As far as racers go, Need for Speed: The Run has a fairly lean selection of modes. The main mode, called “The Run,” is there to give you a focused single-player experience with some narrative elements that also has a small amount of replayability from its leaderboards and the different cars you can you use. Also present are a challenge mode that puts you on tracks from the main game, but with slightly tweaked goals, and an online mode with a reasonable selection of online playlists and unlockable rewards.

The Run

With The Run, developer Black Box is going with the Fight Night: Champion school of thought by having a narrative element that frames the main competitive experience. What has to be understood is that this story clearly just functions as window dressing around what are essentially standard racing game tropes — finish in first place, hit all of the checkpoints in time, overtake a rival, etc. Still, there are some cutscenes here and there, and there are also some brief QTE button-pressing sequences for certain dramatic moments. The QTE stuff probably shouldn't be in the game, but I guess the dev team thought they would try something different this time around.

These race types are alternated across various “stages” within what is essentially a cross-country race through the United States. Some stages focus on technical tracks that involve mountain roads and winding paths, others focus on highway racing that has some traffic avoidance, and yet others feature urban tracks with lots of hills and raw speed.

A nice touch in the game is the use of leaderboards to help create competition for each stage of the race. Potentially, users can compare times on these stages as well as the overall time and then try and use different cars and techniques to improve said time.

This mode also feeds into a driver rating that is ever-present in The Run, allowing you to unlock new cars, in-game accomplishments, Xbox 360 achievements and even tools to be used in races. It's a bit strange that abilities such as drafting another car are put behind this level requirement, as you'd think that having such basic driving abilities would be expected at the start. This might be a sign that some of the content in The Run is stretched too thin.

Challenge Series

The challenge mode in The Run has you playing race stages from the main game with slightly different win conditions. Usually, each track will require that you beat a certain par time or pass a specific number of cars. Sometimes you'll only have access to one car for beating the challenge, requiring you to get acquainted with a vehicle that you might not have used in the single-player experience. Beating the various par times — bronze, silver, gold — allows you to unlock more items for your persistent driver level.

Like the single-player mode, some of the objectives here do seem a bit on the arbitrary side. For instance, some tracks require passing five checkpoints in order to proceed, all the while avoiding traffic to do so. This can present a problem when trying to complete a race that the developer has designed to be finished in a certain time, as the difficulty in avoiding traffic at high speeds, even when you're initiating a turn well in advance, can lead to wrecks and restarts. This can create the feeling that the “simulation” time requirements aren't jiving with the “arcade” road conditions.

Online

The multiplayer side of The Run comes exclusively from its online mode. You'll have access to some basic playlists to start, which use most cars and tracks, but specific street racing and exotic car playlists require you to put in some time before they are available.

The “autolog” player hub from the single-player carries over here, and there are also some online challenges with XP and unlock rewards for driving in a certain way or finishing on the podium. You can form groups of friends to enter race lobbies, which is definitely appreciated, and the “bonus wheel” award (new car, XP points) for winning a race series is a neat touch.

The action online plays decently most of the time, but some frame rate and minor lag issues are definitely present on occasion. At one point, the action around a hairpin corner got so sluggish, it was impossible to tell who was where and what was happening. Additionally, I do find it a bit odd how the game drops you into a race series that is in progress. Rather than waiting for that individual circuit to finish, The Run just puts you on the track in last place, as everyone else may have been racing for 45 seconds. I guess you get some XP points just for hitting the road right away, but its sort of an empty feeling in that first race when you see no other cars around.

Final Outlook

The Run certainly seems to do what it can with the limited tools available, and the online mode seems to show some promise, even with some annoyances. Still, the vehicle handling issues mentioned in the initial impressions remain problematic, so look for the final review to see how everything stacks up.