Need for Speed ProStreet (PSP)

Step on the gas and blow by this one.
3/19/2008 12:00 AM | 0 Comments | Page 2 of 2

In some ways, the look of things is an improvement over Carbon, but in other ways it takes a backseat to its predecessor. Visually, the game is a lot cleaner. A lot of this is due to the fact that, unlike Carbon, which had you zipping around at night, here you race in bright sunlight. It's a lot easier to see what the heck is going on during the day. It's also a lot easier to see what's ahead when you're not distracted by buildings, street signs, strangely configured highway exits, etc. Racing on real circuits lets you get a better feel for the road. On the negative side, despite its title, the game has a tougher time than ever in delivering any real sense of speed. There's a gimmicky blur effect that doesn't really work, and there'll be times when your speedometer will say 150 and it'll still feel like you're driving under the limit in a school zone.

When you're not banging away at the career mode, you can opt for a quick fix of racing in a single event. While the events are theoretically broken into two styles of racing -- speed and grip -- the action is just about the same no matter which you choose. The speed events claim to put more emphasis on airing it out and the grip events are allegedly more about how well you can control your wheels. On the track, though, you have to be able to go fast and have decent handling skills if you plan to do well, regardless of the race style. On the plus side, having to choose between speed or grip adds another menu screen to the disk, making the game seem deeper than it really is. Last fall's Juiced 2 scored points with me for adding drifting into the mix. The juxtaposition of the game's two very different types of racing -- speed versus drift -- forced you to master two distinct racing styles. The game wasn't all that great, but at least it served up a nice variety of mediocrity.

Online, ProStreet lets you go against a live foe in either ad hoc or infrastructure mode. The game is still new on the shelves, so there aren't that many folks out there to go up against, but when you do get to take on up to three other drivers, the action is solid with no noticeable frame rate differences from the single-player game.

With no story through which to plow and the been-there-done-that feel of the closed-circuit racing, fans of high-speed thrills may want to grab the recently released and futuristic WipEout Pulse. For those who dig street action, for my money, you still can't beat the fun-as-hell Burnout Legends. But as its fourth NFS release for the PSP, EA has clearly hit a speed bump with ProStreet. The game delivers by-the-book racing without a whole lot of flair.

This review was based on a retail copy of Need for Speed ProStreet that the writer bought with earnings from illegal street races he won in his Mitsubishi Eclipse.