Over-hyped game from a worsening studio. Franchise needs a new lead developer
Fun!
Last year's Hot Pursuit remake was a step in the right direction for the Arcade side of the NFS franchise. Is was fast, fun and addictive. Both online and off.
BlackBox Studios follow on with The Run. A true victim of it's own hype. Let's start where the first mention of this game did. The engine.
Using DICE's brand new Frostbite 2 engine I expected great things from this game just in the looks department if nothing else and I just didn't get it. The game looked no different to any other NFS game this gen and after an hour of playing it felt like the engine was designed around the use of pointless Quick Time Events and the ability to look pretty if you are looking at nothing but the environment.
The HUD disappears behind the beautiful lighting effects so often that when I'm, for example, trying to stay ahead of one opponent, I can't actually see the split timer on the HUD to see how far ahead I am!
The checkpoint/rewind feature is an interesting idea, but the events that can trigger it are so inconsistent in how they are forced upon you that you are pulled out of the driving experience worrying that the slightest slip might cause you to watch the rewind screen for several painful seconds waiting to get back into the race.
That takes me nicely into the loading screens!
OH MY GOD!
At the time of writing this, i am around half way through stage 5 of the "run". My total time so far in race has been 52minutes, and I am sure that I have spent more time in loading screens than I have in the car.
The car select is rediculous.
Early on, you are forced into a time trial through a long dusty desert back road
- You know, I should mention, with all my complaining, that different road types and enviromental factors do contribute to the handling of the car in a very realistic way (as much as the cars don't handle realistically) -
right, desert back road.
Problem is, there is no way for me to change my car from the rear wheel drive Mustang that I chose at the start, to a 4 wheel drive car that I needed for what was essentially a rally! That was badly thought out in my opinion. In fact, you don't have a single opportunity to change my vehicle until two races later!
following on from Hot Pursuit, and it being BlackBox, I was hoping for a bit of a special game when it was first announced.
But, in my humble opinion, the only thing that BlackBox managed to do with this game, was make the beautiful Frostbite engine look worse than I thought would be possible and prove that they are washed up as a Need for Speed developer.
Hopefully, whatever criterion are doing now, EA will be throwing money at them to bring us another fantastic remake of one of the classic NFS games.