dsa_shea

I like the game and the way you are not forced to participate in stuff. I had to play for about 30 minutes before I was finally able to just drive from Detroit on to St. Louis and then on to Los Angeles. There are so many more places that I look forward to just driving to and checking out. Can't wait!

I was a little disappointed that Tulsa was just an empty field.

MoviePage

That sounds like an amazingly realistic detail.

Decker

Actually it's a gross over-simplification. In the real Tulsa there are like five empty fields!

starseed1981

I am. It's filling my yearly void of Need For Speed. Honestly, if you called this Need For Speed The Run 2 I'd totally believe it. The graphics are pretty mediocre though.

19K

For me, this is pretty much everything I ever wanted in a car game. Real cars. Real places (maybe it's not 100% accurate, but they did a great job of including just enough popular landmarks for each location that you get the feeling you're actually there).

Doing a coast to coast drive and seeing all the different geographical features change as you pass through each region is fantastic. Desert, swamps, mountains, wide open fields, snow, sand, forests... you name it. I drove around aimlessly for hours yesterday not doing any tasks or story missions, but just revealing new areas, and I enjoyed every minute of it.

Multiplayer is there if you want, but you can just as easily do everything solo.

The customization options are great. Street, dirt, performance, raid, circuit. All with their own unique parts and perks.

I think this game strikes a perfect balance between realistic and over the top arcade-y. It's just really, really fun.

dsa_shea

I agree with you and I have seen you online blazing around the map.

19K

Well, I'm pretty sure you can buy a stock supercar at level 1. You just need to visit the correct dealer and have the cash. Which is highly unlikely you'll be able to earn that much money that early.

What you unlock every ten levels is the different spec cars.
You start out with full stock and street spec, then you unlock:
Level 10 - Dirt
Level 20 - Performance
Level 30 - Raid
Level 40 - Circuit (which is the highest performance level)

You can get all those with the same car, but it adds a whole new car. I started with a 370Z. When I reached Level 10, it gave me dirt spec 370Z, which is a whole different car that I can customize with different parts, appearance, colors, etc... and you can easily switch back and forth depending on what type of terrain/race/event you're participating in. When you reach level 20, you get ANOTHER car, this type a performance spec. And it just keeps going.

But like I said, at any time (as long as you have the cash) you can go buy any supercar. You just won't be able to give it a particular spec (ie Raid) until you reach the correct level. Plus I don't know if all the cars have all the available specs.

starseed1981

I traveled from Chicago to NYC last night and something that I thought was cool was that alot of level up events were placed on the route itself that I took. I gained a third of a level just from that trip. Good game design there.

dsa_shea

I think they did a cool job of making the map with diversity like you would see driving from Florida to California. There a lot of meat here in the map and they could simply take it and expand on it while refining what they have. They could expand the map just a bit while putting more of the cities in like San Diego, Houston, San Antonio, Kansas City, Memphis, etc.

starseed1981

I haven't even been past the stretch of Chicago - NYC. The map is ridiculously large. I can't wait from someone to come up with some type of cannonball run.

19K

OK, this is officially my favorite racing title ever. There is so much to do, you could literally play for 100's of hours and experience something new the entire time. Its incredible. I enjoy every second I'm playing it.

starseed1981

That's interesting. I ended up abandoning and selling it off myself. Those chase missions and the rubberband AI got very frustrating very quickly (was literally at the halfway point of the campaign).

19K

That's ok, you're still running factions missions for me and earning me cash and reputation points.

(You can send up to 4 "friends" who have the game on missions every 1-3 hours to help boost your daily salary)

mattysemo247

Anyone still playing this? The Wild Run edition is the Best Buy DOTD for $19.99 ($15.99 GCU) and I'm thinking about picking it up.