Need For Speed: ProStreet (Xbox 360) > Reviews > It's time to take racing off the streets

Author's product rating:   

Playability & Enjoyment	OK -
Addictiveness	Boring after a few games
Graphics	Good
Difficulty & Complexity	Quite a simple game not too complicated
Value for money	Limited value

Advantages:	Good graphics, damage engine
Disadvantages:	Not for everyone, commentary .

Recommend to potential buyers:

no

Full review

Need for Speed Underground, Underground 2, Most Wanted and Carbon were all about illegal street racing and accumulating street cred. With Pro Street this has all gone out the window, Need for Speed has gone back to it's simulation roots in this incarnation.

Gone are the bright Neon streets, gone are the police chases, gone are the corners that you can throw the car sideways through without slowing.

In their place are legal race meets, with a number of different disciplines:

Grip - Straight forward race.

Grip Multiclass - Cars are grouped according to performance, you race against cars from your class, but cars from other groups are there also.

Time Attack - You have a number of laps to post the fastest lap.

Sector Shootout - The lap is broken up into four sectors, achieve the fastest time through the sector to acquire points

1/4 mile drag - Fastest time over a 1/4 mile wins.

1/2 mile drag - Fastest time over a 1/2 mile wins.

Drift - Score points by drifting the rear end around corners.

The first four require a car setup for circuit racing, and drag or drift for the remainder. If you are connected to Xbox Live and do well in a particular race, you can upload your stats and shadow onto the leaderboard for fellow online players to race against. Unfortunately, you don't get an instant display of the leaderboard to see how you placed. To view your place, you need to search through the leaderboards for the meets, and then the particular race to see how you done.

The graphics are really good, and the car models look as they should. Plus this game has a damage engine, something which has distinctly been missing from recent Need for Speed titles. Even just a wobbly bumper can have an adverse affect to how the car handles too.

Modding the visuals on your car involves applying layer upon layer of symbols and shapes to acquire the look you desire. What this means is that it can takes hours to get it looking right, and is probably far too fiddly and time consuming for most. One plus side is, that if you do spend a lot of time getting it right, and have an Xbox Live Gold subscription, you can share your blueprint with your friends. You can also trade blueprints with other users.

Sound is OK, there are some good music tracks used, although you normally only here snippets while you navigate the menus. One thing that becomes annoying very quickly is the repetitive commentary.

I would recommend that anyone looking to buy this game should download the demo, play it in your local game shop, or rent it first. It may not be your cup of tea if you liked the recent NFS titles.