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 Black Box was responsible for some of the best games in the Need For Speed series – most notably, the original Most Wanted – but by 2008 they were making nothing but flops. Heck, NFS Undercover actually managed to get a 4 from IGN, which was more or less unheard of for an EA game back then. But Black Box had a plan: an entirely new kind of racing game, focused more on cinematics and scripted sequences than on competitive tracks or multiplayer. It would be more like a movie than a game, and they even hired Michael Bay to direct the trailer. EA even hired another company to develop some interim titles, so they would have the time they needed to get everything done. They were going to get back on top! They were gonna make it all the way!!! The Run was the last game Black Box ever made. So join me and Great Joe as we drive from San Francisco to New York in a really dumb and bad racing game. Updates will be approximately once a week, unless I forgot or whatever. Fuckin’ A! VIDEOS: Stage 1: West Coast Stage 2: National Park Stage 3: Death Valley Stage 4: Desert Hills Joe plays THE RUN 
corn in the bible fucked around with this message at 20:29 on Oct 16, 2016 |
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Aug 16, 2016 23:42
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Aug 16, 2016 23:42
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STAGE ONE: WEST COAST Naturally, as a CINEMATIC EXPERIENCE this game has a lot of cutscenes. I'd say more than half of this video is just listening to people talk endlessly about nothing. But it's very exciting nothing because it involves THE RUN! (THE RUN is legally distinct from CANNONBALL RUN please do not sue) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cEzwUFhyZg4
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Aug 16, 2016 23:44
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Frank Gibeau's LinkedIn posted:Frank Gibeau is a mobile, PC and console gaming industry veteran, with nearly 25 years of experience in interactive entertainment. He is currently a member of the board of directors for Zynga and Graphiq. I said this in the video, but it bears repeating: Need for Speed: The Run is a passion project. It got extra development time, starting off sometime in 2008 and getting released in 2011, with "filler" titles coming out from Slightly Mad Studios, Criterion Games and Firebrand Games. Mind you, "extra development time" wasn't really a thing until The Run, they'd been making one game a year since 2002, The Run was supposed to be Black Box's magnum opus. It's clear that Black Box got significantly more creative freedom, or at least the ability to implement a few more different ideas except for just a barebones racing model and the pretense afforded by RPG progression mechanics, ideas like a more involved story with multiple characters, a narrative following just one long race and QTE action sequences. That said, it still had to tick all the CEO-mandated boxes. Synchronous and asynchronous multiplayer, the latter tracking multiple different stats about each player; a licensed EA Trax soundtrack with whatever punkish rock and EDM was popular at the time (Skrillex and Deadmau5, right?); an over-budget trailer directed by Michael Bay, and a ton of licensed cars. Licensed cars are a problem, but that's another mini-article. Great Joe fucked around with this message at 02:29 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 00:33
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Will Jack Rourke drive so fast that the mob goes away? Yes. Will Jack and Samantha act reasonable towards the serving staff of the restaurants they frequent? No. There's also a briefcase, and if you get enough xp from driving, you get more driving.
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Aug 17, 2016 00:44
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This reminds me of the Most Wanted LP done a few years back, where I witnessed first-hand, the inability of goons to differentiate between Mexican-Spanish and Italian. And by "reminds", I mean that this is a NFS game, and that's where the similarities end. Other than that, I'm completely indifferent to what's happened in the game so far, and that's really bad for a game to do.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:12
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All I want out of a racing game is to hit cows and have them turn into large meat chunks.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:36
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Esoteric Banana posted:All I want out of a racing game is to hit cows and have them turn into large meat chunks.
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Aug 17, 2016 01:57
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Man this thing takes itself far too seriously. What was their budget on it?
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Aug 17, 2016 15:43
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Great Joe posted:To the people working in development at EA, Frank Gibeau was one of the worst influences on how games were going at the time. He would actively refuse to greenlight "any game to be developed as a single-player experience". This means that if your game concept doesn't at least have online leaderboards showing times, scores, or some other player tracking, it wasn't going to be made. This is why every Need for Speed, from Hot Pursuit onwards has an AutoLog feature - even if for just for tracking times - and a more-or-less tacked on multiplayer mode. Was he also responsible for the online pass fiasco? I remember it was a huge deal when EA finally admitted that, yes, that was a bullshit idea that should never have been put forward in the first place. Thinking about it as well, do EA even release single-player focussed games these days?
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Aug 17, 2016 16:09
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I always thought that the Need for Speed series were reliable racing games. Not good, not bad, just average. Kind of like a poor man's Gran Turismo. I was wrong. I was so wrong.
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Aug 17, 2016 16:33
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Ceciltron posted:I always thought that the Need for Speed series were reliable racing games. Not good, not bad, just average. Kind of like a poor man's Gran Turismo. The only consistent thing about NFS is that it's published by EA and has cars in it. Otherwise, they are all over the place when it comes to actual quality.
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Aug 17, 2016 16:50
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Ceciltron posted:I always thought that the Need for Speed series were reliable racing games. Not good, not bad, just average. Kind of like a poor man's Gran Turismo. The Run is not exactly a good representation of... well, anything.
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Aug 17, 2016 16:53
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Doc Morbid posted:The Run is not exactly a good representation of... well, anything. I'd argue it's a good representation of what happens when a game studio forgets that they aren't in the film industry.
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Aug 17, 2016 16:55
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Ceciltron posted:I always thought that the Need for Speed series were reliable racing games. Not good, not bad, just average. Kind of like a poor man's Gran Turismo. To me the series peaked at Hot Pursuit. Which was okay, aside from some really bullshit rubberband AI towards the end. That kind of soured me towards the end to the point I could only be arsed to finish the "Bad guy" part of the game because the Police section also was a bunch of solid grade bullshit. But I still liked the free roam mode and the environments were nice. I picked up Most Wanted back when it was on the house for Origin and was going to play it just because I was bored. Then I saw the DLC list and went nope and promptly forgot about that idea. Now this otoh just looks amazingly bad and I could be misremembering but back when it got announced on some E3 it looked really unimpressive there as well.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:09
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I played NFS Porsche. It had two modes. One was Factory Driver full of challenges of the same grade of BS as the tutorial in Driver. The other was the interesting mode where you raced through decades of Porsche designs (not counting tanks). Except that the physics model was tuned for the slow early cars so when you advanced into the more modern era with more powerful engines the collisions became utter random garbage. Come to think of it, the physics thing is just like Gran Turismo when you're not driving one of the 40 crappy Mazda variants. SelenicMartian fucked around with this message at 17:37 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 17:29
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SelenicMartian posted:Come to think of it, the physics thing is just like Gran Turismo when you're not driving one of the 40 crappy Mazda variants. Didn't the majority of the GT cars in 4 or 5 not actually have any damage textures or crash physics because they didn't want or bother adding them?
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Aug 17, 2016 17:41
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Gran Turismo 4 had no damage whatsoever, 5 did but it was kind of terrible and only on the "premium" cars if I recall correctly. The "standard" cars, which made up the majority of the cars in the game, were imported from the PS2 games (and some from the PSP version, I think) complete with low-res textures and no proper in-car view.
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Aug 17, 2016 17:57
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I don't remember any damage in 5. GT5 boasted 1000 cars out of which only 200 were PS3-grade, "premium". The others were brought over directly from the PS2/PSP and you couldn't take close-up screenshots of them - the game blocked you. You also had to grind to unlock new late-game races, and log in daily to get XP bonuses and new buckets of paint. It also featured at least two events the cars for which had to be bought at the "used car dealership" i.e. a random selection of a dozen cars out of 1000 that changed once every few races. Good luck catching one of the three non-poo poo pick up trucks there. The only one you could readily buy was this (Scottish wiki).
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Aug 17, 2016 18:07
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GT5 definitely had car damage, but it was minor deformation at best and I think it didn't even show up until you reached level 20 or something.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:09
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GT5 also had endurance races lasting for hundreds of laps. It had 24 hours of Le Mans in real time. It took them a year to patch in-race saving in.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:16
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SelenicMartian posted:GT5 also had endurance races lasting for hundreds of laps. It had 24 hours of Le Mans in real time. Why would anyone even want that? What the hell
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Aug 17, 2016 18:22
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Kaboom Dragoon posted:Was he also responsible for the online pass fiasco? I remember it was a huge deal when EA finally admitted that, yes, that was a bullshit idea that should never have been put forward in the first place. Cooked Auto posted:I picked up Most Wanted back when it was on the house for Origin and was going to play it just because I was bored.  Note: All the coloured-in ones are there to save you from time-wasters put in at either a CEO's or shareholder's or marketer's mandate. I have a very special hatred for Most Wanted 2012. Great Joe fucked around with this message at 18:35 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 18:22
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corn in the bible posted:Why would anyone even want that? What the hell My brother would play the Gran Turismo games in picture-in-picture mode so he could do the long-rear end races while he watched the news or something. Driving game fans are weird. Not nearly Cabela's weird, but weird.
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Aug 17, 2016 18:26
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Great Joe posted:
I was mostly pissed over the feeling that they had most likely locked all the cool cars like the Veyron and such behind DLC purchases. I play these games to drive cool cars, not to pay to get access to them with real money. Then I noticed the mods and all that as well which soured me even further of wanting to actually play that game. Switching to a similar topic I was pleasantly surprised to hear Test Drive Unlimited 2 get a mention in the video. Which is also one of those car games I developed a strong dislike/hatred for after playing it for some time. Somehow I lasted 28 hours for that game before giving up. Good concept but atrocious execution and an incredibly subpar porting too. Cooked Auto fucked around with this message at 18:56 on Aug 17, 2016 |
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Aug 17, 2016 18:52
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Konami made a racing game once. No one has ever heard of it since. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FlcwpqkgTZo
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Aug 17, 2016 19:17
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Cooked Auto posted:I was mostly pissed over the feeling that they had most likely locked all the cool cars like the Veyron and such behind DLC purchases. I play these games to drive cool cars, not to pay to get access to them with real money.
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Aug 17, 2016 19:53
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Great Joe posted:You missed out on some of the worst driving physics ever seen in a video game, oh and over 900 separate EXP bars to fill up. Oh lovely. Guess I'll have to reinstall Hot Pursuit if I ever want to drive fast cars without too much of a bother. Especially since TDU2's driving physics are atrocious as well.
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Aug 17, 2016 20:03
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I've played driving games with far worse physics than Most Wanted 2012, even within the Need for Speed series. The DLC and EXP system are bullshit and the game feels sort of dry, but it plays a hell of a lot better than something like The Crew.
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Aug 17, 2016 20:25
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Doc Morbid posted:The Crew.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:06
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The Crew was free on Xbox Games for Gold a while back and I tried to play it for a couple of hours. I never once felt like I was in control of the car even when I was winning races, and the physics seemed to have a mind of their own so you can never predict how the car will react when you go over bumps or things like that. I don't mind having to fight the car when I'm racing (the Lancia Stratos is my favorite car in Dirt Rally), but I don't want to also be fighting the physics engine like I was constantly doing in The Crew.
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Aug 17, 2016 21:21
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I'll just leave this right here:
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Aug 17, 2016 21:32
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Page 1/9 
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Aug 18, 2016 00:24
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If none of the mottos have to be any good, it's really easy to make nine pages of them.
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Aug 18, 2016 00:27
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I purchased 2012 Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit and I never felt like I ever had any actual fun playing them. I only bought them because I had just watched Furious 7 and wanted to drive cool fast cars. I mean, I did that, but I don't think it was ever satisfying. The only good NfS game is still Underground 2. That was a fun game. And then they were "rebooting" it for the new one and apparently it sucks. EA. 
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Aug 18, 2016 04:11
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Cathode Raymond posted:If none of the mottos have to be any good, it's really easy to make nine pages of them. Where the hell is "Yare Yare Daze", anyway? (Okay, "I'm still in the negative! I just want to get back to zero!" would fit the Steel Ball Run AND the game in general better, but that might not fit.)
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Aug 18, 2016 10:10
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Sir Potato posted:I purchased 2012 Most Wanted and Hot Pursuit and I never felt like I ever had any actual fun playing them. I only bought them because I had just watched Furious 7 and wanted to drive cool fast cars. I mean, I did that, but I don't think it was ever satisfying. The only good NfS game is still Underground 2. That was a fun game. And then they were "rebooting" it for the new one and apparently it sucks. EA.
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Aug 18, 2016 11:23
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corn in the bible posted:Why would anyone even want that? What the hell Although I do seem to recall it offered shorter races in addition to the real-time thing.
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Aug 18, 2016 12:00
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anilEhilated posted:There was actually a game specifically about that. It sold. The thing is, in real-life endurance racing nobody drives the full 24 hours on their own, as the rules prevent that. At Le Mans, every car has a team of three drivers (sometimes just two), and none of them is allowed to drive longer than 4 hours straight or more than 14 hours total. Some crazies did attempt to drive the full 24 hours back in the 50s, but that never turned out very well and was banned later.
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Aug 18, 2016 13:41
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The first Grid also had Le Mans in it, it just represented it by 1 minute = 1 hour.
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Aug 18, 2016 14:19
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