Oh dear! What on earth has happened to Need For Speed?? In my opinion this game has gone and ruined an excellent series of driving games.
With the obvious illegality of street racing the makers of Need For Speed have decided to make everything more legal. Gone are the days of racing through the city streets avoiding cars and police roadblocks! There are now a variety of structured races such as Sector Shootout, Drift, Wheelie competition, Top Speed Run, Speed Challenges and many others. The whole idea of the game is set around a Race Day, meaning you get to compete with other racing drivers from around the world.
There is a new damage feature, meaning if you crash or scrape your car it gets damaged! You can even total your car if you crash into a barrier at 120mph or skid of the track and end up flipping your car over a hill! This however can become quite frustrating because if you total your car your race is over, so it's a bit annoying if you're only 100ft from the end flag! Another annoying aspect of the game is on some of the races there are so many bumps at the side of the track you end up totalling your car for doing practically nothing! Any damages you do incur during a race however can always be repaired with repair markers which are awarded for competing in different races…so don't worry your prize Subaru isn't gone forever!
However this is where I come to talk about the cars. I feel this is the whole let down of the game. The cars have been "developed" so they now handle like a tank! This means you should expect to be doing no more than 20-30mph as you hit a corner or you'll end up in the barrier. I found this very disappointing, Need For Speed has always been a very fast paced game and in previous instalments I used to go racing round corners at speeds above 80mph! Do that in this game and you will total your car and the race will be over. The only good thing about the cars is that you can still customise them in any way you choose, like in the other Need For Speed games.
The graphics of the game aren't too bad; mind you in Most Wanted and Carbon they weren't a problem either. The cars do look slightly better and more realistic though and the settings are more detailed with far more bumps etc. The sound is ok; sometimes the commentator on race day gets slightly annoying though (his high pitched shouting your name all the time gets rather repetitive!)
Having played all the previous games I always liked the fast pace; the skidding round corners at 90mph, the smashing though police roadblocks and trying to immobilise as many police cars as I could and avoiding the spike strips and other police traps! But with Pro Street you can no longer do any of this. It makes the whole thing feel a lot more like a rubbish version of "Gran Turismo" with terrible car handling!
Overall I think the makers of this game had a nice idea but tried way to hard to develop it. There are quite a few flaws in this game that anyone could've spotted and fixed but they obviously haven't! The idea of having all the different races is quite enjoyable if you can put up with the boat like handling! If you are into cars then you may enjoy the customisation side of it but I doubt you'll like the racing. The understeering cars get annoying as do the tiny bumps at the side of the track which total your car immediately. Eventhough this game is called Need For Speed, I believe that it has totally lost the unique flair previous games had making it disappointingly average.
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Advantages: An amazing machine, expandable, some great features Disadvantages: Expensive (but for a reason), almost internet reliant, no browser security
ayanayuk 14.02.2008 (18.02.2008)
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Review of Sony PlayStation 3 (PS3)
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