Need for Speed: The Run Hands-On Preview

Earlier today while I was hanging around EA’s busy booth, one of the booth babes asked me if I was interested in trying out the game. Since she was really pretty it made it that much harder to say no, and since I’m nice I told her sure, I’ll give it a shot. She then told me that if I can complete the mission in around 2 minutes, I would get a Need for Speed USB stick which looks a lot like a fancy car key. It’s a nice little prize, but if you ask me, I could have done without an attractive female looking over my shoulder.

As the mission loaded on this PS3 unit, the game gave me that Need for Speed Hot Pursuit feel, which I have grown to like a lot. Although as many of you already know from the EA press conference that this Need for Speed game is going to be nothing like any of the previous installments. In Need for Speed: The Run you play as Jack, a guy that is down on his luck and is in a very uncomfortable situation. The mob is closing in on him and your goal is to get from San Francisco to NY before it’s too late.

The mission that was demoed on the show floor starts of as a cinematic. The mob is after you and you must steal a police car to get away. You run up to the police cruiser, the new model Ford Taurus, and just as the cop turns around you kick him in the chest, jump in the car and take off; this is where the game kicks in and puts you behind the wheel.

You have about 5 minutes to get out of the city. Following a pre-defined route, you must evade the police as they try to chase and shoot you down from their helicopter. At least, you get a handy counter letting you know how much distance you still have to cover before you are “out of the city”. As you race down the streets of Chicago, the game sets off a number of what appears to be scripted events such as cars being blown up (by the heli gun fire) in front of you.

When you do finally do “get out” of the city, you find yourself crashed on the railroad tracks in front of a fast approaching train. This is where the game gets a bit more interactive than what we are usually used to in the NFS franchise. You now have to get out of the car before the train gets to it, thus effectively killing you. There are a number of different things you can try and the choice is yours. Move the analog stick to the left and press X, and Jack will try banging on the door to get out. If that doesn’t work, you’ll have to try another control combination as your time is quickly running out. Whether or not Jack can make it out of the car alive is completely up to the player, all you have to do is hit the right combination sequence.

Yaz the Marketing Assistant told me that the team wanted to do something totally different with this game. It’s not an open world where you can get out of your car and run around all of the time. There are definitely going to be parts of the game where you can get out and steal a car but this won’t be a Grand Theft Auto clone. Need for Speed: The Run is set to release on November 15, 2011.