Need For Speed is one of Electronic Arts’ most popular franchises. Inspite of the series’ strict release schedule and EA’s corporate meddling, Black Box has tries it’s best to keep the series relevant. Need For Speed: The Run was their last attempt before EA took everything away from them, and gave it to some rich kids on the block. It is, although, considered one of THE worst games bearing the NFS moniker, and that makes me think- is that really the case? Did Black Box really lose it, and was their last attempt not enough? Let’s just start the engine, amd find out.THE PRESENTATION: The Run runs on EA’s Frostbite engine, pun not intended. This is one of the game’s biggest problem- Frostbite was an FPS engine, not meant for arcade racers. The engine gave the developers a LOT of problems during development, amd it shows. The game doesn’t have well-designed roads, or even well-made models. The environments look really good, but the character models, the details and everything else is just ugly. Black Box though, does everything in it’s power to make the game enjoyable. The game still has the Black Box feel, the consistent style and tone that has made it to almost every NFS game. The drowning feels natural, it’s very tight highthe races are very diverse and use environmental hazards that come into play- Independence pass, for example. This type of race just defines the way Black Box makes an NFS game. It’s like not only the racer is your enemy, but so is the entire level. And the atmosphere, OH MY GOD, THE ATMOSPHERE- it just makes you know the game feel THAT good. The music is also fine, it’s not that good, not on the NFS Most Wanted or Carbon levels of good but it’s passable, average. So, for me, the presentation is fine so far, it’s not great, it has its style.THE GAMEPLAY: That bringsme to the gameplay. Now, NFS: The Run is an Arcade racer and, you know, it’s basically a cross country race. So, instead of driving through the city or on very short, dense roads, you’re driving on long stretches of road, on highways and such. The gameplay handling model is very tight and it’s cool. The cars are not as easy to handle as they would be in a Burnout or some of the older Need for Speed games, and may take some time to getting used to. Time you don’t get for reasons I will talk about later. The game is divided into a story mode and the Challenge series. I’ll talk about the story later, but as for the Challenge mode, its kinda like in the same as the challenge series in the older NFS games. You complete a set of racing events in specific cars chosen by the game. The challenge is to complete the race, or reach the destination in a short amount of time, so on and so forth. Overall the racing is fine if good, it’s could have been better, but it is better than the story.THE STORY: I won’t spoil much about the story- it’s boring anyway. It’s about a racer ont he run from a mob who partakes in a race across the country. It’s really short, and rather useless. The concept was good, but it’s botched by very bad voice acting, bad cutscenes and a long list of that, in the end, make the script feel like an afterthought. Adding to this is a necessity to add Quick Time Events while not in your car, and yeah, it’s nothing to write home about.THE VERDICT: Need for Speed The Run is a good game. Although the story is bad, Frostbite sucks, and there are a lot of bad design decisions, it’s worth playing. Seriously, give it a shot.