Customer Reviews

Need for Speed: Prostreet

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(5)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(5)

 

 

I've played the NFS series since the very first title and have watched as they changed the core of their game from title to title. In this installment, you play the usual racing guy who's out to prove his name against some racing gurus who hate him.

You start out with a few low level cars and work your way through a very long career map. The race types are similar to the ones in the past. Drift, Grip (i.e. a normal race), speed challenges and drag strips.

The feel of the game has definitely moved away from the very arcade like style of racing in Underground, but not so far to where it drives like a professional racing game would (like in Forza 2). It's a good balance, I find. There is no big world like there have been in the several past titles, so races are entered by visiting "race days" and selecting the ones to compete in. I miss the police chases from Most Wanted, but obviously that was a whole other style.

Overall, I'd say if you enjoyed Most Wanted and other NFS titles, this is a good buy. You won't be let down. Here are pros/cons broken down:

Pros:
-Driving is more realistic than the past several titles
-Car damage is a great addition. No longer can you just enter a turn at 200mph, hit the wall and then continue driving.
-LOTS of car customization available. You can spend hours tweaking your car to the desired specification.
-Graphics are great.

Cons:
-Announcer on race days and at race events is *really* irritating. I muted him minutes into the game.
-No city to free-roam around in (I enjoyed that aspect a lot)
-All races are closed and "legal", so there isn't any traffic to dodge or cops to run away from.

*Edit Note: I'd like to also add that I run this on Vista Ultimate and haven't had any problems with it...so if you're running Vista and are worried because you don't see it as a supported OS, you will probably be fine. (Who can ever tell with Vista)

I have always enjoyed playing the Need for Speed games, my favorite by far being "Most Wanted" so really, really wanted to enjoy this one.
The addition of crash damage is a huge step up, I think the only time they did this before was in III and it wasnt done really well then (the paint scratches in other titles dont count).
However the downsides of this game are to numerous to mention, and really detract from the overall enjoyment. The main ones are
1 - handling adjustments are really hard to get right, particularly as you cannot make adjustments while in a "Race Day" and set up your car to handle for each track.
2 - The addition of tracks like Mondelo make the game really frustrating rater than fun
3 - The cash prizes for upgrades are too low, particularly later on in the game if you want to remain competitive - and it is really annoying to have to go back to the beginning again to build up some cash reserves
4 - The "Storyline" is pointless and just distracts from the game. And as one other poster has pointed out the DJ announcements are an absolute waste of memory space
5 - Some of the tracks are just annoying

I got about 3/4 of the way through this game and realized that I just wasnt enjoying myself while playing. It had become a grind to continue on. If it had been any other title than Need For Speed I would have taken it on its own merits and may have been able to get all the way through

As it was I popped in Most Wanted again for another go, and put the fun back onto my desktop

Nice graphics, new cars, same game as Carbon. I finally got completely sick of drift races and repairing my car over and over....and slightly bored. Nice looking, etc., but nothing new.

This thing is entirely flash and no substance. There are dozens and dozens of these movies you have to watch, which are visually brilliant but nonsensical. They hog so much computer performance that I had to prop my Thinkpad up and run a fan under it to keep it from siezing. You have to click a bajillion things to get into a race, and when you do the graphic quality is apalling. After the slick renditions in the movies, you see giant, flat-colored polygons all over the place!

The audio is bad as well, as all the engines sound crummy and the tire noise is canned as well. This is because there's this circa 1999-surfer-punk type announcer blabbing away the entire game, hogging sonic space and computing power.

Gameplay is kinda whack...you have to pass like 12 cars on two lane roads within a couple minutes and they weave all over the place, so the race degrades into bumper cars pretty quickly. Braking is out of control, I never touched the brake because as soon as I lifted off the gas the car would slow from 90 to 50 mph instantly and stop within a second.

This game overexagertes the arcade style and provides endless bells and whistles, gratuitous graphics and sound. The actual playing of the game suffers accordingly.

I've played a lot of games that infuriated me, but this one has the distinction of being the only one that got me so horn mad that I ejected the disk and physically broke it in two. I just taco'ed it until it snapped.

I believe I've played all the titles in the Need for Speed series, and this one was a slog to get through. Almost as exciting as poring over the works of Immanuel Kant.

The general consensus of the reviews is that the storyline is unnecessary and boring, the physics of the cars feels unrealistic, there is no free-roam mode, and the controls seem unconvincing and slow to respond.

I'd like to add a number of other things.

1. This game is confusing. The menus are Byzantine, and I found myself playing for quite some time wondering why I wasn't progressing until I accidentally discovered that I wasn't even in career mode.

2. You buy and upgrade cars, but they're nowhere to be seen on "Race Day." Instead, you are given other cars, which disappear once you exit "Race Day."

3. "Drag Race" is confusing: when exactly are you supposed to start? Not being able to ESC the cutscenes is maddening after you've seen the same sequence the 200th time.

4. Being a prisoner of "Race Day" without being able to save until you complete the entire thing just makes you want to shut the whole thing off and find something better to do with your time. Reading the manual didn't help, as the manual chiefly consists of such useless statements as "in a drag race, the challenge is to get the quickest drag time."

5. There's no way to click out of watching your car get totaled, which gets pretty infuriating after about the hundredth time. This is especially infuriating since there's not even any graphics for a damaged car: your car just flips over and over again without getting a scratch.

6. I love how on "Speed Challenge," the lens flare is constantly in your face regardless of which direction your car is pointing.

7. Unfair how you start every race at the very back . . . is this punishment? Why not random position?

I've been a fan of the NFS series for many many years now, but I'm somewhat disappointed with Pro Street. I pre-ordered the game, and anxiously awaited its arrival, but after a few hours I felt burnt out. It's very similar to NFS: Carbon, and not that much fun to play.

If you never played NFS: Carbon, it would be enjoyable. However, to anyone who has it's nearly identical.

3/5

This NFS Game is really cool. But it's not really flexible.. You go through a series of challenges, taking down all the Kings in the region. But the only complaint is that it's too short. You finish the game really soon and there are no courses that are not part of the career mode and lot of the courses are similar.

I bought this game in 2009. At the time, it was only about 2 years old. Wow, has a lot changed since then!

I lost interest in the game fairly quickly ... but started playing it again this winter and recently finished it.

This seemed to be the Need for Speed franchise's attempt at a more realistic driving game ... as opposed to it's unreal arcade-like games. Well, they fell more than a bit short.

The driving engine doesn't work well. At low speed the cars have no grip ... and flip way too easily under silly circumstances. At high speed they grip too well ... again, very unrealistic. The speeds attained in the high/top speed challenges are simply ridiculous as are the effects of drafting. Modifying the cars is a bit silly and simplistic but there is a lot to do for each, including "tuning" the car once aftermarket parts are installed.

Compared with current competitors like Forza 3 and Gran Turismo 5 available, it's kind to say this game's graphics are a generation out of date.

As other reviewers have noted, the game interface you must use to progress through your career, select races, modify cars, etc ... is one of the worst, most confusing I have ever used.

Unlike a lot of people here, I kinda liked the trackside announcers doing their thing during race days ... but they get repetitive. The soundtrack is pretty good to VERY good ... but also repetitive.

Unless you can get a copy of "Need For Speed: Prostreet" for $5 or less, you're better off trying something else.

Everybody has already gone into details, so I will just summarize my thoughts.

I have tried a couple of the previous NFS versions. I don't like the "street racing" arena. I don't believe in street racing, as it is illegal and dangerous, especially to innocent bystanders. I think ERA did it right, by putting racing back on the track as it should be.

I really enjoy this game completely. It may not be ultra realistic, but no game is the same as really being in a car on a track. No game will give you that. This game (for me) is close. I know some of the cars seem to be sluggish and don't appear to run as they do in real life, but with tuning and tweaking, they do become much more realistic. The game is just as much about which mods and which tweaks as it is about racing. That's how real racing is. Actually real racing is 90% mods and tweaking and 10% driving skill.

I only use a game pad and I can control the car well and I can beat all the competition by using racing technique. Come into a turn properly and leave it properly and you gain seconds off the competition. The drag scene is realistic, especially the burnouts. I really love to burn out with a 67 Chevelle hopped up to stage 3.

Overall there's a bunch of tracks, flavors, events, cars and mods. It should keep me going for a long time. So many cars to try out and learn and so many mods to use. I am really satisfied with this game and with ERA's choice to do a "track only" game.

3 cheers for doing the right thing and not promoting more illegal street racing.

Oh, use the patch found on ERA's website. It's needed to have the game be smoother (for XP anyhow).
.
**EDIT** After playing this game for a month or so, I feel it's totally biased towards foreign cars. (Imagine that). Any time a Supra beats a Ford GT in Drag times, then it's absurdly biased. The American Muscle cars are there, but only to get US people to buy. If you use Foreign cars, they win hands down time after time. I mean in comparison - All stage 3 parts on one versus the other. That's just not right, but since nothing is made in the US any more, I guess it's life...

This game annoyed me. After turning down the volume on the strip-club dj announcer, it still annoyed me because I couldn't seem to get a good flowing fps with this game no matter what settings.

Running 2 x EVGA 8800gt sc on Asus crosshair2 2x pcie2.0's with AMD 9950 oc 3.0mhz and corsair dominator pc8500 @ 1071mhz
This rig runs crysis smooth as butter maxed @ 1600x1050 (no filtering)...

Game was moderately fun but doesn't even come close to Grid for pure adrenaline racing experience.