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Time to take your sweet skills all over the globe to prove you are the best street racer in the world. Not only will you have to take down a bunch of scrubs on the local circuits to work your way up to large events, but you must earn this respect by competing in multi-disciplinary showdowns in the style of drift racing, drags, grip racing, and speed challenges. While this is a departure from the Underground and Carbon days that fans have grown accustom to, ProStreet provides more of a realistic feeling of what it’s like to go from circuit to circuit and test your skills while trying to keep your ride in one piece. EA Blackbox has introduced a new and slicker engine this time around, complete with fantastic attention to detail, smooth frame rate, and of course a great sense of speed on high end cars. Not only are the new environments nice to look at, but the career presentation takes you straight into the race day events, complete with booth girls, tons of onlookers, and even a MC who calls the action before, during, and after the race. One of the newest additions to the series is damage. Now I know that versions before supplied damage, but none were detrimental to the outcome of your races. As a matter of fact, you can actually fail events if you trash your cars, so you must maintain composure and have a nice clean race.
Does that mean the A.I. will play fair too? Nope, but at least they are not as aggressive as seen in EA’s NASCAR 08. So you need to make those quick decisions on whether or not you should fight your way through the pack or take your time and take the lead gradually. Pro Street is one of the better handling NFS titles to date. Tight responsive controls allow you to take handbrake turns on a dime, weave through the competition, or just use that nitrous on a straightaway to earn that extra domination of the race. The A.I. is no pushover either. Sure they start off the game holding your hand, but once you earn enough respect and recognition prepare to fight for your life and livelihood. Pro Street provides tons of race variations such as grip class, time attack, sector shootout, drift races, ¼ mile drag, ½ mile drag, wheelie competition, top speed runs, and speed challenges. The career mode does a nice job mixing up these race variations to help the game from growing stale too quickly. If avoiding the career mode is what you want to do, then you can jump straight online and take on the world in your own way. The only downfall here is the game only supports 8 racers online. While the limited number of racers allows for a smooth and lag free time online, you would hope for at least 12 racers minimum in this age of high speed internet. Nonetheless battling online for respect and leaderboard points is also a great way to pass the time. While Need for Speed: ProStreet’s departure from the tried and true NFS formula may turn away some fans, I happen to like the direction that EA is taking the series. Of course, knowing EA, I’m sure they’ll change it up again next year. NFS isn’t the most innovative or even the best NFS title to date, but it is worthy of a purchase if you are into street racing.
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