~~~~~Need for SPeed Pro Street non official thread~~~~~

[HangTime]

Been playing this a bit this week, and I have to say it is shockingly below-par for a NFS title.

-Incredibly clunky and hard to follow menu / race selection system
-Typically runs about 37-50fps, unless I patch it, in which case it's 30fps...
-Graphics are reasonable but not really any better than other recent racers like TDU, DiRT or SR.
-All the fun seems to have been taken out of it from what I've seen so far - no cops, no free roam, no bonuses for near miss / drafting / etc, and it is very hard to accelerate round corners. It feels like you are going really slow except on long straights.
-The tracks I've seen so far have been uninspiring to say the least. I think people sometimes underestimate how important good track design is for racing games, and it is usually NFS' strong point. Not here unfortunately

Now of course some people will try and tell me that it is less fun because it's more of a sim than before, but don't forget that I'm a massive fan of Porsche 2000 which is not a pure arcade racer. I can live with vaguely realistic handling and damage elements as long as the actual gameplay is good and you can be rewarded for aggressive driving.

Unlike most people I actually don't mind the announcer, that's probably the best bit of the game so far for me

 

[zytok]

Unlike most people I actually don't mind the announcer, that's probably the best bit of the game so far for me

Probably not been playing it long enough yet for him to get on your bits.

Incredibly clunky menu system - EA - Never

 

[steve258]

I've used PS2 controller with USB adapter and worked perfectly fine.

 

[dovey]

I ended up killing the sound after i swore id smash the game up if i heard 'ryan cooper' one more time AHHHH. Patch killed it for me! 30 fps cap made it too hard to keybored controll

 

[Final8y]

I ended up killing the sound after i swore id smash the game up if i heard 'ryan cooper' one more time AHHHH. Patch killed it for me! 30 fps cap made it too hard to keybored controll

which patch are we talking about here because the Prostreet 1.1 patch did not cap my fps to 30fps.

 

[Massive Attack]

game sucks, even with a patch to fix it it'll still have that ruddy annoying chap in the background going on about whoever the player is supposed to be in the game.

uninstall and auction for the win.

couldnt have put it better myself, things started to go bad after most wanted imo carbon was just to easy except the downhill cliff races which were just damn right annoying

 

[zytok]

which patch are we talking about here because the Prostreet 1.1 patch did not cap my fps to 30fps.

that's odd. Seems to for everyone else. Makes no difference using vsync or not either in the game menu or through the drivers. Can't find an .ini file that seems to have any settings in and can't see anything in the registry. I find it playable at 30fps but would be nice to have it a bit smoother particular in the corners where it still feels a bit laggy.

 

[HangTime]

I have to say that despite my initial vitriol over this, I too am actually quite enjoying now it in a way.

I've actually found myself agreeing with you

It takes a bit of getting used to, and isn't as good as earlier games in the series.
HOWEVER, I am finding it strangely compelling, especially now I've got a few decent rides. Got an 851bhp Scooby tuned for Drag which consistently clocks in at 190-193mph at the 1/4 mile mark, I reckon with a couple extra upgrades I should be well down under 9s with 200mph+ trap speed.

Turning still loses a bit too much speed for my liking, especially in less powerful cars. Even the shallowest of bends can see you dropping down to 60mph if it's long enough.

I agree that the Race Day thing is weird. There seems to be no penalty for failure, you just keep repeating races until you get enough points to Dominate.

Still, the tracks seem to be improving a bit, I've no idea why they put such boring ones at the start of the game. And the vaguely sim-like handling is a throwback to Porsche 2000, just not quite so much fun to drive.

 

[FerociouS]

I dont think its as Good as Most Wanted, the game seems to have a lower Budget then the previous couple of Need For Speed Games.

 

[yantorsen]

It didn't help that I couldn't drive in a straight line. My car kept veering to the right. I tested the controller in Carbon and it was fine. Not good EA.

I get that aswell, is there a patch for it?

 

[Final8y]

that's odd. Seems to for everyone else. Makes no difference using vsync or not either in the game menu or through the drivers. Can't find an .ini file that seems to have any settings in and can't see anything in the registry. I find it playable at 30fps but would be nice to have it a bit smoother particular in the corners where it still feels a bit laggy.

Hmm.. Vsync does make a difference here it looks better with it on & less tearing
but its not locked at 30fps.
Was using 1900xtx crossfired.

 

[zytok]

is that pre or post patch? 30fps limit only seems to take effect after 1.1.

 

[Final8y]

30fps would kill me.
No 30fps lock here after 1.1 patch.

 

[zytok]

30fps is not that bad, iirc most console games are locked at 30fps. It only feels slightly laggy round tight bends. Interested to know though why you aren't affected by the 30fps limit as others including myself are. Will try re-installing and messing with the nvcpl to see if I can fix it.

 

[HangTime]

Completed this a week or two back.
As I alluded to in my previous post, it's actually a much better game than I initially gave it credit for. Handling is a bit quirky, but at least it's varied between cars and the tuning options do seem to have a genuine effect on your ride.

My views on the different race events:

Drag:
Very easy in general, although it takes a bit of figuring out how to get a car capable of pulling a wheelie. Once you've got a decent motor it is plain sailing, I was typically hitting my top speed (251mph) long before the 1/4 mile was up.

Speed:
No worries early on apart from Totalling your car, which can be a risk on the Nevada courses. However you get given so many Total Repair markers that even if you crash out 10 times in a row it doesn't matter, you just restart. The 3rd race day of the Speed King series was kinda tough, I used around 20 markers there. In preperation for this, I decided to splash out around $1m on a fully upgraded Pagani Zonda with over 1000 horses. However, I ended up using my Dodge Viper for nearly all the races because the Zonda had huge problems with oversteer; even with everything tuned as much as possible (completely loose steering, max front tire / min rear tyre pressure, toe-in etc etc), it would still zig-zag all over the road and was very hard to straighen up. The Speed King himself was a massive letdown, driving some clapped out GTO he wasn't even remotely competitive, unlike some of the drivers you face off against in the qualifiers.

Drift:
Mostly straightforward, although the hardest race day in the game for me was the 2nd tier Drift King event in Tokyo. Two of the drift events there (same track layout) I found very tough to get a competitive score (2.8k+), whereas normally I can pull in 4k+ with no trouble. I think it took me around a dozen tries before bagging the win on one of them I needed to Dominate.

Grip:
Pretty varied; some of the Sector Shootout events can be tricky if you don't get off to a good start. Time Attack is made a bit easy because you can 'stack' nitros all on the same lap, whereas the AI drivers probably don't do that.


The length of the game is pretty good; according to the Career Overview screen I spent over 14hrs racing, so when you add in the out of race stuff (navigating menus, browsing/upgrading/tuning cars etc) it probably represents a good 18hrs of gameplay. The commentary helps add to the atmosphere, although there are some continuity 'bugs', such as some of the references to Ryo Wantanabe even after you've already beaten him and taken his car. Speaking of bosses, it was not obvious how you unlock the Speed King tier. IT says you need to hold 10 records but didn't make it clear whether this referred to overall race day records, or just the individual Speed events. Finding this was a bit of a chore, I had 9/10 records and had to manually search for the missing race, it would have been nice if they could have linked directly to the events you need to do to unlock a given event.

This brings me onto a related problem - the Target Time. In order to break my 10th speed record, I actually had to switch to a SLOWER car! This is because records are based on points, not time. You get points for how much you beat the Target Time by, but the problem is that this seems to change depending on how powerful your car is. So even if I finished 1st in my Zonda, I still wasn't getting enough points to beat the record. The joke is, coming 2nd in the Viper, in a slower time, gave MORE points! This seems a bit stupid as it kinda defeats the object of getting a car with more BHP.

It's a shame that the courses are distinctly average in design. Although perhaps understandable seeing as they are race tracks rather than street races, they are distinctly lacking in character. There is just no comparison with the lush round-the-world adventure that Porsche 2000 or Hot Pursuit 2 takes you on, or the vibrant cities you explore in Underground 2 and Most Wanted.

Overall it's a reasonable game, but unlike most of the NFS series, not one that I can imagine myself playing again in SP mode.

 

[psychas]

i was playing the game till i got my mazda rx7 to 600+hp and it did a wheelie. like come on would mazda doing wheelie was kind a lame... pro street failed

they should just made everything same as need for speed underground 2 just with pro street game engine crashes and police it would be probably one of the best games but noo they have to mess everything up it seams like they not interested the profit they would get out of it

 

[zytok]

Noticed that PC Format gave it 86% last month!!

Not actually read the review as I missed the edition but that's bordering on gold status!! Like I've said before, I think it's better than I first thought it was but I reckon 86% is way off. There's still too many faults to make it a classic must-have title.