NFS: Pro Street Preview (NFS Community Day #2)

• Mike Geise 8/18/2007 5:26 PM

Intro

I had the opportunity once again to preview Need For Speed: Pro Street at the EA Blackbox studio in Vancouver Canada at the 2nd community day of the year. Over the course of this preview I will talk about what I learned and what my thoughts are so far on pro street.

Career Mode

They know that last year's Need For Speed: Carbon was really too short. This year it will roughly take 20 hours to go through the game without completing everything (100%) if you want to complete everything it will generally take you 40-50 hours of game play time.

You will start out in a modified car so you won’t be starting a non stock car this time around.

The street racing scene is now leaving the streets and going to legal sanctioned racing due to the high costs and penalties associated with illegal street racing. There will be 3 main tiers / groups of racing and you start first at the bottom where you must qualify for battle machine. The racing events are ran by racing ORGS which consist of Battle Machine (Multi Disciplinary), Rogue Speed (Drag), React (Multi Disciplinary), Nitrocide (Speed), Noise Bomb (Drift), and Super Promotion.

As you compete in the events and win races you will eventually be invited to the showdown where if you win you will unlock the next ORG body. When you progress though the game and do well in the events you will be invited to specialty events to try competing against the specialists for example the Drag King in the Rogue Speed ORG.

The main goal in the game is to become the Street King (king of racing).

Environment

The environment is really impressive. There are 15 different types of daytime alone. The tracks look awesome visually and are really fun to drive.

When you happen to go off the highway in the Nevada desert you actually feel as if you have because of everything flying up around you. It's especially fun to go flying into the cactus and watching them break apart as you tear through them but you really should be on the road :)

LAN Mode, Replays, Misc

For us PC players where were told that lan mode will be available in NFS: Pro Street but it won’t be in on the launch title. It will become available later as a patch.

Unfortunately replays did not make it into the game due to time constraints and not being where they wanted to be with the replays. It sucks.

Blueprints sound like a really cool aspect of the game. I talked about this a little before in my last preview. There will be leader boards for blueprints so if you have a great blueprint and gave it to another friend and he does well with it. You will be credited with it on the leader board as the blueprint being yours. I believe there are 4 modes of blueprints. The customization in the game this year is fairly outstanding I really cannot wait to get to tune every variable of my car.

The NOS is not like it was in carbon or most wanted. It comes in shots like it should and you have the ability to buy how many shots you want it will also not have a affect on your speed if you are already at top speed.

This year there will be a Dyno which is a Full Physics Sim. Basically after you tune your car performance wise it will take it out to a track and run it with your settings and give you the results back. This all happens basically within 5 seconds.

As for the other online stuff. We still have no word on it but probably in a month or so we will get some more information on the multiplayer side.

Game Modes

We had the chance to play 3 game modes. The first game mode I will be talking about is the drag racing mode which is one of my favorites.

Drag Racing Mode

Now for everyone that played most wanted I am sure you remember how much the drag racing mode sucked. It was basically like a 3D version of frogger but you can just forget about that because what NFS: Pro Street is bringing to the table for drag racing is absolutely fantastic.

The drag racing is actually true drag racing now. Each drag racing round contains 3 races with your average time calculated at the end of those 3 races. Before each race you will have basically a mini game where you have to warm up your tires to get the best possibly grip for your launch when the drag racing starts. Imagine bringing your Plymouth barracuda to the track with almost 800 HP. If you do well in warming up your tired and hit your gears correctly when racing your car will most likely lift up in 1st and 2nd gear and sometimes even 3rd gear if you are really good. I spent most of my time playing testing out this mode and I was really satisfied with it. I think drag racing will be a big part and one of the most popular parts of NFS: Pro Street.

Grip Mode

The grip mode is an 8 car race around tracks in NFS: Pro Street. We had the opportunity to race on one of the configurations of the autobahn track with assists on and off. The assists will allow anyone with minimal racing experience to just jump in the driver’s seat and go racing without the worry of when to brake and how properly corner your car.

You can also race with no assists for all you hardcore racers out there and potentially be faster then you would be with assists on. This will allow everyone racing to be fairly completive against each other.

They also told us they are pretty impressed with the WII version which they have a producer dedicated to working on the controls and say it will be one of the best racing games on the WII.

Speed Challenge

I have to say Speed Challenge is one of the other fun modes and actually fairly challenging as well. It took be a few tries to actually complete one of these events but the build of the game we where playing was adjusted a bit on the hard side.

The track I had the opportunity to race on was a configuration of the Nevada track and it was a really long track but from what a producer told me it's not the longest configuration of the track. The objective of the mode is to post the highest speed at each checkpoint to have the highest cumulative speed at the end of the race.

The cars act like they should if you are tearing down the road at 180mph. If you make a mistake and then over correct you will probably lose control of your car and take a new position of a stunt driver as your car goes rolling over the rocky and rough terrain of the Nevada desert. I have to say I am quite pleased with this mode and the fun factor it brings to the game.

Demo

The demo will be coming out sometime early October so keep an eye out for it starting in October. You won't want to miss it. There should be a PS3, Xbox 360 and PC demo.

Overall I am really pumped up on how Need For Speed: Pro Street is turning out. The drag racing mode alone would get me to play the game.

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