Need for Speed: The Run (Nintendo 3DS)

Good or bad I love the NFS games. This is a great version for the 3ds...a nice change from the karting games you only seem to get on this console.

Quick delivery and my son is in awe with it,did not put it down for few days.

These days, with family commitments and what not, playing my 3ds on my daily commute is about the only game time I get. NFS The Run gave me an opportunity to get my racing fix for this trip, and it does that pretty well. Now just to be sure, I'm just looking for an arcade-style racer than is fun - I'm not interested in realism, in tinkering with my cars or having some kind of "career" mode. For this, NFSTR delivers. Worst thing first: the story mode's mini games are really annoying - when commuting, it is hugely inconvenient to have your stylus at hand, and using your finger on the 3DS's touch screen is just tedious. Some of the mini-games are really brain-numbing as well - like smashing the same spot on the screen in order to break a window, or moving your 2D car along the roads to get petrol. Really, they should not have bothered - it adds nothing to the experience at all. The first few times the camera swings around to show your "Take Down" are really cool, but gets annoying too later on. There should've been an option to turn this feature off, as I found that the camera move make me lose control of the car, often resulting in a minor bump against the railing or some other less than efficient result. Also, taken down cops are replaced immediately, so going through the effort to bump one off is pointless, as he will be instantly replaced by another. It is better to just try and avoid them altogether. On the other hand, the actual racing is fun and immersive. The framerate is great most of the time (gets a bit jittery when there are many cars on the road, like when 7 cops are tailing you). The tracks are great if you like the idea of inter-city highway racing, but offer very little in terms of tricky corners and challenging narrow roads. Drifting is possible and fun, but does not seem as crucial to the game play as in Ridge Racer. Overall though, once you are through the story and just doing the challenges, the real fun begins. More than once I have kicked my legs out when chasing down a time point or speed camera, I think there are some fellow-commuters that are cursing their decision to sit opposite me (I really am sorry!). Points are deducted for the lame story mode and silly mini-games, as well as the lack of more intense, drift mad arcade-style tracks like Ridge Racer. 3.5 stars.

This game is a typical master class in advertisement. They know just the right buttons to press to make your jaw hit the floor when you see the trailer on TV. The problem is it rarely delivers like you imagine. The first thing that I noticed was the 3D, this is the 3DS and 3D is expected. This is not 3D, this is like watching a paper cutout puppet show. The characters are not 3D they are 2D with a 3D depth placed onto it to make the faces separate from the background. The 3D on the actual gameplay (rather than cut scenes) is better but the problem isn't the 3D but the style of the game. When you have a 3D character in a 3D world where you can move the camera at will you can see the 3D effect at its best but when, like in this game, you have a fixed point of view on a moving world, then the 3D effect is fixed, rather like staring at a computer screen for many hours, when you look away your eyes take a little longer to adjust than normal, but when you are playing it you get so used to the single point of view that you might as well not have the 3D on at all. The story is decent. Standard guy wacks guy, guy survives and wonders what the hell is going on etc etc. The game isn't what I wanted, it seems there are over a hundred racers in this RUN and I am down to the last 100 in less than two hours of playing and have yet to even choose or spec up a car I want. Each car is given to you at different points in the game and that is final. Not what I wanted from a Need For Speed Game since most of the fun is driving what you want to drive and doing it up in whatever fashion you see fit. The biggest most annoying thing about this game is the Physics Engine. It seems to me that there isn't one, we may as well be pod racing in outer space for what it feels like to play. I thought it was a requirement of computer game programmers to take at least some physics, just so the world they create feels real. This just doesn't, I know they have limited space to work with on 3DS games especially since they have the 3D on it as well but when you go around a corner at 150+ mph and can manage to stay on the road it starts to get stupid. I played this game for a couple of hours on boxing day and managed to get from last position at the start of the game to under 100 without once taking my finger off of the accelerator or even touching the break. Like I said the physics built into this game just aren't realistic.

I'll start by saying that this game is fun and entertaining, at least for a while. But there are some things that ruins it. I think EA didn't want to spend a lot of money in this production. so they hired a team to do the cheapest game possible. Here are some things that I don't like about this game: - Feels more like an action game sometimes. You are not just racing, you have to destroy other cars, avoid being shot and complete some very stupid "mini-games" using the touch screen. - Story mode is short. It only lasts four or five hours. But overall is actually quite fun. - The story is so incredibly bad... but I guess you are not interested in this game because of the story. - Roads are mostly long straight lines with almost no curves at all. There are some curves, but they are so soft that, with a few exceptions, you can take them very easily. - Bad and repetitive music. I guess if you like this kind of music ("Fast and Furious" style) you will have a different opinion, but there are only a few songs and after a while it starts to be annoying. - Bad graphics. I've read some comments saying that this has better graphics than "Ridge Racer 3D". Well, it doesn't. "The Run" looks like a cheap DS game with some lightning and blur effects that are supposed to make it look better, but in fact make it look quite bad. They even affect negatively the gameplay: sometimes it's hard to distinguish the cars that are coming towards you because the headlights are so bright and the blur effect makes it difficult to see in the distance. "Ride Racer 3D" looks more like a Dreamcast game, with more detailed cars, a richer color palette and far better textures. So I think this is probably the worst option if you are looking for a racing game for your 3DS, but at the same time it could be a nice addition if you already have "Mario Kart 7", "Ridge Racer 3D" and "F1 2009", three games that are definitively better than this one. EDIT: A few days has passed and I think maybe I was a little too harsh with this game. Graphics are not "like a cheap DS game", I was exaggerating, but I still think they are not better than in "Ridge Racer 3D". The problem with the gameplay is that it is not very "replayable".

okay

Like these type of games glad I bought it, keeps me busy for hours.

Best driving game on a hand-held by far. Good story, great graphics and speed speed speed and fun! Great value too for such an amazing product that will keep one entertained for hours - it's very challenging in parts!