With Need For Speed ProStreet EA is trying to go back to the old number one hits, like NFS: High Stakes, and combine them with the best features of recent Need For Speeds. The real street racing with complementary police chases has made room for matches on closed circuits. You’d think this would kill the intensity, but don’t worry, this certainly isn’t the case in Need For Speed ProStreet. It’s more brutal than everything you’ve seen before.

The biggest cause of this brutality would be the aggressive competition with which you’ll be sharing the track. Expect them to give you a little push when you try an attempt to overtake them, losing just isn’t their cup of tea. Another aspect which has its share in the intensity at hand are the new game modes which will force you to take yourself and your car to the limit on all kinds of tracks, going from enormously wide speedways to the slimmest pieces of tarmac you’ve ever seen. The risk is to over-push your car and park it against a nice little piece of concrete while totaling your vehicle (which is a totally new feature to the NFS-series). The smallest driving error can send the car to heaven (or hell, it’s all the same) and, believe me, this will cost you some serious in-game credits.

Also new are the different classes you can put your car in. You’ll have to define the type of races it’ll be driving in and have to tune the car accordingly. You can make a drag, drift, grip and speed challenge vehicle. Drag and drift are familiar names. In the first you’ll be joining drag races (dhu!) while in the latter you’ll have to slide your tin can on wheels through several turns just to get the most amount of points in one run. Grip races is just a fancy name for normal races but it also has some subclasses like time attack, where you’ll have to complete an entire track in the shortest amount of time, the classical race during which you’ll take on other cars in the battle to cross the finish line first and last but certainly not least, there’s the speed challenge. Speed is the key, the mode will have you drive from point A to B at top speeds, trying not the crash your vehicle. The hardest part here is avoiding other cars which will most likely try to pound you into a wall next to the track. This is obviously the type of race where you’ll lose most vehicles. What did you expect? Bringing your car to a complete stop in less than a second with a big pole on the other end of your hood just isn’t healthy at all. Not for you, not for your car.

The entire single player experience is, once again, built around the ‘career’ mode. You’ll play Ryan Cooper, a starting circuit racer coming from the underground scene. Ryan wants to work his way to the top and he’ll do so by going to several events which he’ll logically have to win in order to improve. What’s new here is ‘Dominating’ events. This is just another word for owning the opposition. Dominating an event will grant you some bonuses like extra cash or ‘repair car for free’ cards. Nothing special… Next to this single player, NFS ProStreet also has quite an elaborate multiplayer mode burnt on the DVD. You can sell cars (or their set-up), make in-game friends lists, … The gameplay itself hasn’t really seen any changes, apart from the new game modes that is, but now you do have the chance to match up with your friends more easily…

Graphically there hasn’t been much of an improvement compared to previous games. ProStreet is more like a polished version of Carbon and Most Wanted, but nothing more than that really. Anyhow, we shouldn’t complain! It still looks very smooth and detailed from start to finish. The entire thing just breaths “racing” from the menus through to the actual gameplay (the latter should be obvious, in any other case there would be something very wrong with your racing game). Actually, when I say there aren’t any real improvements, I might just be cutting corners a bit. I’ve got the feeling people over at EA have spent a lot of time on the tremendous damage model. Every bump, scratch or whatever you can possibly do wrong to a car is displayed at very high detail. The consequences of your crashes remain visible through different races to follow (unless you repair). So, be careful when you bend the car around a tree!