Need for Speed: The Run - Performance and IQ @ [H]

FrgMstr

FrgMstr

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Need for Speed: The Run - Performance and IQ - Need for Speed: The Run was released today, utilizing the Frostbite 2 engine, same as Battlefield 3, it should have some pretty good graphics. However, after we dove into this game this morning, we found that it falls rather flat for a PC game. We'll talk about performance and image quality in this article.
 
There's always been something that struck me as being off in the damage modelling in the NFS games and this game is no exception.

Hard to put my finger on what it is specifically that doesn't look quite right. The scuff marks on the side of that Camaro maybe? The lack of any deformation of the undercarriage?
 
really, a 30 fps cap? what is their logic behind that? i cant think of any games that have a 30 fps cap, it is about the oddest thing i have ever heard of. i wonder if the bad press they get about the fps cap will make them release a patch for that.
 
Definitely disappointed in this game, was hoping a great game and was more PC friendly ... I guess there's always next year :(
 
Is there a motion blur option? This would at least mitigate the 30fps cap.
 
Good article, i agreed with it 90%...but there's 2 thing.

1 - Complaining about Keyb control on a Car game is completly ridiculous and pointless, i mean COME ON, you need a controller to play a car game, i had a controller for those back in 1997.. I even had one with my Commodore Amiga back in 1992. If Microsoft got something right on console, it's their 360 controller.. Did i tried Dirt 3 with my KeyB, yes.. did i crash a lot.. you bet, control is horrible

2 - I never had Autolog problems, never in Hot Pursuit, Never in Shift 2 and never so far in The RUN.

Also even if the Config said Antialasing at 3, there's none whatsoever BUT cinematic look AA, in game, not at all..
 
Boy did you bring back memories.

NFS3 is one of my favorites of the franchise. I managed to run NFS 2SE in win 7 a couple of months ago just for kicks.
 
30 fps cap is very disappointing.

That to me is enough not to buy the game if/until there is a fix for it.

Oh well, on to the next.
 
Loved the image where you said "I crashed". Those are some durable headlights on the yellow car!

Agreed on the 30FPS cap. VSync should be selectable. Not so sure on the AA settings. Other [H] articles like Deus Ex have pointed out that the future for AA seems to be going towards FXAA which has so little impact on framerates that it should be enabled all the time. Therefore why have a control for it? Now I have some additional horsepower in my videocard I'd like to exploit, but I can understand why traditional AA controls are waning.

One gripe though. Why on earth would someone review a racing game without a steering wheel? While it is good to see if things like a keyboard and mouse can also be used, it should not be the only consideration when playing the genre. If this game does play well with a steering wheel, it would have been nice to know. It is a performance and IQ review, so I can understand why the wheel was not available (I guess).

Thanks for the review. You guys sure get these out quickly and for that THANK YOU! :D
 
This game is pretty awfulin general but there is a glaring (literally) bug that prevents you from playing at Surround resolutions on some courses. The Frostbite 2 engine suffers from GIANT LENS FLARE at nVidia Surround resolutions. BF3 does this as well.

So I got to the final 2 miles of The Run and I'm head to head with some random gangster and the entire screen is filled with lens flare and I'm having to dodge crates that I can't see until I run out of rewinds. The whole experience is akin to being tied in a chair, having a lamp shone in your eyes whilst someone occasionally hits you in the face with a hammer.
 
I'm sad. I loved NFS in 1998, Need For Speed 2 & 3, the original Hot Pursuit, High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed. The last decent NFS game was Most Wanted, IMO.

The series is a skeleton now, with a little bling. I'll spend my money on Battlefield 3.
 
Stoly said:
Is there a motion blur option? This would at least mitigate the 30fps cap.
Click to expand...

Negative. There is motion blur in the game, but no options to modify it.

Ryoohki360 said:
Good article, i agreed with it 90%...but there's 2 thing.

1 - Complaining about Keyb control on a Car game is completly ridiculous and pointless, i mean COME ON, you need a controller to play a car game, i had a controller for those back in 1997.. I even had one with my Commodore Amiga back in 1992. If Microsoft got something right on console, it's their 360 controller.. Did i tried Dirt 3 with my KeyB, yes.. did i crash a lot.. you bet, control is horrible

2 - I never had Autolog problems, never in Hot Pursuit, Never in Shift 2 and never so far in The RUN.

Also even if the Config said Antialasing at 3, there's none whatsoever BUT cinematic look AA, in game, not at all..
Click to expand...

I ended up using a gamepad for my playing this morning. Control was better better with the game. However, even with my gamepad (which is a Saitek Rumble Force, my favorite gamepad) I could not map my buttons correctly in the positions I wanted. No matter what I tried the game kept thinking my gamepad was a wheel controller :(

Stoly said:
Boy did you bring back memories.

NFS3 is one of my favorites of the franchise. I managed to run NFS 2SE in win 7 a couple of months ago just for kicks.
Click to expand...

Yep, huge fan of the NFS series, I have great memories of the NFS games of old

jcollett said:
Loved the image where you said "I crashed". Those are some durable headlights on the yellow car!

Agreed on the 30FPS cap. VSync should be selectable. Not so sure on the AA settings. Other [H] articles like Deus Ex have pointed out that the future for AA seems to be going towards FXAA which has so little impact on framerates that it should be enabled all the time. Therefore why have a control for it? Now I have some additional horsepower in my videocard I'd like to exploit, but I can understand why traditional AA controls are waning.

One gripe though. Why on earth would someone review a racing game without a steering wheel? While it is good to see if things like a keyboard and mouse can also be used, it should not be the only consideration when playing the genre. If this game does play well with a steering wheel, it would have been nice to know. It is a performance and IQ review, so I can understand why the wheel was not available (I guess).

Thanks for the review. You guys sure get these out quickly and for that THANK YOU! :D
Click to expand...

The game engine 30 FPS cap has nothing to do with VSYNC. And the game has a VSYNC option, but its pointless, since its game engine capped at 30 FPS. Also, options to enable or disable FXAA, along with MSAA in-game are what's needed.

J Macker said:
I'm sad. I loved NFS in 1998, Need For Speed 2 & 3, the original Hot Pursuit, High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed. The last decent NFS game was Most Wanted, IMO.

The series is a skeleton now, with a little bling. I'll spend my money on Battlefield 3.
Click to expand...

Yep, I've watched it go downhill over the years, not happy about it. A franchise with a lot of potential, and the use of Frostbite 2, so much potential squandered.
 
Ryoohki360 said:
Good article, i agreed with it 90%...but there's 2 thing.

1 - Complaining about Keyb control on a Car game is completly ridiculous and pointless, i mean COME ON, you need a controller to play a car game, i had a controller for those back in 1997.. I even had one with my Commodore Amiga back in 1992. If Microsoft got something right on console, it's their 360 controller.. Did i tried Dirt 3 with my KeyB, yes.. did i crash a lot.. you bet, control is horrible

2 - I never had Autolog problems, never in Hot Pursuit, Never in Shift 2 and never so far in The RUN.

Also even if the Config said Antialasing at 3, there's none whatsoever BUT cinematic look AA, in game, not at all..
Click to expand...



I don't think you could have picked a worse example for not using a keyboard. Dirt 3 controls are fubar. i'm not sure what they have done specifically but the controls in that game feel delayed when using the keyboard. with my wheel it playes ok but you still get a detached feeling. not sure why.

I'm not sure if i'm the only one who had come to this conclusion but NFS games are there to be arcade style games. the keyboard is one of the more natural way to play these games. hitting left of right arrow and instantly jumping to the lane in that direction narrowly missing the oncoming traffic/obstacle. a wheel just always seems to kill the overall feeling of the game. The only game i have played more to this style than NFS was Tesdrive.

Using a controller from a console(or MS sidewinder way back when) was fine as long as it was arrow buttons(mimicing the keyboard in a smaller package). now with the joystick like additions to controllers, the controller just seems useless. its nice you have more control over how much you are steering and accelerating/braking but it always takes me ages to get up to speed with knowing how much is too much or too little.
 
IF the game is using FXAA by default then I see no need to enable/disable it.

It seems the worst thing about the game is the 30FPS cap. If somehow you could disable it, would the game be ok? or are there other major faults.
 
NFS 3 HotPursuit good for PC
NFS Porshe Unleashed good for PC
NFS Hot Pursuit 2 good for PC
NFS Underground 2 good for PC

The NFS series has been a great dissapointment for PC ever since NFS Most Wanted was okay... Carbon was okay but just not the greatest. Poor prefromance in both games though. Those two games should have been dual core optimized but it really wasnt a standard yet.... so people forgave them...

BUT:
EA released a patch for Pro Street that limited the game to 30 Frames Per Second. They claimed it would help improve gameplay by providing preformance that was consistent. Therefore implimented in the Patch. (IMO dumb)

NFS undercover was horrid preformance. poor graphics. And ever since that game i disbanded my allegence to buying every NFS game.

The entire NFS franchise I have left for better games like GRID or DIRT 3 for PC.

I would have given this game a chance if they werent so many negatives about it.
 
tricky0502 said:
really, a 30 fps cap? what is their logic behind that? i cant think of any games that have a 30 fps cap, it is about the oddest thing i have ever heard of. i wonder if the bad press they get about the fps cap will make them release a patch for that.
Click to expand...

Split/Second has a 30 fps cap.

Both Dead Space games had a 30 fps cap, although this could be switched off with a 3rd party program (can't remember the name of the program).

Optional caps are fine, forced frame rate caps are horrible.
 
I just noticed that there are new beta drivers 285.79 which has SLI support for The Run

New in Version 285.79

Added or updated SLI profiles for the following games:
-Aion v3.0
-Anno 2070
-Assassins Creed: Revelations
-Bastion
-Need for Speed: The Run
-Payday: The Heist
-The Adventures of Tintin
-The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
 
Just an aside, read the title, this is not a "game review."

Next time we will not touch on controller mechanics at all so as not to give anyone an impression that we are doing something other than stated.
 
Stoly said:
I just noticed that there are new beta drivers 285.79 which has SLI support for The Run

New in Version 285.79

Added or updated SLI profiles for the following games:
-Aion v3.0
-Anno 2070
-Assassins Creed: Revelations
-Bastion
-Need for Speed: The Run
-Payday: The Heist
-The Adventures of Tintin
-The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
Click to expand...

I was using 285.79 with GTX 580 in the article, but with the 30 FPS cap it doesn't matter, its a straight line of 30 FPS as shown in that graph on page 1 of the article.

Hence the conclusion that faster video cards don't matter in this game.
 
How funny that an SLI profile was created for a game with a 30fps cap. :D

Stoly said:
I just noticed that there are new beta drivers 285.79 which has SLI support for The Run

New in Version 285.79

Added or updated SLI profiles for the following games:
-Aion v3.0
-Anno 2070
-Assassins Creed: Revelations
-Bastion
-Need for Speed: The Run
-Payday: The Heist
-The Adventures of Tintin
-The Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim
Click to expand...
 
I am so glad you guys covered this game, because I will NEVER purchase ANY racing game that caps the FPS rate at a stupid 30fps. 30 fps isn't even acceptable for many shooters out there, let alone a racing game. WTF were they thinking in an age when 60fps has become the new standard in racing games? Look at games like Forza and GT series that are beautiful and yet run perfectly at 60fps on 5 year old hardware.

I seriously hope that this is dealt with in some future patch, because WTF are we here buying the latest hardware for when some dumbass prick developer decides that the PC versions need to be locked at 30fps. This is just pure laziness and is unacceptable. :mad:
 
Brent_Justice said:
I ended up using a gamepad for my playing this morning. Control was better better with the game. However, even with my gamepad (which is a Saitek Rumble Force, my favorite gamepad) I could not map my buttons correctly in the positions I wanted. No matter what I tried the game kept thinking my gamepad was a wheel controller :(
Click to expand...


Try and use an xbox360 controller emulator, sadly it is almost required nowadays to configure one properly if you want to use a gamepad.

http://code.google.com/p/x360ce/downloads/detail?name=x360ce.App-2.0.2.156.zip&can=2&q=

This version has a setting for your gamepad it seems.
 
It's EA. They just forgot about the cap when they ported from console, didn't beta test and released the game. You know this to be true.
 
Disappointed in the 30 fps...that's why you need to have a PS3 and a 360...some games are meant to played on console and some of the best games are only on consoles and some are meant for PC...Let's face it...you can't just rely on having a PC for games...
 
Brent_Justice said:
I was using 285.79 with GTX 580 in the article, but with the 30 FPS cap it doesn't matter, its a straight line of 30 FPS as shown in that graph on page 1 of the article.

Hence the conclusion that faster video cards don't matter in this game.
Click to expand...

BTW how do you know SLI works, it might as well be broken and you'd never know. :D:D
 
psy81 said:
Disappointed in the 30 fps...that's why you need to have a PS3 and a 360...some games are meant to played on console and some of the best games are only on consoles and some are meant for PC...Let's face it...you can't just rely on having a PC for games...
Click to expand...

Of course you can..Cut the shit games out and you wont need a console.
 
g1xx3r said:
Of course you can..Cut the shit games out and you wont need a console.
Click to expand...

So you would call Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, ICO, Gears of War, God of War, etc... shit??? PCs will always be superior to consoles hardware wise but if you wanna play some of the best games out there you need a console...that's all I'm trying to say.
 
The 30 fps cap isn't really a deal-breaker for me. I mean, Split/Second caps @ 30 fps but Black Rock applied the correct amount of motion blur to make it look fluid and playable. I'm assuming this is the same. But the disability to apply AA... Can't we enforce it via the Catalyst control panel? Check out my sig, I'll be playing this on 768p most likely.
 
psy81 said:
but if you wanna play some of the best games out there you need a console...that's all I'm trying to say.
Click to expand...

Isn't that a bit too subjective? What if the best game for me is GTR: Evolution? PC exclusive. Sorry, no console. See?
 
psy81 said:
So you would call Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, ICO, Gears of War, God of War, etc... shit??? PCs will always be superior to consoles hardware wise but if you wanna play some of the best games out there you need a console...that's all I'm trying to say.
Click to expand...

Everyone has what they deem acceptable from graphics to gameplay to settings,controllers etc.Games MADE for PC will cater to that crowd.If not,why bother??I once owned all 3 current platforms(PC,PS3,360).I got rid of the 360 when I was no longer satisfied with what it was capable of.My PS3 is next on the chopping block once I finish Uncharted 3 since current console games will get no better than that.Hopefully some devs will still put forth the effort to make real PC games and that will keep me going.
 
Good article, except the dig towards the end about battlelog being terrible for BF3. You guys give a $1,500 video card that is gimped a gold star because it is different, yet trash battlelog because it is different....
 
Thank you for taking the time to write the article. Much appreciated as it just saved me hassle, time and money. 30fps? Console Controls? On a PC? Nobody goes full retard...except EA.
 
psy81 said:
So you would call Metal Gear Solid, Final Fantasy, ICO, Gears of War, God of War, etc... shit??? PCs will always be superior to consoles hardware wise but if you wanna play some of the best games out there you need a console...that's all I'm trying to say.
Click to expand...
Dont bother, tunnel vision. He will never be able to see your logic. He choose a side. That is fail right there. Consoles + PC for the gaming win.

darkstarcow said:
Good article, except the dig towards the end about battlelog being terrible for BF3. You guys give a $1,500 video card that is gimped a gold star because it is different, yet trash battlelog because it is different....
Click to expand...

I was thinking the same thing. I liked the article and had no problems with knowing what it was supposed to be focused on. But that lil dig there about Battlelog given previous awards was unfortunate. I must be one of 4 people that actually like the Battlelog system and the plethora of stats it provides. I see it as no different than in my Quake2 days using gamespy to connect to servers.

I didn't even know there was a new NFS. Guess I'll gamefly it for my console. I rather play on a 42in screen with bigger pixels on my couch, then a higher res, 22in screen on my computer chair anyway.
 
typical console port.

graphics look dated too.

that screenshot where you're going around the bend with the mack truck on the opposite lane looks plain dated.

NFS games have never been able to achieve that photo realistic look.
 
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