Need for Speed: The Run has a prologue level of sorts that establishes protagonist Jack's situation – a guy in trouble with the wrong people, looking for a way out. He finds it in a cross-country race with a purse of 25 million dollars. But where The Run really begins is in a warehouse garage off the Embarcadero in San Francisco. You pick a car and roar out onto the street, greeted by the light of an early morning in the city. It's not exact, by any means, but developer Black Box nails the feel of San Francisco's streets well. And then crazy sh*t starts happening all around you, in the best way possible, as more police cars than I think San Francisco actually has are chasing you and dozens of other cars toward the Golden Gate bridge.
Need for Speed: The Run has more to it than The Run itself, with some fairly standard multiplayer and a Challenge mode. Multiplayer is more bumper-cars. It ditches the rewind feature of The Run for Hot Pursuit style respawns. It makes for a faster and less frustrating experience, but the same underwhelming course design doesn't make things particularly interesting. The challenge races share almost all of the same issues as The Run proper.
And issues are what The Run has more of than anything. Need for Speed: The Run's biggest problem is how much it has in common with a real drive from one end of the US to the other. There are a few bright spots here and there, but it's mostly full of unexpected stops, lots of flat tires, and too many assholes on the road. This isn't the worst Need for Speed, but it can't place against other, better racers from the last year
