After spending a bit of time with Need for Speed: The Run, it's readily apparent that publisher Electronic Arts' contemporary habits have had an influence on this iteration of the long-running franchise. Your mileage may vary on whether that influence is something you want, but either way you can expect the ubiquitous EA online pass, a persistent profile with news updates, Burnout-style takeouts and XP gains (even though those aren't the focus of the game) and a story mode that appears quite similar to the “edgy” yarn that Fight Night: Champion attempted to deliver.

The Run offers a few modes of play, including the titular story mode, some challenge tracks and a suite of online races. The interface seems to work relatively well, allowing you to get into what you want fairly quickly. I was pleased to see minimal interference from the usually pesky EA servers, and the “autolog” that tracks your persistent stats, levels and unlocks does a good job of showing how you're doing.

The story mode seems to be setting up some kind of mash-up between Cruisin' USA (remember that one?) and The Fast and the Furious movies, complete with rugged protagonist, bombshell female dispatcher, mafioso bad guys, fast cars and a cross-country race for money. This type of narrative change actually worked quite well for Fight Night: Champion, so it's intriguing to see if it can work in the racing genre. The story begins with your character, Jack, in grave danger, and it pretty much drops you right into the racing. An effective cold-open, but we'll see where it goes.

The early races take the form of either takeover challenges (passing a series of fellow racers) or timed checkpoint affairs. It's not exactly reassuring that the cars often feel sluggish and unresponsive, even with more nimbler vehicles. The races seem quite winnable, but it just felt like traffic was a little too hard to avoid, even with lots of time. Off-road handling was also quite fussy, even with a more powerful car. It will be interesting to see how the controls fare when unlocking more cars and racing on tracks with a little more going on.

There is a decent selection of cars available, and you're able to generally use what you have unlocked for the story mode. Manufacturers in the game include Chevrolet, Nissan, Audi and Porsche. One smart design choice around unlocking cars stuck out to me, and that involved a “bonus wheel” for online races. The race winner sometimes got XP bonuses, but they could also win an unlockable car — a nice motivator to go for the podium.

Early Outlook

I'm interested to see where the story mode goes, but I am a little wary of the vehicle handling so far. The feature set appears to be well-conceived, so it'll be interesting to find out if this game has got some legs.