Need for Speed: Pro Street. Just don't buy it.

saltesc

I've always loved NFS games for the sheer fun of reckless driving without consequence. I was really excited all the way up to November 14th, waiting to get my hands on a copy of NFSPS. Tales of model damage, an awesome car list, "innovative" gameplay, and that smoke spinning around the wheel!! God, I just couldn't wait. But now that I've got it and have played about 10 hours all up... it's just so.... crap? Shit? Like the same feeling I got when Daktana came out.

i.e.
Before: "omg omg omg omg omg omg omg omg!!! when?!?!"
After: "omfg omfg omfg omfg omfg!!!!!! why!?!?!"

1. FPS blows. I'm playing BioShock at full settings and getting a high frame rate. In NFSPS, I have medium settings and have "laggy" sections on the tracks. Everything is smooth, but something from this corner to that corner makes this part of the track about as smooth as a pick-pocket with Parkinson's. In the demo I had pretty much everything on full (no V-sync, only 4xAA). For some reason, in this full version, I have to drop AA all together, lower resolution to 1280x720 (the lowest wide-screen res), disable shadows, and lower general world and car detail a lot.
2. The Sector Shootout styled races are literally fucked. They actually do not work. You can be the fastest person on the track, you can win all but one of the sectors, but you can still lose. To assure certain victory, you have to be the fastest on every lap. Being second on one lap, then God-like on the rest can still cause you to come second. It's the way the point system works. You score points whenever you make a new fastest record in a section of the track. All four cars race together, however they start seperated by 2 second intervals. Don't see the problem yet? Well the guy who starts first has a 2 second lead (6 on you), as long as he doesn't lose that lead, he will always complete a section first, thus he sets the first record (being first, he is at that point the fastest), so he then gets full points on the first lap by default. So you can gain that 6 seconds, overtake everyone, win by 12 seconds, but you want to hope that despite obviously being better than the AI, you got enough points to beat all the ones the first guy racked up by Sunday driving.
3. AI is atrocious. In some races, I'd get a 3:55 and be totally baffled as to why the car in front beat me with a 3:48 even though I was ruthless and the guy in third got a 4:03. Restart the race, get a 3:55, win, guy in second gets a 4:05... like 17 seconds of difference between the top AI in the two races is normal.
4. Drafting is stupid. You can draft a car that's about 10 car lengths in front of you and I swear the speed gain is well passed that of nitrous. That means final lap, final straight, all a sudden your 2.5 second lead and visions of first-place glory are shattered by a car tearing passed you at 100miles an hour faster to take your win. If you want to guarantee your win, it's easier just to stick in second place and at the end draft your way into first before the finish line. Too make things worse, if you screw up in a Sector Shootout so that you are no longer trailing the other 3 cars, you can kiss the race goodbye. You will be "racing", but they will be drafting off each other constantly, therefore someone is always faster in a sector than you unless you are in the beginning races or you are in fact, the Stig.
5. RYAN COOPER!!!! RYYYYAAAAAN COOOOOPEEEERRR!!!!! Within 5 minutes you will learn to hate that name. It's no spoiler that despite choosing a driving name, Ryan Cooper is the actual alias you will race under. For every area that holds "race days", there is someone commentating the ordeal over loud speakers non-stop. Even when you are selecting races they're talking about Ryan fucking Cooper. About 80% of those soundbytes have "Ryan Cooper" once or twice in two or three sentences.
   
   "Check it out, it's Ryyyaaaan Coooper!"
   "Here's my man, Ryan Cooper getting ready to race."
   "I'm so freaking gay to talk about one man so much, I guess I just love RYYAAAN COOPEERRR!!!"
   
   It's so bad that my house mates, who haven't even played the game, walk into my room saying, "Ryyaan Cooooper!!" because apart from, "o..m...FG!!!! F THIS GAME IN THE A!!!", it's the most heard thing coming from my room. Ryan Cooper... Ryan fucking Cooper... I just want to cry.
6. Damage -vs- cash flow is a real ball-biter. At the start you get very little cash for winning races. You get a bonus for not damaging your car, you spend money to repair your car. Well thanks to suicidal AI that I have seen drive full throttle into walls instead of turning at a corner, making money is a really big challenge. Once you get used to the game self-inflicted damage is actually quite low. But getting through those packs of 8 cars (as you start at the rear in most races)... my God, it's stressful. Swapping paint is fine, but a small nudge will cost you $1,000 or your entire race winnings, better hope no one else hits you for the remaining 2 laps. So you end up getting to a point where you want a more powerful car, but with $133,000 upgrades and more expensive repair damage the more upgraded your car is, you are just forced to go back and repeat races over and over. Considering it's the same track with alterations for a few different corners for every event in every race day in every area, you really get the fuck over it.
7. Tuning is a nightmare. Is it too much to ask for a test track? Straight up, first car I bought when I was able to was a 200sx (a.k.a. S15 or Silvia). I tuned it for grip racing going off GT2, 3, 4 and GTR2 knowledge, totally oblivious to the extremes of the tuning settings in this game. I enter a raceday, do a couple of drags with my Charger and win both. I go to do a grip race and the car was so hard to drive, I obviously had to refine my tuning. So to do that, I have to quit the race day (all races including my two wins in drag are totally reset), go into my garage, tune blindly, go back into the race day, enter a grip race, try it out and hope no AI hits me so I don't pay any damages, leave race, leave race day, hit garage, refine tuning more, etc, etc, etc. Just put a fucking test track in!!
8. The customising of car appearance would be more of a let down than finding out Kirsten Dunst had a penis. They sold this big-time. All loyal NFS fannies insist on how awesome it is. Well there's billions of customisable wheels, about a dozen good looking spoilers... for most cars, three body kits. Two standard body kits that are mildly customisable, but you won't use them anyway because their aero score sucks. You'll just go with the one wide-body kit, which is good on some cars, but tends to turn beautiful cars (like the BMW M Coupe) into something that suddenly makes Kirsten Dunst with a penis far more appealing.

So what's actually good about this game?

1. The graphic design in the menus is really funky. Like, it's nice quality stuff to look at. I can exit a race for the fifth time, completely frustrated at the game, but then I'll see the spunk of the vector art and feel like racing again. I think they designed it that way, knowing that they failed at the actual game part of the game.
2. The cars are real nice. Whether or not I am compelled to play the game to the point I unlock the Pagani Zonda, just to see cars like that is comforting. There's a great variety of cars, from BMW E92 M3 to my old favourite, the Toyota Corolla GT-S AE86. They all look very good and customising stock parts is an option. The commentator refers to the Pontiac GTO as "American muscle", because we all know it's actually an Australian muscle car rebadged from 'Holden Monaro' to the GTO then sold at a much higher price. But as long as the commentator isn't saying "RYAAAANNNNNN COOOOOPEEEEEERRRR!!!!" for once, I'm happy.
3. Ummm.... there's got to be something else.... oh it sounds nice. Cars that are, in reality, NA or supercharged still have a blow-off valve sound on every boosted shift... a turbo Charger R/T drag car is just... weird. But the car sounds are quite accurate to real-life . All zones of the RPM are high-quality.
4. The soundtrack is pretty good. Some of the tracks boast the talent of Fred Durst live with the appeal of being sack-whacked by a 10kg medicine ball. But other tracks are actually really good - I've made note of certain artists so I can check out more of their music later. If you ignore "Ryan Cooper takes the lead!" and "Did I mention, Ryan Cooper!?" while you're racing, some of the tracks really get you in "the mood". Though it probably won't be long till I just pull Winamp up and shut music off all together - I have my own favourite racing songs.

That's all I've got really. I shouldn't really give any opinion without trying out the online and networked play more thoroughly - I hear it's very good. Though, this from the same people that said the game was very good. But to be honest, I really recommend no one buys this. From the dry catch phrases from "cool dudes", to wondering why the hell the enter key just stopped working after I finally won a race, to the bewilderment of my car flipping while speeding down the middle of the track, not touching a thing. It really has let me down, so much. Seeing the reviews out there, scoring 9/10's etc, I really think NFS fans are ignorantly claiming the game to be awesome despite it being a piece of shit that should have been worked on for another 6 months. I don't really like IGN reviews, but the 6.8/10 review by Chris Roper pretty much nailed it. I'd give it a 6. If I was a fanboy, I'd give it a 8.5 or so.

It just sucks though...

citizen059

Interesting take. I'll have to link or repost this over at one of my other forums; a bunch of ex-MCO guys are saying that except for a few things it's like a "second coming" of MCO due to the tuning aspects.

I'll have to see what they make of all this.

saltesc

It certainly has the potential. Everything it takes to be a great game is there. But there is just so much flaw and poor design that all of those would-be awesome things simply aren't awesome at all.

Gosling

Wait... the Sector Shootout staggers starts... and then fails to account for that staggering in the final results? And the player starts last? That is bullshit.

saltesc

Yep. This will explain it much better than I did.

The Sector Shootout challenges can be fun, but there were a few occasions where we had problems with the driver AI and the basic setup for the event. The idea is that the track is broken into a number of sectors, and if you can post the best time for a sector you'll score points. The score counts down as time rolls on. So if someone scores 350 points on a sector, but then you come through and score 360, you'll add that total to your score. Score less, though, and you'll get zero.

It's a good idea, except that it's fundamentally flawed. You begin in a staggered manner instead of all at once, so the lead car automatically has a chance to set the record for each section and score points. You don't lose any if someone bests one of your times, so the lead automatically has a huge lead. As well, if there are ten sectors on a map, and one car has set the record on all of them, and then you come in and beat nine of those sectors by a small margin, you'll still be way behind because you've gotten zero points for the tenth and the other scores were close enough that it doesn't make up the difference. Had you lost your points when someone else beat your score, everything would have been fine. But as it is, it's fundamentally broken. - Chris Roper, IGN.

HyperAquaBlast

I just want a Most Wanted 2 in a new area and thats about it.

saltesc

Yeah I enjoyed free-roaming, cops, and a storyline. I was always frustrated about not being able to modify the BMW M3 and not being able to initiate drift and hold it whenever I wanted. Now both of those things are possible, but the gameplay itself is about as elaborate as Excite Truck without the fun of a Wii-mote.

Most Wanted you could finish and still open up the game months later to have some fun driving wherever whilst attempting to take out the entire police force. I can't see what Pro Street might offer once the career mode is over apart from online racing... but there's a bunch of other titles that are better for online racing anyway.

Tzyr

saltesc wrote: »

[*]Tuning is a nightmare. Is it too much to ask for a test track? Straight up, first car I bought when I was able to was a 200sx (a.k.a. S15 or Silvia). I tuned it for grip racing going off GT2, 3, 4 and GTR2 knowledge, totally oblivious to the extremes of the tuning settings in this game. I enter a raceday, do a couple of drags with my Charger and win both. I go to do a grip race and the car was so hard to drive, I obviously had to refine my tuning. So to do that, I have to quit the race day (all races including my two wins in drag are totally reset), go into my garage, tune blindly, go back into the race day, enter a grip race, try it out and hope no AI hits me so I don't pay any damages, leave race, leave race day, hit garage, refine tuning more, etc, etc, etc. Just put a fucking test track in!!

You can tune your cars during any practice race, as long as the car does not have stock parts for what you want to tune (which is the same as if in the garage or not), or is a preset car (a car that you've not created a blueprint for, so the "pre-tuned" cars you win in career, or any of the preset/bonus cars in Race Day). You can do this in either Career or Race Day (though not online or splitscreen).

This means you can enter a practice, drive around, tune the car, keep driving around, and return and keep tuning till you find something you like.