NFS ProStreet (PC)

NFS ProStreet (PC)

Navneet Prakash, Dec 04, 2007 1700 hrs IST

After a series of much loved NFS titles, will this one shine?

Race Day is very innovative, Good online racing system, Good graphics and awesome crash effects.

Heavy on the system, Bland plot, You'll miss the cop chases.

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Gameplay

The new NFS ProStreet is all about legal racing, it's about winning races in a more professional fashion. No running around with cops on your tail, no hiding in garages or changing paint. The game has various modes, the single player, multiplayer LAN, and online and quick races. All the game modes offer same race modes, you can also create your own race-day (details ahead).

The basic race is called a Grip Race; it's just a cool sounding name for a regular race. You race around with the fastest lap time and you're a winner. There are drag and drift races like before, all of which are optimized to work better. There are speed challenges as well, again an old game mode. Most NFS veterans have already played all these game modes, so they would know what I'm talking about.

There's an option called Race Day, which is basically a custom option for every player. You can create your own race day and go online or play on LAN. In race day, you can add as many as 8 events one after the other; so you can start with a 4 lap grip race, then add 2 drift, a drag race, and a speed challenge. These race days can be accessed by other players in ranked and unranked matches online. It's very simple -- you play the entire race and the one with maximum points in the end is the winner.

The race day option is hassle-free and leads to nice online events. I'm talking about the online aspect as it's the best option in this game and is fast and fun. The racing style is very realistic and very difficult initially. The cars follow the physics of a racing line and road-banking, you can't just race at 100 miles an hour and take a u-turn, you'll see your car tumbling and hitting the ground in ultra slow motion to increase the agony. All the races can end very quickly if you are totaled. If you've ever played Burnout, you'll know that totaled means turned into scrap metal. If you bang against an opponent or a solid object while making fast turns, you car takes major damage, rendering it useless for that race. The car damage option makes the game more competitive.

Every time your car takes damage, you'll carry forward the damage to the next race. You'll have to earn a lot of cash and make repairs to your car. In the garage, you can also fine tune your car, these minor adjustments can make a lot of difference in the game. The specs of your new car can be saved and shared online via the EA servers, these changes are called Blueprints. This is a really cool concept and works really well. The overall gameplay is good, but the initial 30 races use really boring slow cars that can test your nerve. The game is good fun much later.