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When the original Need for Speed arrived, Electronic Arts had a feeling that it might have a hit series on its hands and did their best to port the game to as many different platforms as possible. During Need for Speed's second and third incarnations, however, it lost a bit of steam, as the duo of games were both rather lackluster, and did not have the appeal that the first game had. When it became time to put together the fourth game, Need for Speed: High Stakes, Electronic Arts made a complete turnaround and produced an intense, exciting racing experience. Because of the success of High Stakes, of course the series has come back for more. This time around, though, the designers have decided to ditch all the cars featured in the previous titles and concentrate only on the Porsche line of cars. An interesting choice, sure, but it seems to have been a good one on Electronic Art's part. Restricting the vehicles to only Porches was a bit puzzling to me at first. Thankfully though, the developers have utilized the Porsche license to span all the way from the beginning to where the vehicles now exist in the year 2000. Interestingly, the Evolution mode allows gamers to check out the evolution of the Porsche through four different eras. Starting off in the Classic Era, the point is to then earn money to purchase new and more powerful vehicles, and accomplish enough goals so that is possible to move onto the next era. Each era has its own set of Porches, tournaments, circuit races, etc. The menu screens are also tailored to include a unique style for each era, and music that provides a fitting mood for that time period. Out of the two main sections of NFS: Porsche Unleashed, I can easily say that Evolution was the mode that I got the most out of, if only for the intrigue factor of seeing how the Porsche line up has changed from the past to the present.
Alongside Evolution is Factory Driver mode, the other part of Porsche Unleashed that ended up occupying most of the time I spent messing around with the game. Another innovation on Electronic Arts part, this has the player taking a spot on part of the Porsche test driving crew for the purpose of completing various assignments that are handed down from the other test drivers. Completing missions can result in being promoted up to the next level, thus paving the path for more complex and advanced, as well as more interesting, missions. Usually the goals presented consist of making it through a certain course under a specific time limit. Factory Driver is certainly something different from what's been designed for other racing titles in the genre, and I can never help but feel a sense of accomplishment each time I completed a new mission that had presented a particular challenge to me. As has been seen with recent PlayStation titles, the machine is being pushed nearly as far as it can go in terms of technical accomplishments. There are still some tweaks that can be made here and there, but there are few developers who can really get down to the core to take advantage of those. Porsche Unleashed has a decent enough engine backing it up, with a frame rate that stays fairly constant throughout the races I put it through, and it even was able to sustain a half-decent rate when handling four players on the screen at once. Depending on how many sprites were occupying the surroundings of the track, I could spot quite a few instances of polygon seams popping up all over the screen. You have to be looking for it to spot it, but there is no doubt that it is there. The Porsche vehicle models are well done, and each of them has been uniquely modeled to equally represent the differences between them. When it comes to customization, it is possible to change their color to suit your taste. Also, by inputting your name (though it limits it to only five letters, so there is only so much that can be put in) it will place it on the license plate of the car. I must mention, though, that the driver models placed inside the cars are just plain, flat-out ugly. Understandably, it is a minor detail, but even so, perhaps a tiny bit more effort would have been nice. Other options in Porsche Unleashed lie in its multiplayer components. Most of them can be played with one human person by themselves or with an AI opponent, but half the fun is lost without live people huddling around a TV. Capture the Flag has players zipping around a track in a race to collect the chosen number of spinning Need for Speed icons that have been scattered about. One problem I had with this mode is that sometimes the icons were not spread out enough, and popped up right in front of another, making the race too short. Chase is a game where one person is the cop and the other is the criminal on the run. It's the job of the cop to catch up to the criminal and take him down, while the criminal has to do his best to survive the time limit and evade the law. Race is, well, racing. Pretty simple stuff. Time Battle, however, happens to be where a time limit is set, and each player is assigned that limit. When one person completes a lap, the timer on the other person will being to fall to zero until they complete the lap. Whoever's timer reaches zero first is the big, lame loser. Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed is a departure from the revival of the series, NFS: High Stakes, but in no way is it a disappointment. EA has done a good job of providing enough new features and improvements to guarantee the future of Need for Speed. Hopefully EA will not let this confidence go to their head, and continue to refine the series when it comes to the next entry.
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