Game review: Need for Speed: ProStreet

I've been playing Need for Speed games for almost as long as I've had access to a computer at home. I had fairly high hopes for ProStreet, since EA were supposedly leaving the street-racer style behind and switching over to a track-day atmosphere. The game itself is very promising, and has a number of cool gameplay features.

Unfortunately it's also riddled with problems that manage to ruin most of the potential enjoyment. Let's start with the graphics. Pro Street looks better than any of its predecessors. The textures, particle effects, shading and reflections all look amazing. Unfortunately when it all comes together it brings my computer to its knees. My computer may be a couple years old, but it is not slow by any measure. I'm running the latest drivers for all my hardware, and my machine is tuned perfectly. I'm sporting an overclocked Athlon64 4000+, 2 gigs of DDR and an overclocked 7900GT, and even with all the settings turned down this game runs like crap. This machine easily has twice the raw power of the minimum system requirements. It stutters and hangs, the framerates are terrible, and with everything turned down it looks worse than Carbon.

The reason for this is that, while you can turn down the detail on everything and make the textures look like crap, the game still renders useless eye-candy like reflections and lens flare. There is no option to disable these effects. I'd gladly trade my lens flare for some particle effects or a bit better texturing. The really unfortunate part of this poor performance is that it adversely affects the driving experience, but I'll get to that later. With all the textures turned down, my WRX STI doesn't look very impressive. This is compounded by the fact that I changed the paint color to flat black in an effort to improve the game's performance by removing the need to render reflections on it. As a prelude to my next point, I need to point this out: with all the textures turned down, the game's many, MANY advertisements are still perfectly legible from a considerable distance.

That's right, advertisements. The whole game looks like the inside of an AutoZone. Everywhere you look, there's an advertisement for spark plugs, carburetors or nitrous kits. Real racing tracks are often populated with ads, and one could argue that these merely add to the realism. I won't disagree with that, but when the trackside billboards are noticeably more detailed than features on the track, it kind of sucks the little remaining enjoyment out of the game. It's kind of like watching television; they always play the commercials a little louder than the show itself. I'd much rather see that telephone pole on the apex of the next corner than the Energizer Lithium billboard half a mile away.

Screenshot

Now, on to the controls. I'm using the standard mouse and keyboard, which have worked very well for me in the past. The real problem with this game is its control scheme. I'm using the tried-and-true WASD keys, but the handling is so jumpy it's very difficult to modulate control inputs and you just end up swerving around everywhere. This isn't a show-stopper in the slower, tighter tracks, but in the wide-open, high-speed races it becomes almost impossible to stay on a track when things get twisty. Things get even worse when you're stuck in the pack, the other cars greedily hogging system resources with their shiny paint. Where things get really sad is when the game starts stuttering. When the graphics grind to a halt, the physics are still at work. If you're issuing any control inputs the game keeps logging them, so when things start moving again you're pointed in a different direction.

I really want to like this game. Buried amongst the advertising and crappy graphics, there is an excellent game in there somewhere. There could be adrenaline-pumping flat-out racing action, sexy graphics and snappy performance, but it's been lost in a sea of ads and useless graphical effects that someone deemed more important than the game itself. There are a number of other faults I could point out, such as the lack of a dedicated LAN multiplayer game (any multiplayer functionality has to be accessed by logging into an online account tied to your CD key) but the ones mentioned above are complete show-stoppers for me.

Pulled-out-of-my-ass rating:
3 out of 10: a steaming pile of crap with a handful of likable features

Pros:
Potential for good racing action
Cool selection of cars
Cool customization and upgrade options
Crappy soundtrack can be turned off

Cons:
Horrible performance
Useless graphics options
Crappy controls
Ads jammed down your throat
Gameplay compromised to render ads
I can't return it

As a final note to anyone considering purchasing this game: don't waste your time (or your money). As for EA, please stop letting your advertising department bean-counters design your games. Seriously, keep them the hell away from the programmers and play-testers. Stop pushing to see how much advertising people will tolerate before they stop buying your shit.