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IGN Review of Need for Speed: ProStreet
EA's Need for Speed series has long been an ever-evolving franchise, one that changes up its focus, mechanics and style every couple of years. Though the game sells incredibly well, the developer/publisher doesn't like to sit still. This obviously means that the series has had its ups and downs, and unfortunately Need for Speed ProStreet isn't one of the ups.
ProStreet is a game that doesn't really seem to know what it's trying to be. It's been years since we've seen a Need for Speed title that focused solely on track racing, with the franchise branching out into open world settings with a story, cop chases and all sorts of other things to make it stand out. ProStreet, however, goes back to the track-based racing, putting the player into race after race on closed circuits, and then sending them back to a menu after each race is over.
This setup is perfectly fine and, in this case, does work well to some extent, but there's not really a whole lot of extra "stuff" outside of the races that make it seem like Black Box had a good idea of exactly what it was trying to accomplish. Yes, the fundamentals are there and the setup does work well, but the bulk of the presentation doesn't feel all that robust, especially when compared to what we've seen in recent years.
Most of the cars in the game feel like caricatures of their real-life counterparts, but not in a good way. Most every vehicle drives like a boat and feels very reluctant to turn. Even vehicles in hardcore driving sims like Gran Turismo turn with much greater ease than most any of the vehicles found here, and yet the game isn't even trying to be ultra-realistic.
A few of us around the office drive some of the cars that you'll find in the game, and none of them handle anything like the real deal. ProStreet's versions of some of the cars barely turn at anything above 30mph, and don't really instill any sense of their 400hp engine. The real cars are nimble, but ProStreet's representations feel very top-heavy and they slide around corners like they're covered with ice.
You might have guessed that the most obvious difference between the Wii version of the game and the other versions is the control setup, which (although not necessarily an improvement) holds up quite well. ProStreet only requires a single Wii remote, which you hold on its side like a classic controller. The buttons are all generally mapped to the most obvious function (2 to accelerate, 1 for braking, etc.) and steering is controlled by tilting the controller to the left and right. We were hesitant about this dynamic at first, considering how super fast driving requires a lot of precision input, but the motion control was responsive and felt comfortable for the most part.
The only other change to the controls can be noticed during drag races, which have you hold the remote in the normal pointer manner and twist to steer, while using the B button for acceleration. This also works fairly well and doesn't deprive you of necessary precision.
Though there's not a lot of pizzazz and whatnot to it as we mentioned before, the Race Day progression does offer up a nice assortment of race events for you to partake in. Each Race Day features a handful of events -- be they grip races, drag races, sector challenges or what have you -- and pretty much all of them are good fun.
Drag races start out with a mini-game where you heat up your tires before heading to the line, and then it's all about timing your shifts, using your nitrous at the right time and keeping your car in a straight line, which can be tricky when you get to the really fast cars. The tire heating mini-game can get a little old, especially since each drag race event has three runs, so you'll play the game three times in the span of a couple minutes, but it's fun to try and shave a couple hundredths of a second off your time by getting a perfect start.
The Sector Shootout challenges can be fun, but there were a few occasions where we had problems with the driver AI and the basic setup for the event. The idea is that the track is broken into a number of sectors, and if you can post the best time for a sector you'll score points. The score counts down as time rolls on. So if someone scores 350 points on a sector, but then you come through and score 360, you'll add that total to your score. Score less, though, and you'll get zero.
It's a good idea, except that it's fundamentally flawed. You begin in a staggered manner instead of all at once, so the lead car automatically has a chance to set the record for each section and score points. You don't lose any if someone bests one of your times, so the first car automatically has a huge lead. Also, if there are ten sectors on a map, and one car has set the record on all of them, and then you come in and beat nine of those sectors by a small margin, you'll still be way behind because you've gotten zero points for the tenth and the other scores were close enough that it doesn't make up the difference. Had you lost your points when someone else beat your score, everything would have been fine. But as it is, it's fundamentally broken.
The track design is decent, but nothing stands out whatsoever. All of the races take place out in the middle of nowhere on closed-off tracks, so you won't see too many interesting trackside vistas or what have you. They're all rather flat and most of them lack characteristic turns or sections. They're all different enough that you'll quickly learn the layouts and won't be confused as to what track you're on at the start, but nothing here screams great track design.
As well, you can now tweak a number of settings like shock spring rate, roll, nitrous boost and whatnot to fiddle with how your car will perform. If you don't know what you're doing you can just leave them at the default settings, but these let you go in and mess with the metal if you want to.
One of the most pressing issues with this version of ProStreet is the lack of an online mode, which is definitely a positive element of the other platform iterations. With no ability to play with other people online, the Wii ProStreet loses a lot of the replayability that you would have otherwise had access to and makes this title far less appealing than its counterparts.
©2007-11-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved
ProStreet is a game that doesn't really seem to know what it's trying to be. It's been years since we've seen a Need for Speed title that focused solely on track racing, with the franchise branching out into open world settings with a story, cop chases and all sorts of other things to make it stand out. ProStreet, however, goes back to the track-based racing, putting the player into race after race on closed circuits, and then sending them back to a menu after each race is over.
This setup is perfectly fine and, in this case, does work well to some extent, but there's not really a whole lot of extra "stuff" outside of the races that make it seem like Black Box had a good idea of exactly what it was trying to accomplish. Yes, the fundamentals are there and the setup does work well, but the bulk of the presentation doesn't feel all that robust, especially when compared to what we've seen in recent years.
Most of the cars in the game feel like caricatures of their real-life counterparts, but not in a good way. Most every vehicle drives like a boat and feels very reluctant to turn. Even vehicles in hardcore driving sims like Gran Turismo turn with much greater ease than most any of the vehicles found here, and yet the game isn't even trying to be ultra-realistic.
A few of us around the office drive some of the cars that you'll find in the game, and none of them handle anything like the real deal. ProStreet's versions of some of the cars barely turn at anything above 30mph, and don't really instill any sense of their 400hp engine. The real cars are nimble, but ProStreet's representations feel very top-heavy and they slide around corners like they're covered with ice.
You might have guessed that the most obvious difference between the Wii version of the game and the other versions is the control setup, which (although not necessarily an improvement) holds up quite well. ProStreet only requires a single Wii remote, which you hold on its side like a classic controller. The buttons are all generally mapped to the most obvious function (2 to accelerate, 1 for braking, etc.) and steering is controlled by tilting the controller to the left and right. We were hesitant about this dynamic at first, considering how super fast driving requires a lot of precision input, but the motion control was responsive and felt comfortable for the most part.
The only other change to the controls can be noticed during drag races, which have you hold the remote in the normal pointer manner and twist to steer, while using the B button for acceleration. This also works fairly well and doesn't deprive you of necessary precision.
Though there's not a lot of pizzazz and whatnot to it as we mentioned before, the Race Day progression does offer up a nice assortment of race events for you to partake in. Each Race Day features a handful of events -- be they grip races, drag races, sector challenges or what have you -- and pretty much all of them are good fun.
Drag races start out with a mini-game where you heat up your tires before heading to the line, and then it's all about timing your shifts, using your nitrous at the right time and keeping your car in a straight line, which can be tricky when you get to the really fast cars. The tire heating mini-game can get a little old, especially since each drag race event has three runs, so you'll play the game three times in the span of a couple minutes, but it's fun to try and shave a couple hundredths of a second off your time by getting a perfect start.
The Sector Shootout challenges can be fun, but there were a few occasions where we had problems with the driver AI and the basic setup for the event. The idea is that the track is broken into a number of sectors, and if you can post the best time for a sector you'll score points. The score counts down as time rolls on. So if someone scores 350 points on a sector, but then you come through and score 360, you'll add that total to your score. Score less, though, and you'll get zero.
It's a good idea, except that it's fundamentally flawed. You begin in a staggered manner instead of all at once, so the lead car automatically has a chance to set the record for each section and score points. You don't lose any if someone bests one of your times, so the first car automatically has a huge lead. Also, if there are ten sectors on a map, and one car has set the record on all of them, and then you come in and beat nine of those sectors by a small margin, you'll still be way behind because you've gotten zero points for the tenth and the other scores were close enough that it doesn't make up the difference. Had you lost your points when someone else beat your score, everything would have been fine. But as it is, it's fundamentally broken.
The track design is decent, but nothing stands out whatsoever. All of the races take place out in the middle of nowhere on closed-off tracks, so you won't see too many interesting trackside vistas or what have you. They're all rather flat and most of them lack characteristic turns or sections. They're all different enough that you'll quickly learn the layouts and won't be confused as to what track you're on at the start, but nothing here screams great track design.
As well, you can now tweak a number of settings like shock spring rate, roll, nitrous boost and whatnot to fiddle with how your car will perform. If you don't know what you're doing you can just leave them at the default settings, but these let you go in and mess with the metal if you want to.
One of the most pressing issues with this version of ProStreet is the lack of an online mode, which is definitely a positive element of the other platform iterations. With no ability to play with other people online, the Wii ProStreet loses a lot of the replayability that you would have otherwise had access to and makes this title far less appealing than its counterparts.
©2007-11-19, IGN Entertainment, Inc. All Rights Reserved