Need for Speed ProStreet (PC)

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1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 1 Comments | Page 2 of 3

Between Race Days you can click over to your Garage and upgrade your vehicles, adding nitrous, better tires, exhaust packages, flame decals on the sides, etc. all in the name of giving you an edge on the next Race Day.

ProStreet, like all recent games in the series, features real-world Cadillacs, Mazdas and Nissans, to name a few name brands. And forget bulldozing your way through races as you've done in years past. In ProStreet, even the slightest fender bender results in damage. Do enough damage, and you'll total your ride, and won't be able to finish the race.

The mouse and keyboard offer a decent amount of control, but for my money, I prefer using an analog gamepad. And whatever you do, for god's sake do not use a USB/force feedback-type steering wheel -- unless spending a few hours fighting with a phony steering while shouting expletives that would make Don Rickles blush sounds like a good time to you.

Like the console versions, the PC version of ProStreet not only features traditional racing-against-other-online-gamers-type showdowns, but it also allows you to set up your own custom Race Days, picking and choosing which events you want to include. Once your roster of races is in place, you can then invite your online friends/foes to log in at their leisure -- even if you're offline at the time -- and run the gauntlet of races. The person with the most points at the end of the time period is the winner of the event. It's a nifty way to integrate the game's Race Day structure into the online side of things.

But in the end, ProStreet commits three sins, and while none of them make the game unplayable, all three seriously handicap the game.

The first is the game's DJ. Seriously, I'd rather sit next to Kathy Griffin on a five-hour flight than have to listen to this guy. To make him even more annoying, because he's supposed to sound like he's talking through a grandstand loudspeaker, most of what he says sounds like this: RAA RAAA AWWW YEAH RAH WON'T RAAH FINISH LINE RAA RAAA IT'S GOING DOWN TODAY, FOLKS. Dear EA: Instead of including a DJ, next time, just ship the game with a vial of ants to dump down our chinos. Thank you.

Number two: The Career Map is designed to look edgey and "rad," like a tattoo or a piece of graffiti. There's a skull! Look, a cartoonish bomb! But mostly, it is a bit of ornate bullshit (apparently leftover from Most Wanted and Carbon) that is nearly impossible to navigate.

Finally, ProStreet's greatest sin is that, overall, it's a very bland, very dry affair. That doesn't mean it's necessarily bad. It's not. In fact, ProStreet is more than competent. The racing action, though repetitive, is solid fun. Yet, something seems to be missing at the game's center. The problem, I think, is that it never feels like anything is really at stake here. There's no real drama, no emotion. I won races. I lost races. And, unfortunately, my reactions to both outcomes were virtually indistinguishable from one another.

I'll say it what I'm sure some of you are thinking: I really miss the cops. Nothing like a good old-fashioned smokies-on-your-tail jaunt to get the blood going, you know? Without the cops, without any inherent drama, you're doing nothing more than going really fast in a souped-up Mazda.