The Darkness II (PS3/360) matches a new look with its comic book credentials, but it’s still the sheer demonic madness of it all that is the real draw.

The Darkness rental games are based on a comic book, but not just any old comic book. This one has such a convoluted and intricate plot that it makes Lord of the Rings seem like a walk in the Plenor Fields. The Darkness II on PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 follows up the 2007 game that broke new ground in terms of first person story telling — although it was rapidly eclipsed by era-peer Bioshock.

The Darkness II may sounds like it’s going to be more of the same, but it quickly looks quite different. For a start the visuals have moved to a hand drawn look, a bit like Borderlands, and give the game a more playful feel.

Of particular interest to me is the recently announced co-operative Vendetta mode where you play as one of four characters each with different abilities. Because of this mode’s restraint in demonic destruction, in comparison to the main game where you summon huge demonic octopuses and golem-like Darklings, it offers a more strategic turn. You can’t just charge into an encounter and expect to come out alive — quite the reverse.

My favourite looking character here is Inugami who wields a possessed samurai sword that has the added bonus of being able to restore health — as well as slice up the demon hordes. He also has a unique magic attack that summons a swarm of tiny demons which I also like the look of. The other co-operative characters offer shotguns (Shoshanna), black holes (DuMond) and fast fists (Wilson).

The online co-operative mode is a mix of the sort of gameplay you find in Left 4 Dead, Halo Reach’s Firefight mode and Gears Of War’s Hord mode. This ensures that you have to make the most of your characters abilities to score well. I enjoyed learning to play both Halo Reach (PS3/360) and Gears of War (PS3/360) with the different load-out options, and the thought of having another multiplayer game like this to get my teeth into is more than a little exciting.

This co-operative mode also has a story running through it, although I’m less excited about this. The story in the main game is more convincing however and I expect to be hooked in pretty quickly - I actually took to taking notes about the different characters and plot points in the first game to try and keep track of it all, although maybe I shouldn’t admit to that publicly (ed: too late).

The rental game’s protagonist returns from the first game. Jackie has a variety of special abilities but it is the range of firearms that look the most fun to play with — this is a first person shooter after all.

Alongside these traditional weapons are a variety of demonic appendages that can grab people, rip things apart and generally cause carnage in a blood thirsty kind of way. Those of a sensitive disposition may want to stop reading at this point as the grossness continues to build. Enemies that have been captured and killed can have their hearts eaten by Jackie to regain health — which proceeds a particularly unpleasant process of cutting them out with your hand weapon.

This is more than mere gross novelty, or shock value though. The Darkness II (PS3/360) puts its gore to good work in terms of gameplay. Tentacles are essentially a novel way of interacting with the world and enable you to grab and throw, rip open car doors and even construct makeshift shields. All this is achieved with a system that avoids making the player too powerful and demands that you pay attention to stay alive.

As well as all this you also have your Darklings horde to call on. Unlike the first game though you can now dictate where they go and how they attack. Jackie and the Darklings are upgraded as you make your way through the slightly over complicated range of skills — each of which lead to yet more ways of being gross with your enemies in the name of victory.

Some (many?) may find all this a little too much to bear. But to dwell on the offense of it all is to miss the point. The Darkness II (PlayStation 3/Xbox 360) was always going to be this sort of game. What is more of a surprise, and much more exciting, is how much innovation there is in terms of gameplay. Sure, it’s bloodthirsty offensive gameplay, but that’s never stopped a videogame being fun in the past and it’s not going to hamper The Darkness II now.

The Darkness II will be available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360 and PS3 from the 10th February 2012!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!

We have had a fantastic response to our 2012 Customer Survey, thank you to all who have taken part.

There’s still time to complete the Survey and have the chance to win a console or a game of your choice, the Survey closes Saturday night and we will announce the prize draw winners by 18^th January.

Once we have looked at all the answers and feedback you have provided, we will let you know what developments we are going to bring on line and when. Rest assured that these developments will be the most popular and so, there should be something in there for everyone!

We are aiming to announce the first development in February, and our aim is to also introduce some totally new things, so watch this space, 2012 is going to be a biggy!

Neverdead 360/PS3 juxtaposes an immortal hero and a fragile body. It sounds like high philosophy but in practise it’s bombastic, bizarre and questionably offensive — much more fun.

With its Metal Gear pedigree Neverdead 360/PS3 gives away more than a little about Shinta Nojiri’s previous game. The Metal Gear Ac!d director is obviously as keen on swordplay now as he was then.

To get a little ahead of ourselves for a moment, the two things that stand out in Neverdead are a sword mechanic that uses a very odd combination of buttons and a very unusual approach to character damage.

The main protagonist in Neverdead 360/PS3 slowly loses body parts until he is nothing more than a head rolling around the world. It creates an odd, almost itchy and scratchy, overblown approach to violence that lampoons just how ridiculous videogames have become in recent years.

But before all that let’s get the basics of this rental game out of the way. At the centre of Neverdead’s 360/PS3 third person shooter design is an invincible man who is at the same time vulnerable to dismemberment. This odd scenario not only makes light of the violence that is inevitable in these sorts of games, but also adds a puzzle element to the game.

Certain parts of the game are only accessible at a particular stage of decay. One such area is accessed via a balance beam that requires you to just be a head that can be rolled across before rejuvenating on the other side. Other puzzles have you throwing body parts through a basketball hoop to collect one of the game’s collectable emblems. Sounds gory doesn’t it? In fact there is more than a little tongue in cheek humour here.

The shoe is on the other foot when it comes to more direct combat though. What was an asset in accessing hard to reach places becomes a real pain when facing the contorted array of zombie like enemies. Mastering the swordplay will be critical here.

During my time with the game the strange button combos soon had me tapping out rhythms on the controller rather than the usual button mashing and panic I usually resort to. Because of this, Neverdead 360/PS3 feels intense, tight and intelligent to play — not what you’d expect from its gory credentials.

To help you on your way in this rental game is a computer controlled partner. She offers some help in battle and adds the inevitable sprinkling of innuendo that is stock in trade of these games (I’m thinking Bulletstorm and Duke Nukem here).

Whether the over the top violence and sexuality is intelligently intentional or just how the game turned out we’ll probably never know. But there are enough knowing nods to the camera and winks at any players paying attention that it is hard not to revel in the irony of it all.

Some may find the game a little too slow for recent tastes, but I appreciated the more considered approach. I’m really not after another Bulletstorm, so that lack of swagger in favour of more diverse gameplay was no bad thing in my book.

The narrative, again true to form for the genre, is a simple enemy chase where you and your partner are rushing to find and dispatch an evil overlord. Along the way you are presented with an impressive array of environments, all fully interactive — at times it seems that anything you touch explodes.

Neverdead 360/PS3 looks like it will be one of the most unusual games this year. To my mind it more than gets away with it. The combination of flying body parts, inappropriate antihero quips and chauvinistic prattle will offend those who don’t get the point. But for those with ears to hear, there’s a promising sword/shooter beneath that veneer — and one that has more than a few things to say about the state of gaming today.

Not one for the kids, but also not one for the oldies either. Between these two groups are a bunch of players who will have a lot of fun here. For once, I think I might be one of them.

NeverDead will be available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360 and PS3 from February 2012!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!

SoulCalibur V 360/PS3 promises an unlikely return for the series. This was the start of my multiplayer passion and its fifth iteration looks as strong as ever.

There’s no better knife edge to cut your teeth on in the world of multiplayer gaming than a fighting game. I remember first encountering SoulCalibur (as Soul Edge back then) on the original PlayStation. I’ve been transfixed by this out-sized fighting master-series ever since.

Many will decry the ridiculous storyline and fantastical collection of characters and moves. But you can keep your Street Fighters and BlazBlues with their feet on the ground, give me SoulCalibur’s ridiculous love of the bizarre any day of the week.

SoulCalibur V sees publisher Namco Bandai and developer Project Soul finally arrive for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 in February. It was a release that seemed like it might never happen. After SoulCalibur IV was wrapped up in 2008 the team was disbanded and to all intents and purposes the franchise had, with Street Fighter IV in the ascendance, run aground.

But outrage in the surprisingly large SoulCalibur community caused Namco Bandai to think again. So here we have SoulCalibur V 360/PS3. True to form this is a dyed in the wool SoulCalibur rental game. Early indications suggest that it ticks all the familiar boxes.

Like its predecessors, SoulCalibur V 360/PS3 draws the same stable of Japanese fighters - from the diminutive females to the over sized and cumbersome males. But more than simple gender caricatures each of has their own story and feels different to play. Fighting styles, melee weapons and even guns mean that they need respect and must be learnt to capitalise fully on their abilities.

Along with its fast and loose approach to storytelling is a propensity to include characters from other games and franchises. I enjoyed the inclusion of Link, Darth Vader and Kratos in SoulCalibur IV. This flirting with the great and late of the geekdom continues in SoulCalibur V in the form of Ezio Auditore di Firenze of Assassin’s Creed fame.

The story, as much has been revealed of it so far, brings back Nightmare — although exactly how is unclear as he was decisively dispatched at the end of the previous game. His return, and subsequent world domineering will likely be the subject of the doubtlessly wacky storyline in SoulCalibur V 360/PS3.

Other characters to return this time are community favourite Dampierre (in case you don’t remember he’s the flashy business like fighter from the PSP game). Series stalwarts like Seigfried are of course included, although now the passing years have had their toll on him — whereas he started as a young 17 year old fighter, he is now a middle aged man — so different tactics are required to get the best out of his older self.

Although there is still plenty more to see of the game, I can already tell (with the pieces in play already) that this is going to be another compulsory purchase for fans of the series. The bigger question is whether it will be able to win over new converts with such steep competition from its peers (I’m thinking Super Street Fighter and BlazBlue here mainly).

However it turns out, it perpetuates my advice for those who want to get into (or understand what all the fuss is about around) multiplayer gaming. Fighting rental games are the best place to start. SoulCalibur V looks set to continue that tradition in its own inimitable style.

SoulCalibur V will be available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360 and PS3 from 3rd February 2012!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!

Metal Gear Solid HD gets a UK release on PS3 and more interestingly on 360. But more than this novelty it’s the quality of the original games that really excited me here.

Being at the thin end of the console cycle is a double edged sword. Things are maxed out in terms of visuals and surprises, but it’s the perfect time to re-release classic games with up-scaled and reworked visuals. After the excellent Ico and Shadow of the Colossus HD 360/PS3 and God of War HD collections we now have Metal Gear Solid HD Collection.

Here though there is the added bonus of being able to rent Metal Gear on the 360 (and older Metal Gear titles on the PlayStation 3) for the first time, not to mention in HD. Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty, Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater and Metal Gear Solid Peace Walker join the two original MSX games to offer the complete Metal Gear cannon.

Don’t let the fact that there are older PlayStation titles put you off though. Choppy visuals and limited storage are just the outer skin of some of the most perfectly judged stealth action videogame thrillers.

Metal Gear Solid 3 Snake Eater 360/PS3 stands out as the real star and is arguably Hideo Kojima’s finest work. There is the real touch of an auteur director here as imaginative storytelling and dramatic set-pieces combine to create some heart stopping moments.

Metal Gear games work on a simple survival premise, but unlike the recently popular horror genre survival here is about strategy, tactics and stealth. Rather than the ever expanding arsenal of weapons found in Dead Island or Resident Evil 5 Metal Gear expects you to survive with only limited tools.

There’s a surprising thrill to sneaking across enemy lines, using field craft and the refuse of war to survive. Magical moments abound in Metal Gear Solid 3 where you find yourself harvesting not only fruit and animals but fungus and other less edible elements to simply stay alive.

In high definition this all looks fresh and modern. Because the original designs were themselves stylised and angular they seem to make the transition to higher definition without too much of a jar. Things are locked down to 60 frames per second as well so the games have an added smoothness not possible with the straining original hardware. Metal Gear Solid 3 also benefits from the third-person camera that was previously the preserve of the limited Subsistence release of the game.

Alongside Snake Eater the other titles pale a little, but still have their moments. Metal Gear Solid 2 Sons of Liberty has some stand out sections, the storm battered ship really makes the most of the improved visuals. Whereas much of the detail was lost in the original, in HD on 360/PS3 every last piece of geometry contributes to the sense of fighting the elements out at sea.

Then there is Peace Walker, which brings the top-tier PSP rental to the home consoles. Leading on from Snake Eater we are in classic Metal Gear mode, but with added strategy as you get to co-ordinate the disparate elements of your forces. There’s also the great feature where you can save enemy units and employ them on your side after a quick visit back to base. Playing this reminded me how obsessive you can get over collecting all these different elements — obviously very different, but not a million miles from Pokemon. And all this with the added benefit of co-operative play via PSN or XBox Live.

The collection is rounded off by the old MSX games. While it is nice to have the complete set there is slightly less fun to be had with these. That said, I really enjoyed seeing how the story of Metal Gear Solid took shaped before the games came to be what they are today.

The only negative in what is a comprehensive package is that this is basically an upscaled version of the game, rather than a re-textured and tweaked remake like Zelda Ocarina of Time (3DS).

While these sorts of games are not part of my usual gaming habit, having the complete set made accessible like this, not to mention the high definition makeover has made them my go to games of late. Now that they are getting a UK release it really would be a shame to miss out.

Metal Gear Solid HD Collection will be available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360 and PS3 from 3rd February 2012!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!

Every year the videogame industry sits back and surveys all it has done. This is the time when the best games rise to the top of the barrel and the not so good ones slowly sink to the bottom. Here is the second part of the top games of the year for me.

Best Platformer

Assassin’s Creed Revelations: Sometimes games are criticised for churning out more of the same each year. Here though it’s no bad thing. What takes Revelations to the next level though is the quality of its storytelling and pixel perfect nature of the fighting, running, jumping and exploration. By delivering on every level Revelations easily won its place as best platformer of 2011.

Best Multiplayer

Battlefield 3: While edged out of the overall shooter category by the sheer momentum of Modern Warfare 3, Battlefield still has a big lead in the multiplayer realm. Destructible scenery and an ability to approach each multiplayer challenge from a variety of angles means that Battlefield 3 360/PS3 outshines all others in this category.

Best Sports

FIFA 12: Competition breeds excellence, that’s the theory anyway. This year that comes true for football games as the tussle between PES and FIFA 360/PS3 mean that each of them raised their game. FIFA edges out PES with its new player momentum mechanics and greater focus on tactical play. Add to this the premierships full roster, not to mention the sheer quality of the delivery, and this is the perfect football game in 2011.

Best Story

Uncharted 3: While other action adventures spend their budget on the scenery and gunplay, Uncharted 3 stands out because it pays as much attention to the story as these other factors. What results is a gripping action game that is not only great to play, but also tells a fascinating story with characters that players care more about than any other. The best videogame story in 2011.

These are the games that stood out for me, and took the lion share of my rental play time. As with any list I’m sure yours will be different. Play these games through the Christmas period and you will have visited some of the best experiences to be had on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2011. Enjoy.

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!

Games of the Year 2011 Part 1

Every year the videogame industry sits back and surveys all it has done. This is the time when the best games rise to the top of the barrel and the not so good ones slowly sink to the bottom. Here is the first part of the top rental games of the year for me.

Best Shooter

Modern Warfare 3: Achieved what seemed impossible and improved on Modern Warfare 2 360/PS3. Pushing the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 to the limit this is the epitome of a perfectly balanced shooting game. Campaign or multiplayer, Modern Warfare 3 has it all with visuals and audio to die for.

Best Action Adventure

Batman Arkham City: Another excellent follow up to an excellent game. Arkham City 360/PS3 took the basic premise of Arkham Asylum and expanded upon it in every direction. More than this though, it is the quality and sheer joy of playing the caped crusader that makes this game stand head and shoulders above the competition.

Best Role Play Adventure

The Elder Scolls V Skyrim: In a year of follow ups it seemed that Skyrim 360/PS3 might get overlooked. However, the scale and grandeur of the world it creates, and the range of ways to play it, make this the perfectly pitched role play game. Skyrim is the archetype of open world gameplay, as the thousands of hours lost to its depths by players all over the world attests.

Best Racer

Forza 4: It was a risk incorporating Kinect functions into such a core racing title. That fact that it worked so well (whether the head tracking, steering or car investigating) is testament to Turn 10’s ability to deliver at a very high level. Forza 4 360/PS3 expands its horizons all round, and manages to finally eclipse the spectre of Gran Turismo to become the de facto racing game of 2011.

Best Strategy

Tropico 4: While other games try and recreate the minutiae of life, Tropico 4 360 excels at granting you your own island and running it how you please. This not only makes for some unusual strategy gameplay, but also creates some of the most entertaining set pieces in a sim game. It’s Tropico’s ability to turn the bizarre into the compelling that make it my best rental strategy game of 2011.

These are the games that stood out for me, and took the lion share of my rental play time. As with any list I’m sure yours will be different. Play these games through the Christmas period and you will have visited some of the best experiences to be had on the Xbox 360 and Playstation 3 in 2011. Enjoy.

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!

Saints Row: The Third PS3/360 is a rental game on steroids. Even a hardened multiplayer loving gamer such as me can see the sound entertainment logic behind running around an imaginary city naked dominating enemies with psychic sea creatures. Some will dismiss all this frivolity as just that, a feel good flash in the pan, but there is actually a lot more substance here than such a verdict would suggest.

Saints Row PS3/360 heads out of familiar territory in other ways too as we leave Stilwater and make for the city of Steelport. We find three gangs going happily about their business, well as happily as these things ever are, and are soon tasked with upsetting the apple cart and winning over the city.

Although everyone starts in the same city with the same basic character, it’s soon evident that customisation is the engine at the heart of Saint Row: The Third PS3/360. From what you want to wear to what you want to drive, the generic out-of-the-box experience soon starts taking its own path.

It’s because of the depth of this customisation that Saints Row: The Third becomes its own game (read: wacky bonkers in a good way). There are enough choices and flexibility to all this to make it feel worthwhile investing it.

Previously I’ve spent hours honing my Modern Warfare 3 load out or my Battlefield setup but usually just gone with the default settings for adventures games. In Saints Row I must have spent as much time messing around with different looks, often chuckling to myself at the bizarre combinations, as I have actually playing the game proper.

Gameplay helps make sense of all this with a set of missions that are as hilarious as the get-ups you can go around in. Some favourite moments for me were babysitting a tiger, having a sex change and not forgetting the incident with the chainsaw and the wrestlers.

Around this central thread - if you can call a wonderful grab bag of loosely related ideas a thread - are a range of side quests that are equally diverting. Here you’ll find yourself stealing cars, committing Insurance Fraud as well as a wide range of traffic misdemeanours that will be familiar to those who have played the previous games.

The danger of all this (highly entertaining) insanity is that you will become bored of yet another bonkers plot point or mission objective. However, Saints Row: The Third is a step ahead of us again and offers all manner of incentives to keep on playing. Every action has an equal and opposite reaction, which in Saints Row means rewards.

Money earns you territory, weapons and upgrades. Respect will unlock special abilities. Misbehaving will earn you respect. It’s a wonderfully un-vicious cycle where activity grants access to more agency which in turns leads to more activity. It’s the sort of mechanic that is usually reserved for top tier online multiplayer rental games.

Provided they are taken with a pinch of salt even the juvenile characters and childish dialogue don’t grate too much. I was happy to forgive the swear-happy civilians and general unproblematic approach to issues of identity, gender, violence and grown up life in general.

The story itself is also not great, and takes a real dive at the end. But playing the main campaign cooperatively again makes this less of an issue — and being able to do that via system link is a big tick in my online multiplayer gaming box.

Saints Row: The Third pulls all sorts of cheap shots, but it does so in the name of entertainment without too much backslapping or bravado. Because of this it ends up endearing itself to the player rather than alienating them. I’m left with a real soft spot for Saints Row: The Third, which I really didn’t see coming.

Score: 7/10 A roundly entertaining rental that wears its heart on its sleeve.

Saints Row The Third is available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360 and PS3!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!

Christmas is just around the corner and so we wanted to update you on what we are doing over the holiday period.

So, here are the key dates:

Last return date for best chance of new games before Christmas - 15th December

Last posting date from Boomerang before Christmas – 23rd December

Boomerang offices closed - from PM 24th December

Boomerang offices reopen and posting service recommences - 28th December

Boomerang offices closed - 1st January

Boomerang offices reopen and posting service recommences – 3rd January

Please also be aware that as we get nearer to Christmas, the postal service slows down, so games may take a bit longer to get back to us and out to you.

Lastly, thank you for choosing Boomerang - we would like to wish you a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year!

Need for Speed The Run on Xbox 360/PS3 turns it’s back on circuits in favour of a story driven point-to-point race. Blessed with Hot Pursuit’s Autolog system and Battlefield’s Frostbite 2 engine, it delivers a good rental game that should have been a lot better.

The Need for Speed series has had something of a turbulent time. Once the (slightly air-headed) darling of arcade racing fans, it slowly slumped into a yearly cycle of average street racing shenanigans. But then last year, the Burnout developers were brought on team and soon had things going in a much more positive direction with Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit 360/PS3.

This not only returned to the classic cops ‘n robbers modes of earlier Need for Speed titles but injected some of the Burnout dare-devil magic into the mix at the same time. Since then Need For Speed Shift 2 360/PS3 has been allowed to straddle the annual releases with its more serious racing.

That brings us to this year. The main responsibility for Need for Speed now falls to Black Box, who used to work on the franchise back in the day. The idea is for them to build on the technology pioneered by Hot Pursuit: the Frostbite 2 graphics engine, and socially nimble Autolog system that connects your game with friends and family in creative and intelligent ways.

As a multiplayer fanatic, having Autolog was enough to grab my attention. Last year it revolutionised how I played Hot Pursuit with other people online. I was no longer tethered to making appointments for races. I could simply clock-in at will safe in the knowledge that my competitors would see my activity next time they went online.

Need for Speed The Run (Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3) is a rental that not only takes full advantage of these Autolog features but also looks fantastic. The slightly drab visuals of previous versions are happily banished. But, perhaps more importantly, the cars also handle much better. Like in Hot Pursuit things feel incredibly fast and respond quickly to your input. I found myself instinctively picking up where I left off last year — classic Burnout drift racing at it best.

I’m not a huge fan of single player modes in my racing games but Hot Pursuit managed to get me interested. You take the role of Jack Rourke as he heads into a Point-to-Point race from San Francisco to New York to win a big cash prize. This is split into nine legs each made up of a series of stages.

Beyond this unusual approach to a racing game — which usually recycle their courses — things are a little tame. While tactical elements exist, like changing your car to suite the weather and road conditions, the process of doing this is often enough to lose you the race.

This frustration is offset somewhat by some varied challenges on the different stages. For instance, sometimes you have to gain a certain number of places while other times you have to stay ahead of a particular rival. Alongside these are the more traditional against the clock modes and straight up races.

While the components are all here, it lacks the sparkle and coherence of Hot Pursuit. Where Hot Pursuit really pushed its concept to the brink with layer upon layer of imaginative element, The Run 360/PS3 plays things pretty safe.

For some this will be no bad thing. The central mechanic of getting all these miles under your belt in the allotted time is a familiar and compelling idea — this could almost have been called Need for Speed Canonball Run. This focus does a good job of removing any extraneous activity that doesn’t contribute to your progress toward the simple goal of crossing that finish line first.

But unlike Hot Pursuit’s wringing out of every last drop of racing goodness, The Run feels a little waterlogged. If you are after a point-to-point racing game, you will love all this, but for those who need a bit more variety in their speed, this has failed to top last year’s outing.

Score: 6/10 A good racing game, but one that lacks imagination.

Need for Speed The Run is available to rent or buy from Boomerang on the Xbox 360, PS3, Wii and Nintendo 3DS!

If you’re looking to rent, our packages start from just £3.99 a month! And you can now become a Priority Member from as little as £10.99 a month! Why not try our 21 day free trial? Click here to join now!  

Want to reserve your own copy? Click here to order at a great price and free P&P! We also sell ex-rental copies in ‘as new’ condition complete with brand new box & manual!