Need for Speed: ProStreet

The Need for Speed franchise has been known for its fast paced, hot blooded racing and some snazzy chicks along the way and in many respects Prostreet doesn't change the given and successful formula but it falls short due to some less fundamental problems which become to prevalent to recommend the purchase.

Prostreet immediately changes its familiar free roaming elements to a race day twist where you'll be navigating through the menus in order to get to races. Prostreet barely compensates for this and while it allows you to find a race easier (should be easier), it takes the immersive feel out that you probably had with Most Wanted.

Further, the menu's are horribly designed as it takes seconds after pushing the continue button to actually advance further forth into the menu. Save menus are also completely and utterly confusing by making several save file slots and then you'll have to make another save file within that file. It's an annoying process that needn't even be there.

The Race Days themselves actually present themselves quite well as you have plenty of game modes to choose from and while they aren't entirely original from each other, they each have different means of completing it. For instance, you have your functional Time Attack mode and then you have a fairly mirrored version of it where the fastest lap wins. The differences are certainly subtle but variety is rarely scarce.

Prostreet features a minimalist story to get you going and it does very little. From the start, you can tell it was an area focused on by one or two developers and certainly no more. Story segments only happen after every few boss races, and the villain is so predictable in his personality that you couldn't care less if he didn't like you.

However, Prostreet does improve upon the mechanics which it's known for and that's the ever expanding number of cars and upgrades you'll have seen in the games. There are around 60 cars excluding the dozen or so viable from the Playstation Store. What's better is that when the difficulty ramps up a notch, you'll have just the right money to buy one of the next higher tier cars and so you'll be getting your cars naturally rather than being forced fed. It should be an expected feature from games, but Prostreet should be commended for doing it so well.

Upgrades are just the same as predecessors in the way they're any car buffs dream and no more. The number of acquirable upgrades has multiplied significantly and what's better is you can go online and show off your latest pimped up ride with the press of a button.

Damage has also been greatly enhanced in Prostreet to encourage safer driving but you shouldn't feel too punished as there are still tons of free repair icons scattered throughout the game and they're not badly priced either.

The game play follows many other racing games in blending loose game play mechanics with tight handling, resulting in a run-of-the-mill but entertaining game play portion. Braking is more of a let go of the accelerate button rather than manually using L2 but it works just fine and turning hairpins is great fun as you'll enjoy the fantastic screeching sound. The button layout is decent but circle feels awkwardly placed and it doesn't incline you to use it as much as you'd want to because it interferes with the accelerate button. The AI feels a bit too crash-conscious at times, but that's ok.

Drag Races aren't very accessible from the get go and so they'll be hard to master but the challenge is pretty good other than that. There are also some noticable glitches where you can easily get stuck in a sand dune. Reversing or accelerating won't get you far and you'll usually have to restart the race again, that is, if you're offline.

The graphical presentation takes you through two different locations. You have your busy and crowded urban environments full of mannequins and then the sandy dunes in the remote deserts. It's weird to see the dune tracks come into the game play but it's not necessarily a negative. The design is just the same as you'll have played in Carbon, except with some nice crisp, sharp layers of polish on top. The deserts certainly give that feeling of remoteness and it's easy to forgive the bland level design because of the atmosphere they behold.

The audio design is merely average and fails to live up to anything special because of its unimaginative dialogue and droning but decent voice acting. However it all changes when you hear the seismic crashes and the breakthrough it beholds. Skidding, sliding and simply crashing is just plain fun. Of course you'll want to stay on the track and be alive but seeing bonnets clinging onto your car while you drive off is irresistible.

Prostreet does feature one major value selling point in that it has a split-screen two player option unlike its predecessors. This is where you can use Prostreets standard Race Days for your enjoyment or make your own. Your standard selection of cars is limited to 12 out of 60 and even on your own Race Days, you can only play around with 20 cars. The online itself bases around the same novelty and it's fairly good fun but that's if you can actually get online *cough*.

Prostreet has to have the worst functional online sever, absolutely terrible. The first noticeable feature is that you must download a dozen of updates for the online component and without you can't access it. Just cancel the option for downloading and enjoy the single player for what you can. What's so bad about these updates is that they waste hours of your precious gaming time, take up your precious hard drive and improve upon nothing but minor glitches or faults upon the online. Apparently the Xbox Live allows you to cancel the download and still go online but that's if you can connect to EA. On numerous occasions, EA would have been down for maintenance or even crashed.

But no it gets worse. There is no skilled based matchmaking and so you with a Volkswagen Polo must face a Buggati Veyron. It's really dampens your day and really kills any enjoyment you could possibly get from the online. The Buggati Veyron is one of the purchasable cars via the Playstation Store and EA purposely put a price on it because of the raw power it has. No skill is required with it especially on the flat and straight desert tracks. In fact, I can guarantee you that a small but big minority of the community use Bugatti Veyrons.

Pros
+ 60ish cars.
+ Cars are balanced and priced well.
+ Damages to your car look authentic and cool.
+ Graphics are great even if not improved much.
+ Race Days feature a variety of game modes.
+ Seismic crahes and sound effects are fantastic.
+ Tons of upgrades to mess around with.

Cons
- Average dialogue and voice acting.
- EA severs are break down and crash.
- Gameplay feels bit too safe at times.
- Menu is horribly designed.
- No skill based matchmaking.
- Saving a game is annoying and confusing.
- Story is almost non-existent.
- Tons of worthless online updates.

Confusingly, customers would immediately buy the Buggati Veyron for £2.00 but all the other cars are priced exactly the same, so only hardcore completionists would do such a thing. EA furthers its marketing sense by using aplenty of an array of licences for in-game advertising. I wouldn't be surprised if their excuse was to say "Oh, were just trying to make the game more authentic." Just simply avoid this milk of a cash-in altogether, this is only for the Hardcore fans. Them and them only!