Need for Speed: Prostreet
Score: 76% ESRB: Everyone 10+ Publisher: EA Games Developer: EA Games Media: DVD/1 Players: 1 - 2 / 2 - 8 (Online) Genre: Racing/ Simulation/ Arcade
Graphics & Sound: The graphics in Need for Speed: Prostreet look really good, appearing, at first, to rival Forza 2. Playing for a while, however, reveals the Need for Speed: Prostreet comes up short in some places. Specifically, Need for Speed: Prostreet doesn't allow the amount of customization and the ease of participating in community aspects that Forza 2 allowed. You style your car with a variety of vinyl graphics and decals in Need for Speed: Prostreet, much like in Forza 2, but you are limited in Need for Speed: Prostreet to 20 of each; 20 layers of vinyl and 20 layers of decals. This means that you won't see vehicles that are as detailed (and, hence, awesome looking) as some of the masterpieces to be found in Forza 2. As for the appearance of the graphics, they look pretty darn good. Need for Speed: Prostreet is HD ready, playable in 720p, 1080i and even 1080p. The tracks are nicely detailed, as are the locations of the events. The cut-scenes are done nicely and the girls are, well, quite frankly, distracting - just as if you were really there. The music in Need for Speed: Prostreet covers a wide range of modern rock and alternative music, but if you don't find anything that you like, you can put the custom soundtrack feature to use and race to whatever you like.
Gameplay: I'm a long-time fan of the Need for Speed series. We're talking about years of playing games in this series. It's interesting to see that with Need for Speed: Prostreet, the series doesn't just say, "Don't try this at home," about street racing; the game itself takes the racing off the streets. Need for Speed: Prostreet has street-type racing, but all of the racing is at sanctioned racing events. While this is an honorable choice and it provides a new angle, some gamers who like the street-racing subculture aspects of the Need for Speed series may be a bit disappointed by this new twist. There are a variety of different types of races in Need for Speed: Prostreet in four different categories: Grip races, Drift events, Speed races and Drag races. There are different types of races in these categories, but they are really varieties on a theme. Grip races are your typical "circuit" races. Drift events are all about getting your car going sideways, fast and smoothly around corners as you make your way to the finish line. Speed races are all about getting to your top speed, and feature tracks with a lot of long straights that allow you to really open up your throttle. Drag races are all about getting a good start and opening up a burst of speed in either a quarter-mile or a half-mile of straight track. An interesting aspect to the Drag races is that you actually have a little mini-game dynamic before each run in which you have to heat up your tires by revving your engine. The better you do, the better grip your tires will have, so you'll want to get good at this.
Difficulty: While it's likely that you'll find one or two race types that your prefer over the rest, you'll need to train yourself in each so that you can win in all of these categories. That's because you get more rewards for dominating an event day than just winning that day. It's worth it to work towards domination; you'll get to select a second random reward, which can be anything from upgrades for your car, to cash or Progressive repair markers. Along with practicing at all of the events, you'll need to make sure you put some money into your cars to increase their stats as the difficulty of the races increases. If you don't, you'll find your cars outmatched by your opponents, and you'll find it more and more difficult to win. Additionally, since winning races earns you money and winning events (and dominating events) earns you more money, losing races will hurt you financially... which makes it harder to afford repairs... which makes it harder to win races. The moral of the story is that you want to keep a buffer of money available for necessary repairs, and you want to either develop your cars or go back to earlier races, where the competition is not as stiff. If you're ever really strapped for cash, you can go to Challenge events, where cars are provided for you and repairs are not your problem.
Game Mechanics: Need for Speed: Prostreet was a fun and very playable game, but it was definitely not without its problems. The limitation of 20 layers of vinyl and 20 layers of decals was a bit of a limitation for tweakers (and artists) out there who loved the customization allowed by Forza 2. You can still make some cool looking cars, but you've got to be more creative. Unfortunately, even the car "blueprints" you can make are considerably more difficult to spread around than in Forza 2. There is no auction in which to sell off your designs; instead, you'll have to choose to share them with your friends. If you don't have friends that play Prostreet and you're not big on trying to make new friends, you won't be able to do much with the sharing feature. One of the things that really puzzled me was the amount of time it takes to load in the car models. When selecting cars, I often would switch around the menus and select my cars without ever seeing them, since they were still loading. This seems strange, especially since Need for Speed: Prostreet has the 20/20 limitation on the vehicle graphics. Further confusing me was the fact that at certain times, when things got really close and down-to-the wire, the game would slow down. I'm not talking about network lag, either; these were during single player games. It almost seemed like it could have been caused by the physics engine having to really work hard or something, but the slowdown caused by this lag tended to actually help me out a bit, by giving me a little extra time, hence making more accurate adjustments to my driving in those hairpin turns. Did this help my driving performance? Yes. So, is this a good thing? No; I would have preferred to sling out of the turn and into a wall than to have the game actually slow down. I was so hoping that the days of consoles lagging was behind us. Sigh. Another minor yet persistently aggravating issue is some strange "bounce" and "flicker" display problems. Specifically, if you watch the animations that go on during race days at the menu screen, when the action loops, the cars do this weird "bounce" in unison, as if they were just "dropped-in" from ever-so-slightly-above the ground. Also, at the end of a race (especially noticeable at the end of drag races), your car will disappear and then reappear, in a single flicker. I chalked this up to some strange anomaly of a time issue the first couple of times I saw it. Then I came to realize it did it after every single race. Now, I have no idea why it's doing it or how the testers could have missed it. My assumption is that it was a documented bug, but that they didn't feel it was of high enough priority to fix it. Deadlines, you know. All-in-all, Need for Speed: Prostreet is a fun game, but there is a lot of repetition. Although there is a slightly interesting story that goes on in the background, it can basically be ignored. Beyond the story, the game is a lot of track-bound racing in a variety of events. That's okay, though - racing games shouldn't have to offer a lot of variation. It's racing; if you like racing, you're likely to like Need for Speed: Prostreet. However, if you're a street-racing fan who likes the shady underground racing aspects of the rest of the series, you may want to rent this one before picking it up.
-Geck0, GameVortex Communications AKA Robert Perkins
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