NFS Pro Street - First Drive Preview

[jtace]

Ok so I've been in Vancouver, Canada at EA's Pro Street studios the last couple days, playing with a build of Pro Street. We got several hours of play time this time around so we got a really good feel for how the games progessing and some good ideas of what to expect from it so far. Before I go into detail about the hands on play time I got, here's a some more information I've learned.

Career mode:
Here's the general idea behind how your career will progress. Yeah they know last year Carbon was way too short with no real way to restart, so they're not going to make that mistake again. General timeframe for career will be 20 hours to beat the game just going straight through and not doing everything. If you want to get 100% complete it should take 40-50 hours depending on how good a racer you are. So here's the general structure.

You start out in the first of 3 tiers of racing. You're a big time street racer, but the street racing scene is leaving the streets because of the high costs and penalties associated with illegal street racing now, so there's only one place left, legal sanctioned racing, run what you brung, no holds barred, street style. These events are put on by different racing Orgs (organizations like NOPI) and you start out in Battle Machine. They're a general, multi-disciplinary racing organization that puts on events at different places around the world. This is where the best go to race legaly. The better you do the more events you can go to, and you eventually get invited to a showdown, which if you win will unlock the next tier of racing. Once you conquer all the competition the Battle Machine's Org Body can throw at you, then you open up a new Org Body, React.

React organizes the racing in the European and Asian scenes mostly, so you'll see lots of new locations and even better racers. Do well enough and you'll get to start attenting Super Promotion's Org Body events were the best of the best race all over the world. Now at the top of this teir is the Street King, the best Multi-Disciplinary racer out there.

Along the way if you do well enough in the different events you'll get invited to specialty Org body's events to try your hand at taking on the specialists. Rogue Speed is the where the Drag king and the best drag racers hang out. Nitrocide is where the speed freaks hang out, the speed challenge king is here for you to challenge if you can. Noise Bomb is where the Drift King rolls, and Geffect is where the best GRIP racers are. If you want to own them all you'll have to prove yourself in each discipline and climb each of these specialized Org Body's events ladder to the top and take on each specialized King. If you're really good you'll beat them all.

Physics:
I know I talked about the last time but the physics engine in Pro Street is incredible. I actually got to play it for a couple hours this time and I must say this is the game that many of you have been waiting for when it comes to physics. Don't worry you average joes though, they've got several layers of assists there to help out as needed. Turn on them all and you'll get an experience much like most NFS games of the past, hit the gas, turn the corners and go. That way will let you beat the game if you want to, but don't expect to top the leaderboards with it. The more assists you turn off the better control you'll have of your car and the better times you'll be able to post as you master control. Oh and we're probably going to get an analog clutch if you want to use it.

Odds and Ends:
A few odds and ends I picked up befor I get into the meat and potatoes of how the modes I got to drive play. Replays, well unfortuantely while we'll get to see our spectacular crashes in replay type fashion, there really is no true replays in Pro Street. Sorry guy's, it ended up one of the many victims of the cutting knife as it get's closer to release and time and manpower are short.

Blueprints are going to be great for you tuners out there though, there will be seperate leader boards for blueprints. So if you have a great car setup and people set records with it you'll get credit and rep for it. With the amount of depth availible for tuning this year, people who want to get down and dirty with the nuts and bolts can.

NOS has been completely reworked this year, expect it to work much more like it should work this year. Limited shots of NOS, takes a bit of time to build up pressure in the system to use it again after a shot.

Demo, word is we're looking at an early october demo release for PS3, Xbox360 and PC. Of course when we have more information we'll post it.

LAN play, yes LAN play will be supported this year, but it will be a post ship patch.

Online, yeah sorry online only get's a foot note right now. They're holding back information on online modes for another month or so right now. But I think they at least realize that online is important and that it's been screwed up in the last few PC releases

Speed Challenge:
Now on to the intersting stuff. The speed challege mode I got to play a lot of was a Nevada track. Object of the game is very much like what we saw in the last game, post the highest speed at each point along the way and the highest cumulative speed wins. This desert track in Nevada looks awesome! I figure I need to get that out of the way, the visuals in this game are great, the tracks are top notch and have great atmosphere and scenery. The build we had of this mode was tuned a bit on the hard side, I managed to complete the track but wasn't able to come in first place. This track is very fast, but be carefull, if you get off course at 160 MPH, your car will behave like it should and you have to be very careful in how you regain control, or you could lose it and crash and total your car! It was a challenge for sure, but we all enjoyed it, with some more tweaking it'll be perfect.

GRIP:
The next mode we got to play with multiple levels of assists on, the pick up and play level of assists will allow your dad to pick up a controller, just worry about keeping on the throttle and stay on the racing line and be competative and have fun. Or if you're good you can turn the assists all off and have full control of the car for a more difficult but potentially faster car. This will allow two racers of vastly different skills to pick up and have a fun race and keep things reasonably even between the two of them. In fact word is they're toying with the idea of having a kid mode on the Wii console so my 4 year old could pick up and race against me, do well and have a good time. In fact they're pretty impressed with the Wii version of the game right now, they've got a guy dedicated to getting the control scheme for it down right and it sounds like they're gona be the first to have a good racing game for the Wii.

But back to the actual GRIP race itself. Eight cars on the track, the AI was tuned pretty well on this version, was very fun and competitive, no catchup mode exists here. The AI will make mistakes, dive to hard into a corner, take a bad line, just like you do.

Drag Racing:
That's right, Drag racing is back, and it's better then ever. Let's just get it out of the way, drag racing in Carbon and Most Wanted blew chunks. The man who killed drag racing was kept out of the loop this time and just told everyone, make it better this year. (Sorry Producer Micheal Mann ) Let's just say we have real drag tires, wheelies, no lane restrictions, no frogger style obstacle course and a MUCH better experience. This is real drag racing and we all predict this will be popular this year. The mode starts with a mini game of sorts during which you do a burnout and try and keep the revs inside an ever moving green zone. The better you do the better grip your tires have when you start racing, this effects how large of an ideal launch range for the RPM's you have. Let's just say we spent a LOT of time in this mode and people are going to love it this year. Horray for real physics!


Post any questions you have and I'll be happy to answer what I can.

Other Community Day Write-ups:
http://www.nfsg.net/
http://www.nfsunlimited.net/article/...y_day_hands_on
http://www.nfscars.net/site/communityday2.aspx
http://www.nd4spdworld.com/?section=nfsps&page=preview2

[Avro707C]

Good riddance to old style Drag Racing!!

Sorry EA - but drag racing in the old style was absolute garbage. The obstacle course didn't make things better - it just frustrated as much as the lane restrictions and car responses on drugs did.

Sounds like Pro Street is a huge step in the right direction.

[jtace]

Amen!!

[Troy]

damn it now i cant wait for this game

[jtace]

Tell me about it!

Oh I also will try and keep track of all the other writeups at the bottom of the first post for everyone to get some other perspectives.

[KyzrSoze]

I enjoyed Most wanted, but skipped Carbon entirely. It sounds like this one is worth my attention. I look forward to the demo.

One caveat - If online play is not good or non-existent this game will have a short life. We here like to discuss these games and race each other and a good online multiplayer setup will yield sales for a long time. That's good for everyone.

[jtace]

Yeah I keep getting told that they're working hard on online this year and that they know carbon sucked and how this year online will be great. But they've been pretty tight lipped about any real details or information, marketing has kept them quiet for another month at least. I'm thinking we'll have to get closer to release before we get any real information.

[Troy]

theres 2 new videos over at gamespot.com
http://www.gamespot.com/video/939664...ficial-movie-5

one is about draging.

[Radical-Al]

i knew replays would get fuxxored

anyone notice the Chevelle?

[jtace]

Definately check out that video. Thanks Troy! It's a good example of what drag races will be like.

[Radical-Al]

um... do the FWD cars smoke the front tires and have slicks on the front and skinnys on the rear and also do they wheel stand? :S I hope not to all things I said.

[Frank N. O.]

Originally Posted by Radical-Al

um... do the FWD cars smoke the front tires and have slicks on the front and skinnys on the rear and also do they wheel stand? :S I hope not to all things I said.

good one Al! Actually there are fwd drag-cars and they do have giant front-tires (the one I saw looked quite funny, like a Hot wheels car, the wild ones that is, not the authentic '66 Batmobile I just got today), I don't think the rearwheels were that tiny though, but not as big as the fronts that's for sure.

Frank

[jtace]

www.nfsg.net has linked to several of the videos that have been found around the net if you guys haven't seen them yet.

[biggin]

Guess we'll just have to wait and see....

biggin....