A coast-to-cost race, ala Gumball Rally, is fertile ground for interactive entertainment. The problem is solving the complexity behind its potential and then transforming that concept into an accessible experience. EA Black Box, no stranger to the racing genre with a decade’s worth of Need for Speed titles under their belt, seems to have solved this problem with The Run, their latest entry in the Need for Speed franchise.
The Run‘s narrative felt focused and unobtrusive. Owing a significant amount of money to some less than patient mob guys, Jack Rourke is in a dangerous spot. His method of acquiring funds arrives via Sam Harper, who grants Rourke an opportunity to compete in a 3000 mile race from San Francisco to New York City. After an opening cinema the story bits were mostly limited to radio communication between levels, but Black Box went all out in constructing The Run’s cut scenes. Both Sean Farris (Rourke) and Christina Hendricks (Harper) acted their parts in real time, and not only were their motions captured but their eyes, facial expressions, and general likeness as well. That might sound excessive for a racing game, but if Uncharted has taught us anything, great tech and accomplished actors can do wonders for a game’s credibility
The Run‘s car selection is impressive from the get-go. Whereas other racing games shower the player in disappointment by kicking them off with the most unappealing car they could license, The Run kicks off with a striking suite of fast cars and, somehow, they only get more impressive as the game progresses. In our demo session the opening selection boasted new models of the BMW M3, Mustang Shelby, Camaro, Porsche 911, and, my personal favorite, an old school Datsun 240z. In the two hours I progressed through the campaign I also piloted a tricked out Exige and yet another Porsche, and through gas stations mid-race or via narrative circumstance, The Run provides ample opportunity to switch vehicles as it progresses. No, it doesn’t really make much sense how Rourke has access to a wide selection of high dollar vehicles but, honestly, it doesn’t much matter either.
When I pictured a coast-to-coast race, I expected a handful of races stationed in a few big cities along the way. My personal concept of a racing game was a series of tracks, levels basically, arranged with modest effort and design to be replayed. I had no idea how that would work as a game, but thankfully Black Box conceived a master plan beyond my infantile suppositions. The Run is indeed separated into different stages, but also different connected levels within those stages. It hits major landmarks like Nob Hill in San Francisco and The Strip in Las Vegas, but it also revels in the spaces in between. The Run is as much about decimating the countryside as it is blazing through city streets. By embracing both angles Black Box opened a cornucopia of potential for each race.
The first stage, for example, tasked me with getting to Las Vegas from San Fran and making it to 150th place by then. In the opening race, getting out of San Francisco, I was tasked with gaining eight positions before the ‘race’ ended at a checkpoint several miles ahead. If I overtook eight cars, I proceeded to the next race. If I failed, I did the race again. For the next race, Interstate 580, Harper called and said I had to make up some time. The Run translates that command into a familiar mechanic, hitting a bunch of checkpoints before time runs out. Checkpoints carried the same weight as the previous race; pass and proceed, or fail and repeat. By the fifth race I was in Yosemite on El Portal and had to overtake specific cars in a set amount of time. If I was ahead of that car when the clock ran out, I got to keep going. Winding up behind the target car brought failure and a prompt to repeat the race.
The AI opponents could be dealt with in a myriad of ways. The most obvious is to engage nitrous and blow right by them, but other more devious methods are available. In the earlier stages, making any sort of contact seemed to be the best way to make them slow down and allow me to pass. Later, especially around hairpin turns on El Portal, I resorted to T-boning them. By the time I made it to Vegas the cops were actually either pulling my opponents over or making them spin out. Different challenges called for different approaches, I obviously wasn’t as intent on taking out the other drivers on simple “advance eight positions” races, but that’s not to say you wouldn’t be able to play The Run how you like anyway.
Other racers aren’t your only obstacles. Need for Speed has always been fairly adept at throwing traffic at the player, and The Run is no exception. Weaving in and out of traffic presents a great risk to reward ratio, not to be outdone when combined with enraged cops. Police cars have a tendency to seem super human – I noticed several occasions where they would suddenly speed ahead and try to slide sideways in front of me, as if scripted – which is to say police are another way to increase difficulty. They also set up road blocks which can be avoided with reasonable reaction speed, though sometimes my fellow racers trapped me into unavoidable collisions. Ice, dirt, and rain, ground surfaces also come into play, albeit with a slight arcade-style lean so your Lamborghini remains competitive when blowing through dirt roads. Other mega hazards pop up too; we’ve all experience the controlled avalanches from the demo’s mountain downhill race, but a desert dust storm proved to be another intense challenge.
One might expect failing and repeating to be a fairly common occurrence, but a built-in retry mechanic eases potential frustration. Each race has a handful of checkpoints, the latest of which you can go back to if you spin out and fall behind or destroy your car in a blaze of glory. That was especially handy for those times when what I thought was a hidden route was actually a fast track off a cliff, but also when my opponent edged me out at the last second. It seemed a true rewind feature would have been a bit too generous, so Black Box split the difference with a limited mulligan.
Experience points also come into play. Rourke can earn experience by passing opponents (clean and dirty), taking out police cars, not using retries, and, of course, winning races. Experience earned can be spent on extending Rourke’s nitrous meter or its ability to recharge, or external features such as personalizing one’s online profile icon or avatar items (we weren’t privy to the full range of in-game unlocks, as our build had everything maxed already).
The Run’s genre status, arcade or simulation, is also of particular interest. The correct answer is a little from column A and a little from column B. On one hand each car handles with reasonably accurate physics; a mid-engine Exige was prone to more spinouts and mismanagement than a torque heavy Camaro, for example. On the other hand every car seemed peculiarly glued to the road. Oh, sure, there were a bunch of times where I slid out into the grass, flew right off a cliff, or busted through a gate to a hidden path, but those seemed to be restricted to when I really screwed up. In most instances I was able to recover or bounce off a wall with modest braking and basic corner-in corner-out skill.
And then there’s the elephant in the room; those on foot, quick time-event sequences that drew heavy criticism when The Run debuted at E3. I played the campaign for over two hours, progressed through fourteen races, and only encountered one such event. Busted by the cops in Vegas and forced to make a quick break, Rourke had to break free, climb a wall, kick a cop in the face, and evade a nasty dog before kicking open a door for his ultimate getaway. Input was limited to button prompts, giving it a distinct Heavy Rain feel, though it was seemed pretty forgiving. In fact, if I blew multiple prompts (and I did, twice) it set me back five or so seconds without penalty. Easy, relatively unobtrusive, and a decent way to push narrative and break up the pace – I’m not sure what the fuss was all about.
Autolog, Criterion’s solution to making single player competitive, makes its return from 2010’s Hot Pursuit. It functions are mostly the same in The Run, but comes with a few upgrades. First and foremost, how you’re comparing your friend’s times on each track is visible in real time. If your time is in the red, you’re behind, but if it’s bleeding green you’re on track to get ahead. It’s an easy and ingenious solution to time management, and keeps the player’s focus on the road rather than wondering if you’re +2 or -3 in the middle of a race. Your total campaign time is also measured against your friends, adding incentive to complete every stage as fast as you possibly can (and yes, you can go back and cherry pick individual stages with different cars once the game is completed).
Needless to say DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine has done wonders for The Run’s appearance. Lighting and visual fidelity have taken major steps upward. A night time stroll through Las Vegas, for instance, boasted obvious allusions to the mega resorts on the strip, each bathed in the soft neon glow of excess. The draw distance was also quite impressive; on Northshore Road I could barely see the pack racing up a hill in front of me, but their headlight beams made the presence known at a great distance. Smaller touches, like the careful blend of autumn colors in trees and what I swear was a black ops jet flying through the southern Nevada desert, adds character to the spaces in between the big cities.
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And the biggest revelation about The Run? It felt like an action game. Most every racing game, no matter its particular gimmick, tends to feel like a connected series of races. Make no mistake, The Run is a connected series of races, but it conceals its disposition with an absorbing sleight of hand. The constant pressure to advance in the pack, the separate stages with both short and long term goals, the variety in objectives, communication with Harper, and brief rivalries with other drivers build toward a perceptible sense of mission and purpose found in character driven action games. It was the last thing I expected, but oddly what I most appreciated.
Challenge Mode
The Run’s campaign was fun – and may easily last at least ten hours if my two hour’s worth of progress was any indication – but a fairly extensive challenge mode is also available. Fifty challenges are available, and each essentially remixes assets from completed courses in the campaign. Adjustments can include but are not limited to different times of day, reversing the track, or challenging the player with a different task from what they encountered in the same parts of the campaign.
My interview with Executive Producer Jason DeLong took place during most of the challenge session, so I didn’t get a ton of time with Challenge Mode, but what I played felt solid. Double Black Diamond tasked me with going downhill on a track full of ice, and Traffic Jam, as the name implied, blasted me through a rural highway littered with pedestrian vehicles. The Gap, Hell on Wheels, Death Valley Run, and Porsche Attack were other challenges I didn’t get a chance to play, but one can get a peak at what’s inside through their rather expressive titles.
As one might expect, Autolog is also a part of challenge mode. Better yet, each challenge has a bronze, silver, gold, or platinum medal to unlock if you manage to complete the challenge in a set amount of time. To recap, for each challenge you’re competing against that challenges particular goal, your friend’s times at doing the same thing, and trying to nail down better times for experience granting medals along the way. Needless to say, there’s quite a bit packed in every single challenge.
Multiplayer
Multiplayer also looks to take significant strides in the realm of online racing. Both EA and Black Box were stressing The Run’s simplicity in regard to match making. There are no obvious hosts or servers or half empty rooms filled with affected anarchists to mess with. Black Box’s solution to the needless minutia and annoyance of the typical online experience was to create what they’re calling playlists (more on these shortly). The Run also features drop in drop out multiplayer, which not only ends races if player’s quit but also adds new players in competitive positions if someone gets dropped in mid-race.
Each playlist groups particular models and tiers of cars, like muscle cars, exotics, or exclusive Need for Speed models. From there players are grouped and assigned a series of three or four races, and each individual player has a set of optional challenges (like passing opponents while using nitrous) they can meet for extra experience points. There is also a bonus wheel after each playlist to incentivize players into sticking with the group. Boosts in experience or certain afflictions were said to be some of its results, but we did not get the opportunity to experience these first hand.
Experience earned in races can be spent on customization options – not only for cars but also for your personal icon. The closest analog I could think of were the little symbols that appear alongside player’s names in Call of Duty, though The Run’s options seemed to be a lot more customizable. Bonus awards – and experience points- can also be acquired after every race for doing things like not hitting traffic, spending the most time in first, going faster than anyone else, drifting, or stealing away first place.
The actual race is a bit of a double edge sword. On one hand, to the rejoice of many, there didn’t seem to be any rubber banding. Wrecking completely only set you back a couple of seconds, but you won’t be granted any mysterious bursts of speed or anything that would give you a competitive edge. On the other, The Run’s multiplayer was at its absolute best when there were four or five of us in a pack and we were repeatedly punishing each other. Watching someone wipe out into traffic and then driving under their airborne car was thrilling, and going into a cliff-side hairpin and demolishing another driver – sending him over the edge – was awesome. Banging around a couple cars like a ping pong ball was fun as well. Oddly the only lulls I experienced were when I was winning the race by a large margin; it was lonely at the top.
Overall The Run looks like it’s shaping up to be one hell of a game. Check back with us for a full review when it drops on November 15th
