Need for Speed: ProStreet Review

Making the series more down-to-earth and less of an arcadish experience didn't exactly work out the way EA planned. While the physics and new damage model emphasize realism, the races just aren't as entertaining and intense as they once were. Likewise, excluding adrenaline-pumping cop chases is also a slip-up. It simply takes the fun out of the whole ride and for that reason, I see ProStreet as a step back, as opposed to an innovative addition to the series. Free-roaming the streets GTA style and challenging other drivers was considerably more enjoyable, hence Underground 2, Most Wanted and Carbon remain superior to this game. Each of these games had a story with sudden twists and that's something I sorely missed when playing ProStreet.

It's hard to concentrate on driving sometimes.

Screw you guys, I'm going the other way!

On a positive side, you can unlock a solid number of cars, each of which can be customized and prepared for various events any way you want to. A feature called "Race Days" also adds the possibility of creating your own races and setting up diverse challenges, which may then be experienced online in ranked and unranked matches. Now, this seems like a very nice addition... if you can manage to find any opponents online, that is. Last we checked, the Leaderboards were empty. Expect to experience lag even if you do manage to find anybody online.

So, here's how things are. NFS fans who appreciated earlier games, are likely to regard ProStreet as a disappointment. We applaud the developer's attempt to create something fresh, over the concept of illegal races and being pursued by the police. Yet, this new style isn't quite the improvement we were hoping for. The tournaments and races become tedious after a few hours, which also goes for the tracks. There is a decent choice of tracks available. Still, they seem rather uninteresting when compared to the locations in, say, Most Wanted. As it turns out, customization and realistic damage represent modest signs of progress and they make the gameplay interesting for a while. These additions, as I'm sure most of you will agree, fail to compensate for all those things that made ProStreet's predecessors shine - free-roam driving, outracing the cops, story-driven gameplay and so on.