the event to fail. There are only a few of these, just enough to keep the storyline going.

In addition to the Run, Challenge races are available in each section of the Run that has been unlocked. These can be used to help  level up and earn new cars.

Need For Speed: The Run is not a driving simulator, which I regard as a good thing. It’s easy to get lost in customization in a simulator, tweaking your ride in every detail. This game offers rudimentary adjustments, mostly color choices and a selection of style kits.

Completing challenges and Run segments garners experience points, which builds your driver level, unlocking new rewards and challenges.

In keeping with the latest trend, Need For Speed: The Run requires an online pass (included with new copies) to play multiplayer, an effort to encourage gamers to purchase the game new, rather than used or as a rental.

Online play consists of playlists that contain several race sessions that players vote on. Playlists include The Underground – illicit urban street racing; Muscle Car Battles; and Mixed Competition, for a grab bag of races for all car types.

Racing games for me tend to wear thin pretty quickly, but the concept of the Run – an actual goal that can be visualized as the map shows progress across the country – made the chase a lot more fun.

Review: Need For Speed: The Run is a helluva ride.

Platform: PlayStation3/Xbox 360

Manufacturer: Electronic Arts

Rating: Teen

Score: 8.5 chilies