Shame you're too busy trying to be first / not die - you might have been able to enjoy the scenary... |
There's a wide variety of different types of races that you'll be engaging in as you trek across the US. There's normal competition races, where you simply have to overtake a set number of people before you get to the end of the segment. There's time attacks, where you have to reach each checkpoint before the time runs out, there's battles, where you have to overtake someone and hold the lead until the time runs out, rival battles and a handful of other race types. You chop and change between them all as you race, so it keeps thing interesting so you're not finding yourself doing the same thing repeatedly. Unless you kept failing a segment, then you would be because you sucked ass.
Even without the snow, those tight windy corners are a bitch |
Of course, there's not just the single-player you'll have to contend with - The Run also comes with multiplayer and a 'challenges' section. In the online multiplayer, up to eight people can race against each other in 'sets' of tracks that follow a similar theme. These tracks are taken/based on the single-player tracks, although you only get to pick one car for the whole track. This adds a very tactical element to the game, as after the whole set is won there is an overall winner - do you try and go for the early or late wins, by choosing are that excels on only some of the tracks, or do you try and be an all rounder? Multiplayer also comes with 'Group' and 'Solo' objectives that you can try and complete across the whole set which will get you bonus xp, and you can also earn badges for all kinds of things that also net you xp. There's also a random reward given in each set. All these points count towards your overall Driver score, so it's all transferable.
The Challenges mode presents the player with a series of tracks, either from this game or from past games that you can unlock as you go along. In each track, there is a different 'type' of race that you can engage in, and the point is to try and earn medals by performing well. They are pretty tough, so beware - in the time attack modes, the sheer length of some of the tracks can sometimes have you falling behind. The Autolog also makes a triumphant comeback in this game as well, still acting as the social-networking / matchmaking service that it was in previous games. It'll still be keeping track of stats and times etc.., and comparing them to that of your friends. IT will also recommend tracks to you if someone has, for example, beaten your time and so you need to defend your crown.
Once again, the Police seem to have better cars than you do |
With only two weeks to go, we wonder how much can really change before release. Hopefully some optimisation issues like loading times etc... will be iron out, but other problems like the trigger-happy resetting may take some additional patching, who know. Still, as an addition to the franchise, there have been worse. Breaking up the race into bite-sized chunks, whilst making it hard to flow well, keeps people interested and keeps people wanting to make it all the way to the end. Not to mention all of the other stuff available for players, so Need for Speed fans should be pleased to say the least. Need for Speed: The Run is due out on PC, Xbox 360, Playstation 3 (And Wii / 3DS) on November 15th in North America and November 18th in Europe.
Most Anticipated Feature: Multiplayer is a lot of fun, so seeing what else they can do in that space will be interesting.