Need for Speed: The Run

As a racing game this is definetly in the "Arcade" category.Most damage that occurs to the selected vehicle appears to have no effect on performance unless the crash is so severe that a restart level is activated.Braking on an apparently icy road at 200 mph brings the vehicle to an incredibly abrupt halt!
However,it cannot be denied that the actual gameplay is very entertaining.Graphics,sound effects (Turn off the Dire Music!)and gameplay are top drawer.What's not top drawer are the annoying scenarios that occur between some levels involving your character,fighting,running,jumping and other such nonsense.Truly Tiresome!The long time waiting for each level to load is also below par in this day and age and spoils the flow of the game.
In my view a great game to play for 30 minutes or so but fails in the addictive quality category that excellent racing games have going for them.

I had been waiting a while for this game to come out and looked forward to playing, however I actually didn't enjoy playing it!

Story - 4/5, The game does have a good story too it but it isn't the whole point of the game. You have to race from San Franciso to New York for a $25,000,000 purse and pass 199 car's throughout the (sarcastic) 3,000 miles of aspalt! You play as Jack who is a marked man and is at threat by the mobs, so he enters the race to settle it down!

Gameplay - 1/5, Yes, this is what I am saying is wrong with the game. Everycar does feel different and drive different, but lot's of cars oversteer and loose control at slow speeds, so you lose time and car's pass you. Muscle car's are a total waste of time (except from the Shelby Cobra Daytona), they just drive the same speed of any other car but they are too slow arround corners. There are parts where you play on foot, which are kind of fun but useless because you just press a button (I thought need for speed was just a plain driving game). There are often police helecopters and the mob that chase you with a gun which make you crash because you are forever avoiding gun fire and crashing into things, making you waste all 5 reset's at the start of the level! Completing through the run can be done in a matter of a few hours and is no-where near 3,000 miles, more-like not even 300 miles, and the challenge series is fine but it get's boring quickly!

Fun - 2/5, I would say that the game is pretty fun through the run, when you just drive arround quite roads but when there is gun-shot or oncooming traffic, it's waaayyy too much! The challenge series is also something cool to play too after you complete the run!

Sound - 3/5, The engine sound is very alike the past need for speed games but the music used makes it too-much like a hollywood movie than a game and most soundtracks don't even fit the tracks you race at!

Graphics - 2/5, To say that the game run's on the frost-bite 2 engine, the graphic's don't look anything like it! The car modelling is very good and im not saying that the world modelling is bad either but in mountain levels, the textures of rocks and snow is very low resolution and fuzzy but the game runs at 1080p, I would much sooner see the game running at 720p but with high resolution texutres and better anti-aliasing. Also the colour sceme is too dark and full of dull colours, so that I can't even see the damn roads! Most wanted was released like 6 years ago on a past-gen console and even had better graphics, what have EA done?

Online Play - 1/5, What the heck! they expect me to pay 800 microsoft point's to play online with this game whic his like £6 when I already paid £39.99 for the game itself. Why would I pay that after I tried out the trial and it just cut-of my connection between races so that I couldn't earn any achievements there!

Conclusion - I give this game a 2.2/5 (2/5 on amazon) and don't advise you buy this game unless you wan't to give it a try and see what you think, It just wasn't fun to me most of the time. If you don't have Need for Speed most wanted or one of the old Undergrounds, buy those instead. Don't waste your money, We need an NFS Underground 3 or NFS Most Wanted 2!

This series has been sold down the line by E.A, a lot like many other successful series and is annoying to play an unfinished game with a load of bugs. The graphics are from the frostbite 2 engine and so are alright as it can't be played to its full potential on the Xbox 360. The A.I are usually ok but sometimes catch up with from afar. The story is almost nonexistent and a complete waste of game time, with the quick time events bringing annoyance when you don't hit a button in time and you have to start it all over again. The loading times are unacceptably slow with only a few minutes of game time from each load.

Overall i wouldn't recommend this game, only until the game is able to buy for a few pounds, though the driving is somewhat fun and realistic the rest of the mechanics let the game down.