GamesCom 2011 – Community Reporter Mat Jones Need For Speed: The Run Review
dmcdonagh
2011-08-22
The EA press conference footage of Need for Speed: The Run wasn’t representative of the real experience. The tech is exactly the same; the graphics are exactly the same. The only thing different is that the demo didn’t feature the character’s car continually crashing into massive pieces of stone.
I had a chance to play two levels and by play I mean get halfway through and then find it impossible to progress.The new checkpoint-specific time rewinds are invaluable for getting a little pattern memorisation down and helping you to figure out difficult sections, but they don’t grant the power of making you better at the game. If (like me) you don’t have the skill level needed to move on further then you’re out of luck. The Run is far more of a hardcore experience than the new focus on story would initially suggest.
The premise allows for interesting set pieces that would have felt oddly hammered in otherwise. A level that we had a behind closed doors look at was the one shown during the EA press conference. This was assumedly about midway through the game and the difficulty was ramped up hugely from another segment closer to the start we had an attempt at. Beginning with your character Jack comprehending the snowy and dangerous route ahead of him, the narrative is quickly moved on by a speeding Audi R8 bursting through a set of barriers into a snowy route due for avalanche shelling. The footage seamlessly shifts from cut-scene to action and the two-man race starts.
Because it’s a cold climate, obviously there’s ice on the road and this makes the car skid out of control terribly. This adds another layer of challenge to cornering and manoeuvring. It’s topped only by the on-the-fly alterations to the content of the levels. Developers EA Black Box are really talking up how using the Frostbite 2 engine is allowing them to dynamically alter the levels to offer new obstacles on the fly. The avalanche section is a great example of this because of the massive falling rocks that crash onto the map and give the player a miniscule space to move through. You’re not even able to slow down in this section or you’ll be buried under the piles of snow falling behind you so the speed just adds to the tension even further.
