Need for Speed: The Run Demo

Need for Speed, a franchise which has been through somewhere between five and a bajillion iterations. When "What's the best Need for Speed?" is asked there are really only a few answers: Most Wanted and Underground 2 and Hot Pursuit 2. Most Wanted and Underground 2 were massive open world street racers, however Underground 2 did not feature police chases whereas Most Wanted made them pretty central to the gameplay and featured pursuit breakers. Hot Pursuit 2 was the first NFS title done by Black Box and gave the cops an arsenal. Why?

I have no idea, to be honest. Carbon and Undercover never struck it with the fans, though Carbon wasn't that bad albeit a bit one-trick-pony-ish, and I never played Undercover. Prostreet was reviewed really poorly, which is all well and good because it was eventually followed by Shift, and then Shift 2 Unleashed which for whatever reason dropped the "Need for Speed" bit of the title. Their Prostreet -> Shift -> Shift 2 Unleashed progression followed their entrance into the simulation racing world, which got off to an incredibly rocky start. Shift won points for its superb cockpit view and visceral feel, but was just under the cusp of awesome due to vehicle handling troubles, and then Shift 2 Unleashed polished it out nicely. Need for Speed had up until then been entirely arcade racing focused, so some people are probably upset that it's not solely arcade style.

But now there's Need for Speed: The Run! Yay. It's like Uncharted in cars. Cinematic-style action and racing mixed in with traditional arcade style racing, but all point-to-point like Hot Pursuit (as far as I can tell), complete with out-of-car quicktime events. While it seems like they may indeed deliver that awesome movie experience, driven by action scenes which the player participates in and an incredibly generic protagonist whom they can not give a fuck about, what's going to happen to those that loved Most Wanted etc.? I wonder what game they will play.

Not Need for Speed: The Run, that's for sure.