The Run: EA Need for Speed Community Day
The Need for Speed Community Leaders
Now that the excitement is over, I finished collecting my thoughts. It takes time to sort out what happened, along with recovering from all the previous late nights enjoying the company of all the other Community Leaders. Finally establishing a pretty intensive timeline while through my notes documenting the whole experience of this year’s event.
If you’d like to go straight to the preview click here
Day Zero
For me it was a short hop from Edmonton to Vancouver, unlike some of the others who had ended up traveling for close to twenty-one hours. I was squished between two others on the literal front row of a smaller jet, but it wasn’t too uncomfortable, knowing that I had a big week ahead of me. Once I touched down, I had to power on my phone and send a message saying I was safe. It’s always been that way, someone is always worried about my flying, it is something I have gotten used, to but lately it has been so much different. I exited the plane and proceeded directly to the luggage carousel, and waited, I was probably there for about 5-10 minutes before retrieving my bag. Still felt light, I double checked to make sure everything was still secure and the bag was undamaged, and then headed out to the street and hailed a cab.
Once arriving at the hotel, No one I knew was around at the time, I had expected that, as some had decided to take a tour for the day, enjoying the sights of Vancouver and area while they could. For some, this was their first trip to Canada and they wanted to make the most of it. I hit up my room and lounged for a few, enjoying a little more time of relaxation before the evening gathering for supper. There were two plans at the same time, everyone gathered to the lobby for dinner while others wanted to hit a bar immediately. Being only six, I wasn’t yet ready to have a drink. The larger group decided to stay at the hotel for dinner, as the menu’s were passed out, we all looked at them thinking, what is this, and why aren’t there any burgers on the list. The waitress was quite pleasant and found us a more ‘casual’ menu for non-high society patrons. For the most part, everyone ordered hamburgers. After the meal was over, we headed out to meet the other group and had some drinks, we ended up returning to the hotel around one-thirty that morning. Heading to sleep.
Day One
Getting up excited for the day, thankfully no headache. Meeting everyone in the lobby and hopping into the limos was our next step, as always, every year, we ended up waiting on someone, funny though, as we were looking for him, we found out that he was not even in the hotel at the time, yet he was still late. Go figure. Finally we left the hotel, already fifteen minutes later than we hoped to, heading towards the EA Canada – Burnaby studio. Once we arrived at the studio we headed inside, and checked in, asking security to let Drew know that we were here, and anxiously waiting to head inside to check out The Run. He came out, signed us all in, gave us our tags and lead us to the “Bigger Picture” room. This room was an auditorium filled with many rows of curved desks and office style seats, at the front, there was a large projection screen which nearly spanned from corner to corner of that wall. Drew officially welcomed us to the event at this time, explained several rules and requests, then handed out copies of The Run for us to preview. We had the choice between PS3, Xbox, and PC, with everyone taking a preferential machine. I had chosen a PS3, since it was the lead development platform, however I did have a chance to experience it on the Xbox as well, and there wasn’t too much difference between the two consoles.
While booting up the console, we were told that the build we were to be playing was NOT the final build, but we would have access to the entire game unlocked. No worries, I was just excited for the chance to get my hands on some fast cars and play career mode. We each made new profiles and signed into the Networks, so we could utilize the Autolog I entered career, selected the difficulty from one of four different options, from easy to extreme being the most difficult. I chose extreme. Unfortunately, extreme was a little too overpowering for me for my first time picking up and playing through the game. After a few restarts I learned quickly what I must do. So I went into the settings and changed the level from extreme to hard. After changing the settings, I worked on progressing through the game. I had played through the career mode throughout most of the day, I ended up quite far in the game. Soon afterward everyone was starting to get tired, and wanted to head back to the hotel to finish off their night.
Day Two
After waking up, I just HAD to run down and get my coffee, two blocks away, I was quite refreshed once I had my large double double. Another member of the community had joined me, and never had Timmy’s coffee before, but once he had it, it was that whole, “it’s amazing coffee, I gotta have it all the time when I’m in Canada now.” Just as expected. Back to the hotel, we all hopped into the limo and headed back to EA for day two. Once we arrived, we had to sign back in at security for another eventful day. We had our breakfast then played some more “‘The Run” before the presentations. at first we had Justin Weibe, it was unfortunate that Jason DeLong was unavailable for comment, he was busy working on last minute objectives dedicated to the launch of “The Run”, but Justin did an excellent job in his place giving us plenty of information about the game and answering our questions. After the presentation we took and had an interview with “”, giving us an up close and personal look at some random questions I had asked.
Lunch came and silence had loomed over the auditorium as people were enjoying their food. Small discussions were heard within little pockets of community members as they discussed their ideas and feelings about the game and the presentation. Quickly after, our lunch came and went, we had another presentation with Marc De Vellis, and Ling Chan. Melvin Teu showed up after in time for a video interview I had with Marc, so they both gladly helped answer the questions I had. The video of that interview can be seen in a future news post. Feel free to watch, and comment on it. After the interviews were done, everyone was getting anxious to heading to the hockey game. Drew and obtained some tickets for us to watch a Western Hockey League hockey game between Vancouver Giants play the Seattle Thunderbirds. Drew’s wife’s cousin plays on the team, and promised to give a show. And a show he did, within the first 10 minutes of the game, the fight happened on the ice, getting all excited in it, everyone was cheering, some of them were watching their first ever hockey fight, and others getting into it so much, they fell in love with the game so much. Glad to see we managed to convert some Europeans to be interested in Canadian’s favorite sport, and become avid hockey fans. The rules had to be explained for some of the calls, but overall, the guys all enjoyed every moment of it all.
Once the game was over, we headed out to dinner, it was almost eleven when we arrived at the restaraunt, and the hostess was surprised, but pleasantly showed us to some tables. We ordered drinks and our meals, and brought the evening to a close there. Everyone hopped into the cars, and headed back to the hotel for some much needed rest.
Day Three
Our last day, Saturday, for the EACD, we headed out to the studio, it was quiet, the past couple days had people coming in and out, busy running around, looking like little ants within their farm, but being the weekend, it was so quiet, you could nearly hear a pin drop. Coulter and one of the community guys had taken off to McDonalds to get some breakfast for everyone. They arrived at one minute to eleven a.m. and asked for twenty egg and sausage McMuffins. The staff was not happy, but they obliged filling the order, and likely saying some interesting choice words under their breath after the guys left. Once they arrived at the studio, everyone ate breakfast, and started practicing on the track we were going to use for our in-house community challenge. One we do each year. Overall the same people win each year but, its a nice feeling to try and see if there’s any new blood who can “keep up”. I can honestly say, I did poorly, I should have used a rewind immediately after my first little error, but I ignored it and tried to finish the race in one run. It didn’t work out that way. I continued to use up my rewind availability, and progressed through the track. However, I was unable to finish in a time which was even close to the winner of the competition. After we chowed down our lunch, we hit up the secret cabinet cleaning out all the swag that was not nailed down, so expect many contests and other prize winning competitions of the sort in the future. We helped Drew and Coulter clean up the auditorium and put away all the consoles then headed back out to the front doors. We said our good-byes, and planned to go for a last meal as a group in a bar and watch the Vancouver Canucks play the Edmonton Oilers. Everyone making fun of me, but I calmly declined their attempts to mock me, as I am a Vancouver fan, even though I live in Alberta. We had our meal, and enjoyed the game as we watched the Canucks defeat the Oilers, just as it should be. We finished a few more drinks, and then asked for the bill. A shock, but not too shocking.
We all headed back to the hotel, and said our good-byes to each other as some were leaving in the morning, and others later, so everyone wasn’t sure if we’d see each other again.
Sleep.
Much needed sleep. the past several days were exhausting but so much fun that it’s worth every moment of no sleep.
Now for the game details, which I know you’re all waiting for, and probably skipped the entire first half of this article to get to.
I wish to show my thanks and gratitude to Drew and Coulter, and all of EA, on behalf of ND4SPDWorld and all the rest of the communities represented for presenting us with another amazing and exciting Community Day. Until the next one, the memories of this week will be remembered for quite awhile.
After setting up and creating a new profile, we started with the career mode. We will not be giving out any detailed information regarding the career mode as this will allow you, to experience the full intensity of the story for yourself the first time around. Starting in San Fransisco you get a small selection of cars to choose from. After choosing a car, you enter the race, and begin your first stage towards the final New York destination.
Physics
The physics of The Run feels clean this year with a new Physics engine, the handling comes close to feeling like a combination between Most Wanted and the old school Hot Pursuit 2 for the PS2. Each of the cars have their own unique weight and handling characteristics. The four wheel drive cars handle much differently than the rear or front wheel, and are especially useful on the dirt and ice you will find on the tracks. Muscle cars are quite heavier in comparison to the Tuners and Tuners feel so much different from the Exotics as well. The roads all have different characteristics and feeling to them also, depending on what you’re travelling on, whether its dirt, pavement, ice, or gravel. Being a Canadian, I felt quite at home driving on the Independence pass track racing on the ice and snow.
Environments
The Environments in The Run have so much detail to them, the draw distance is significantly noticeable and you feel like track you’re racing on is alive, not feeling barren with no depth to them. It may be a linear style game and tracks, but it feels like you’re deep within the city when you’re racing, looking down alleyways and cross streets. The Frostbite 2.0 engine really helps to immerse you deep into the game with high quality detail, but being a spectator while someone else is playing is the only way you will get the chance to the amazing amount of detail much better since you wont be focused on the race it self so much. The sky textures are also detailed in such a way, the clouds look to have so much depth to them and felt like they were fluid and in motion rather than just a basic image texture. The roads have some nice textures and reflections on them as well, whether they are dry and dusty in the desert, or frozen over with ice and snow, the roads are detailed nicely.
Car List
The Run has a heavy stable of cars this year, As you have seen there’s a nice balance between Muscle, Exotic, and Tuner cars giving everyone a favorite car they’ll enjoy driving. Each car feels and drives differently, each seem to have their own weight and handling. Each car will corner and accelerate similar to their real counterpart, but remember this is still an arcade racer, so they will still feel faster and overpowered in comparison to a simulation racer. The cars will have damage and deformation as well, which will have only a slight effect on the handling of the car. With fifty cars already announced, and plenty more still to be announced, there’s something for everyone.
Race Modes
With the demo being out at the moment you should have a clear understanding about the survival races. These races can be just a race against you, the elements and one opponent, the races are throughout the game and they range from busy industrial areas to deep in the snowy mountains like Independence Pass. They can get insanely hard if you put the difficulty up to hard or extreme leaving you with little to no Rewinds.
Battle mode is a bit different but still classes as a typical sprint race. Unlike a normal sprint, you have fewer opponents, but the catch is that you have a set amount of time to pass the guy in front of you. Once passed you have to make sure you do stay in front of for approximately 20 seconds. Once passed that opponent, you move on to the next one and do the same thing. The race I played featured 3 opponents in this game mode.
At times you will have to make up for lost time in the form of checkpoint races. This is pretty much a point to point race in which you need to get to your checkpoints within a set amount of time. These races can be fun and aggravating at the same time, depending on how you take your route.
The last game mode is a simple sprint mode just like survival mode seen in the Demo. These are just your normal point A to B races in which you have to move up the ladder by passing a set amount of cars. The demo shows the sprint on the Desert Hills level as you drive from 172 to 162 on the list.
The game features only three camera modes. Being the usual Bumper-cam, Hood-cam and Near-cam. There is no cockpit view again this time around. To be honest I think the lack of a interior-view is a proper choice for this game. Seeing the world is so lively and so much action is going on you would miss so much of the scenery while driving around. I do however already miss the Far-cam.
Challenge Series
The Challenge series unlocks after finishing a stage whilst playing through the career mode (The Run). There will be multiple challenges that are staged on the roads you play through during the career. Some challengers where already announced such as the Most Wanted and Carbon Challenge series you will get with your pre-order of the game.
Playing the challenge series is quite similar to the time trials of Hot Pursuit. There are set time for you to beat on 4 ‘difficulties’ ranging from bronze to platinum. These Challenges are quite hard from what we did experience. Some Challenges EA has announced are the Carbon and Most Wanted Challenges which you will get with the limited edition and will allow you to drive the BMW M3 with the livery from the M3 from Most Wanted and the Mustang from Razor.
Autolog
As you have seen with the demo, the Autolog system will be back this year and will be used to track second by second race times in order to create some solid competition between you and your friends.
Stay Tuned for Our Video Interviews and Our writeup about NFS: World