Need for Speed: ProStreet

Need for Speed: ProStreet is the eleventh game in the Need for Speed series. It was released on various platforms during November, 2007, with a demo released the month before.

Plot

The game begins where a former street racer known as Ryan Cooper enters a challenge day and wins it with a Nissan 240SX. Ryan is mocked by Ryo Watanabe the Showdown King .

He then moves on to Battle Machine a famous race organization and he dominates it. He then moves onto Showdown Chicago promoted by Super Promotion and the best organization is introduced, the Super Promotion , there are other organizations in each specific event such as the Noise bomb for drift, G Effect that are a circuit crew, ROGUE SPEED which is for drag, and Nitrocide for speed runs. Each organization has a top race team, Apex Glide, Touge Union, Grip Runners, Aftermix, and Boxcut, respectively. Ryan dominates the showdown and moves onto React Team Sessions. He then moves onto another Showdown and dominates it. He then receives invites to elite organizations of the four Kings of Drag, Drift, Grip and Speed challenge. He beats them and earns their crowns and dominates enough organizations and showdowns to face Ryo who drives a Mitsubishi Lancer Evolution X. Ryan beats him and the Super Promotion team leaves Ryo. Ryan then becomes Street King owning all the crowns of the Kings and becomes the best racer in the country.

Gameplay

Need for Speed: ProStreet has taken the series in a different direction of gameplay. All racing in ProStreet takes place solely on closed tracks, making ProStreet the first game in the series since Need for Speed II that doesn't animate illegal racing. Rather, the type of racing appears to be Touring Car Racing. The performance tuning feature is enhanced, compared to previous versions, especially Autosculpt. Unlike Carbon, where only certain body kits can be autosculpted, this can now be applied to all body kits, including stock bumpers and wide body kits. Furthermore, some adjustments through autosculpt impact the car's aerodynamics.

In ProStreet there are four different game modes: Drag (a race in a drag strip, point to point), Grip (similar to Circuit races but with four different types of Grip races available), Speed (similar to a Sprint race) and Drift.

• Drag race is a simple straight away race that has three heats. There are three types of drag races, 1/4 and 1/2 mile drag races where the fastest time, out of three runs, wins. There is also a wheelie competition where the longest wheelie on the 1/4 mile track wins.
• In Grip races, there are four different modes (Normal Grip, Grip Class (all versions except for the PS2 version), Sector Shootout and Time Attack), the player has a choice to race rough, such as ramming, smashing, or blocking the opponent in order to win the race, or race cleanly and follow the given racing lines. Normal Grip races feature 2 to 4 laps around a circuit track with up to 7 other racers. First driver to cross the finish line wins. Grip Class races take 8 racers and divide them into two even groups. The racers are placed into the groups based on their vehicles performance potential. Group A starts about 10 seconds ahead of group B, both groups race on the same course but are only competing against the 3 drivers in their group. In Time Attack, the driver with the fastest overall single lap time wins the event. In Sector Shootout the track is divided into several segments, with drivers attempting to complete these sectors in the shortest possible time. Extra points are awarded to drivers who 'dominate' the course by holding the fastest time for every segment of the track.
• In Speed Challenge races, players must cross the finish line first to win the race. Players have to be cautious in Speed Challenge at speeds exceeding 180mph.
• In Top Speed Run races, the course is divided into 3 to 9 sections (just like that of Sector Shootout in Grip races) and at the instant a player crosses a checkpoint their speed is clocked and added to that player's score, the player with the highest cumulative speed wins. This is similar to the Speedtrap events in Need for Speed: Most Wanted, and is followed by Speedtrap events in Undercover.
• In Drift, players drift to emerge as the driver with the most points scored in the event. Points are scored based on speed, angle, and how long the drift is held.

Other than gameplay itself, ProStreet features detailed damage modeling, unlike previous Need for Speed games (except for High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed) where damage is relatively little or non-existent altogether. The new damage system introduces more depth of damage (except on the PlayStation 2, PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS and Wii versions, where the damage modeling has been scaled down due to the limited processing power, so the damage is similar to the previous titles) where any object in the game world has the potential to inflict cosmetic damage breaking off pieces of the car such as the hood,bumpers,side view mirrors, light damage, or heavy damage which reduces performance of a car, and even has the potential to total a car immediately after impact.

ProStreet features customization of cars. The changes affect the aerodynamics of the cars, and players can test them in an enclosed chamber called the "Wind Tunnel" (all versions except the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions).

The Speedbreaker does not return for ProStreet (as the game lacks a police presence; the Speedbreaker was mostly intended for police evasion, however it returns for the Nintendo DS version of the game).

Online

Online modes are not featured in the PlayStation 2 and Wii versions. However the PlayStation Portable, Nintendo DS, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3 and Windows PC versions feature online mode. Unlike previous Need for Speed titles, it is much more integrated into the game; as long as a player is connected to the Internet and logged in, his/her in-game progress is recorded for the purpose of online leaderboards. A player's custom-built car can also be shared online via blueprints, with the creator being given credit whenever their car setup is used for a leaderboard.

Development

On May 21, 2007, Electronic Arts published a teaser trailer of ProStreet, and officially announced it ten days later. It was released worldwide in November 2007.

The official title was leaked several months before the official announcement. Soft Club, the Russian distributor of the game, unveiled the name and release date of the game in February 2007. EA had not until the official announcement on May 31, 2007, given any clue about the game's title.

The demo, featuring two races, one speed challenge and one grip race, appeared on Xbox Live on October 26, 2007, on PlayStation Store on November 1, 2007, and on PC on November 2, 2007. The PC version is the last in the series to use CD-ROMs, which are succeeded by the usage of DVDs for the rest of the series.

Features

Cars

There are a total of 55 playable cars in ProStreet.(46 on the PlayStation 2 and Wii)(76 with add-ons)

The Collector's Edition for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 adds another 5 new cars. It is available via download.

A Booster Pack for PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 added another 16 cars that were made available via download.

The total number of cars available in NFS Pro Street (if the player purchases both the collectors edition upgrade and the booster pack) is 76.

Characters

In Prostreet, the player is Ryan Cooper, a former illegal street racer and a newcomer to the legal side of racing. He is seen only in the very beginning, during showdowns, and after defeating a King; however, his face is never seen, as he wears a helmet all the time in the footage. He also never speaks, much like the main character in the games from Need for Speed: Underground to Need for Speed: Carbon.

ProStreet features some girls cast as characters in the game:

• Krystal Forscutt, a former Big Brother Australia contestant,
• and Sayoko Ohashi are starting girls.

All three announcers voices heard throughout ProStreet's career mode are real-life, professional race commentators :

• Jarod DeAnda (Big-Jay Battle Machine & Noise Bomb) announces live at all Formula D,
• John Hindhaugh (Roger Evans from R3act Team Sesssions & G-Effect) is the long-term host of Radio Le Mans,
• JBird (J-Mack from Super Promotion, Noise Bomb & Rogue Speed) is the official voice of NOPI.

In ProStreet, there are five Kings that Ryan must defeat in a set of challenges to become the Street King.

Expansions

The Collector's Edition is available at the EA Store for the PC, Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 unlocking 5 more cars and 4 more career race days.

An expansion pack branded by Energizer Lithium is also available. It adds 16 cars (2 free and 14 purchase) and 2 tracks.This also disables all cheats for the game.

Customization

Players have a wide variety of decals, vinyls, and paint colours, all very similar to the previous games in the series. Additional extras have been added as well. Players have a huge variety of body modifications, such as rims, hoods, body kits, mufflers, spoilers and roof scoops. The Autosculpt feature, which was first introduced in Need for Speed: Carbon, is featured in ProStreet and plays a significant role in terms of car performance. Although there are more parts to autosculpt in the car, the autosculpting method is for the most part the same. The hood, roof scoop, front bumper and spoiler can all change how a car performs in a race. Autosculpt can affect everything, from your cars handling to downforce. ProStreet now allows you to modify stock and wide body kits as well as hoods, roof scoops, wheels, spoilers etc. A new feature called the Windtunnel is introduced on the PC, PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions of the game. It is not available on Wii and PlayStation 2 versions. The Windtunnel, along with Autosculpt, can help you alter and refine your car's performance.

Locations

Many of the races take place on well-known roads. Locations include Chicago (Meigs Field Airport; now disused), Nevada, Europe, Tokyo Docklands (Daikoku Futo parking area), and the Autobahn (A100 Berlin ring road). The Texas World Speedway, a real track in Texas used by the SCCA and in the 70s NASCAR, and also the Infineon Raceway, available in the NASCAR configuration as "GP Circuit". The game also includes many other real world tracks such as Portland International Raceway and Willow Springs International Motorsports Park in the USA, Autopolis and Ebisu Circuit in Japan, and Mondello Park in Ireland. The tracks are the same in all versions of ProStreet.

Reception

ProStreet has been given a rating of 7.0 (good) by GameSpot for PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, a 6.5 (fair) for Windows PC, Wii and PlayStation 2, and a 4.0 (bad) for PSP, as well as a 7.0 rating by Game Informer for all platforms. Both reviews have cited the lack of police in the game, the handling of cars being unrealistic, and the fact that ProStreet strays away from its traditional roots of street racing as reasons for the ratings, as well "an overload of in-game advertising and a higher hardware requirement (causing poor sales on the Windows version)." The IGN.com review of the PC version seems a bit more realistic as far as the list of complaints goes. The rating was a 6.9 (passable) but it mentioned the common complaint was that all of the cars had shoddy performance and terribly unrealistic handling. videoGaiden lambasted the game in its 2007 Christmas special, having harshly criticised its predecessors in the previous two years. The main criticism was that the game was as lacking in substance as the previous installments, but also lacked the high production values of those titles. These were the lowest ratings ever in the series despite higher sales of the next game, Undercover.

The PlayStation 2 and Wii versions were also criticized due to missing content, downgraded graphics and frame rate issues.

Soundtrack

In September 7, 2007 DJ, record producer and Musician Junkie XL released a single entitled "More" in conjunction with EA's Need For Speed: ProStreet videogame. JXL was asked to compose the score of the game, the game also included 34 songs as part of its soundtrack.

Junkie XL Need for Speed: ProStreet Score listing
No.	Name	Time
1.	Decalomania	2:42
2.	Dampener Rod	3:34
3.	Choke	4:24
4.	Idle Lever	3:05
5.	Halogen Blindness	3:33
6.	In The Trunk	3:19
7.	Clevis	2:58
8.	Bezel	3:04
9.	327 - V8	3:26
10.	Castellated Nut	3:03

Controversy

Models controversy

The advertisement of the game has recently come under critical fire for featuring topless models in certain ads. UK promotional material for the game featured in The Sun advertised the game with its Page Three Girls, Becky Rule and Amii Grove posing topless. Electronic Arts claims that the ads "slipped through the proper EA approval process." As a result, the ads have been removed.

External links

• Official NFS:PS website
• Official NFS franchise website

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