Need for Speed ProStreet (Wii)

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1/31/2008 12:00 AM | 3 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 game's control scheme borrows a page from the Excite Truck playbook: turn the Wii remote sideways, use the 2 button for gas and the 1 button for brake, and tilt the controller to turn. (During Drag races, I had to point the controller at the screen, twisting it back and forth to steer, while using the B button to do my accelerating.)

I didn't feel terribly confident in this setup at first, since the Need for Speed games generally require more precision than Excite Truck's strapped-to-a-rocket type gameplay. My take: It's not great, but it works well enough.

The Wii version's graphics are a step up from what you'll find on the PlayStation 2, though they're a long, long way from the smooth-as-glass high-end visuals you'll see on the Xbox 360 and the PS3. Also, the frame rate stutters here and there for some reason. And online gamers, beware: The Wii version of ProStreet doesn't support online play. At all.

But beyond that, 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 edgy 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.