Need for Speed ProStreet Hands-on

UK, July 20, 2007 - Great news Santa! There’s a new Need for Speed game coming this year. That’s right beardy: you can sack some more elves, pop down to your local games emporium and pick up a few million copies of Need for Speed ProStreet, ready for the predictable glut of requests from clamouring fans. That’s if the last three years are anything to go by, when entrants in the Need for Speed series have consistently troubled the top spot in the UK Christmas charts.

For this newest iteration, EA is attempting to redress the balance between customisation, ’street culture’ and making a realistic driving game. Producer John Doyle admitted to IGN that the past few years have seen the Need for Speed series concentrate less on driving and more on the customisaton of cars. However, that’s set to change, with Doyle assuring us that ProStreet offers the most realistic driving experience yet in a Need for Speed game.

Thankfully there’s a decent sense of speed as you thunder along

tracks.

“It’s very hard every year to make a new Need for Speed,” Doyle told us. “I mean, we’re not a sports title, so it’s not just a case of adding the latest players or changing the leagues. We go through a lot of concepts before deciding on the final game and we have to make sure whatever we come up with is innovative. For ProStreet we had five or six different concepts. But what we decided is that we wanted this new game to be more realistic, so that players felt like they were part of the experience.”

Apparently, one way to do this, according to Doyle, is to add smoke: “We wanted people to feel like they were making contact with the roads and we thought that we could do that by having smoke coming off the wheels,” explained Doyle. “A lot of work has been done on the smoke and I think we’re about 90% there. Plus it has gameplay effects too, as well as adding to the visual experience. For example, if you’re drifting behind another racer the smoke has a negative effect on the racing because you can’t see where you’re going. It can also be used to intimidate opponents when you’re on the starting grid.”

The other big shift in ProStreet is the move away from the illegal side of street racing to specially-organised legal competitions. As such, driving events are visual spectacles with massive balloons floating through the air, sound systems pumping out the latest tunez, crowds of fans and amazing cars lined up for all to see. It’s a complete contrast to the rather low key underground racing of previous Need for Speed titles and it looks fantastic.

Both cars and tracks are packed with lovely detail.

All this pomp and flair is part of ProStreet’s new race weekends, which make up the bulk of the single-player game. Rather than driving round a city randomly challenging other racers, Pro Street sees you travelling the globe and taking part in an entire weekend of events. During the competition, you enter four different categories - grip, drift, speed challenge and drag racing - to beat your opponents and ultimately become the Street King. Race weekends take part in Europe, America and Japan. “We wanted to take the game on a global scale and we’ve got locations from around the world - locations which are iconic and recognisable within the street racing scene,” explained Doyle.