First of all, this game is bad. Quite possibly one of the worst games I've ever played, definitely one of the worst racing games i've ever played, absolutely the worst Need for Speed game I've ever played. This is coming from someone who really like Most Wanted 2012 if that shows my taste when it comes to this franchise. The story and its rather short length are it's worst aspects by far (I finished the game in one sitting, it took about 3 hours).
The story of The Run is about a guy named Jack. He's a street racer who is indebted to the mafia. After escaping from certain death in a junkyard car crusher via a quick-time event sequence and setpiece showing him escaping, he meets up with Sam, an old friend. She enters him into The Run, an exclusive cross-country street race from San Fransisco to New York City, the winner of which gets 25 million dollars, more than enough to cover Jack's debt.
Now, I should mention that this game has the distinct vibes of "We're trying to capture the Call of Duty audience". You might be wondering how a game about cars racing could be so 2010's-action-game-core, you should go back to the line where I mentioned quick-time events, because they're in most of the plot-relevant setpieces, of which there are a couple. There's the crusher of course, but also:
- A scene where Jack is nearly arrested by Las Vegas police, manages to run away, goes out of his way to steal a stupid hat from a shady gift shop, and nearly gets killed in a horiffic car crash he starts by nearly getting ran over by one of the many police cars looking for him
- A scene where Jack is ambushed by the mafia in Chicago and has to outrun a helicopter gunship (that the mob just has for some reason i guess) on foot somehow until he falls off a building and steals a cop car. This leads into a setpiece where Jack has to run from the chopper in his newly-liberated pigmobile. He inevitably crashes into a rail yard and has to do a quick-time event in order to escape the car before he is hit by a train
I don't really have the energy to continue talking about this game (it's like 2am my time as I write this and I'm not feeling too good) but i'll probably continue this at some point