The Need For Speed series are one of the best car racing series in my opinion. And all of the different series have brought some new experiences, from street racing to on the track racing. The one thing that Need For Speed: The Run brings you though that is different, is the fact that you are racing for your life, and not to catch some street racers, or be the best racer out there. You instead have to race to stay alive.
When you start out you are trapped, duck taped to your steering wheel, and of course, about to be killed. You are hanging in your car, and drop suddenly into a machine that will crush your car, and over all, kill you. And you have to escape the car before it is too late. So you have to do this button pressing part to get out. And if you do it right, you get out, and then you run to a car. You then steal the car, and get away from the mob who is trying to kill you. And eventually, if you are a good driver, you will escape them by passing right in front of a train, and basically using the train as a way to put a wall between you all.
This is the start of the career. And there is a lot of racing modes that you have to do in order across the US to win some money. That prize will help you get yourself out of being killed by the mob. Now before I go any further, I will say, the game is really easy, and it goes by really fast.
Now the first game mode would be just standard racing pretty much, be the first person to the finish line. You have to pass a certain amount of people in each one of these races. These can be from as high as 20 or as low as 3. And I like these races a lot, these are one of my favorite modes to race in, because I like doing those races with lots of drivers. And with all the drivers, each one you pass you can earn experience, and that is needed for things like upgrading your nitro, or getting new cars available.
But the next type of racing can earn you more rep, towards the end of the game at least. This is the one on one racing that you get to do. You have a rival and you have to overtake them. And there is another game mode similar to this I will explain later but this is the part where the game is the hardest. When you do one on one racing, the rivals are almost always more aggressive than you. But me, I am an aggressive driver, so I got by most of these without restarting. But this is the hardest part of the game for me, but I still liked it.
Now the next type of racing that was similar to the other, is where you have these other racers, who are not necessarily rivals. But they can be hard to race, depending on the map. This mode of racing is like time trial and regular racing put together. You have to pass a guy, and stay ahead until the clock runs out, or you hit a checkpoint. Now the clock starts when you hit a checkpoint, and sometimes the racer is far away, and this can be the hard part. But I really find the hard parts to be in the maps with mountains you can fall off of.
Now the last type is the time trials. You race the clock and makeup time that you have lost overtaking rivals, doing standard racing, or other things. Like running from cops, which are a big part in the game. But I am going to talk about that in a bit. This time trial racing is my least favorite racing mode, but it is easy. These time trials if you chose the wrong car, they can get hard, but if you chose the right car, the time trial is really easy. And usually I chose the fastest cars, with normal to easy handling. And every now and then I get a challenging handled car, but I still make it through these time trials with sometimes a minute to spare.
As a mentioned a bit ago, cops are a big part of the game. And this is where the cut scenes come in play too. But the cops are mostly in the career racing, just there trying to stop you. And these cops can give you experience if you take them down, which is really nice because of all the experience you get from them. But other than killing them, you get to run away from them on foot in cut scenes. Now these are really exciting, but annoying. You have to press certain buttons as well to get away, and if you don’t press the right ones, you get killed, or arrested. And I personally like this change, you get to get out of your car, and do other things than racing. Which is a big part of the experience of the game. Having more than just the racing is great, and I really love it.
Now this game, I have to say is one of my favorite games of the NFS series. But there are a few things I do not like. I don’t like how you can’t customize your car, this disappointing me because I was really looking forward to getting to customize all those cool, fast cars. Especially with the Limited Edition cars that you could only get with the Limited Edition version of the game, which I got. But I really did not like that at all, and it was something I really did not like about the game.
Even worse than that, was the fact the game went by so fast. I was hoping I get to drive all through the US, but instead, I just got to race in certain areas. But the want for racing in Nebraska where I live, was there. And it was just how it really is here, straight road through it with slight turns, but there was not much corn. Anyways, this game went by really quick, and I beat it in 2 days.
Overall, I would rate the game a 7 out of 10, because it had a lot of good things in it, but thing in there I really did not like, and that is what set it back. But the game was good, and the story line was great and full of action. And I really liked playing it, the only problem was that I got bored when I beat the game because of the lack of customization, and that the game went by really quickly, and was just really short.
About Isiah Thorne
