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Need For Speed ProStreet

Pro hardware required

While the box lists very moderate requirements for the game, what it doesn't say is that the game expects you to play at 640x480 resolution on that hardware. If you are happy with that, it will run on what the package says at minimum settings. To actually play the game without any slowdowns that tend to lead to crashes, you need a considerably faster system. NFS ProStreet seems to tax both the video card and the CPU, and both need to be up to a reasonably modern spec to allow smooth play with consistent 30fps+ at 1024x768 or 1280x1024 resolutions. The YouGamers minimum specification - a 3.4GHz CPU and an  ATI Radeon X1800 GTO or  NVIDIA GeForce 7600 GT with 256MB will get you that at fairly low settings.

You can turn the car textures to High with a 256MB card, and turn on the more detailed damage model on the YouGamers minimum, but to really push the fancy effects to a level that would match the console counterparts, you need a modern gaming system - a midrange dual core CPU and upper midrange graphics card - such as an  ATI Radeon HD 3850 or an  NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTS 320MB. A bit older card will also do, but expect to have to make small compromises with the special effects to keep the game running at consistent 30fps.

Everything at the bare minimum level - still very recognizable, mostly because the game doesn't scale down that much.	Close to minimum settings, this is what you can manage on the YouGamers minimum system at constant 30fps.
Bumping up the settings to a medium level reveals real shadows and extra detail.	All settings maximized, stays at 30fps for most of the time on YouGamers recommended system.

"But I'm willing to take a lower frame rate, why it has to be 30fps?" you may ask. While lower frame rates are fine with some genres, you simply can't take an fps dip while zooming down a track at 300km/h+, or you'll end up as a twisted wreck. In the case of ProStreet it's even more important as the driving physics seem to be synced to the frame rate, so if the game stutters constantly, it becomes impossible to drive. This is probably also the underlying reason for numerous complaints about the ProStreet handling - in reality it handles fine as long as the fps figures stay constant.

So, it's a console port

I've grown wary of multiplatform titles these days - the PC version is often just a quick'n'dirty port, often done by a "secondary" developer with little effort towards making a proper PC game. I'm happy to report that while ProStreet does betray it's console-based origins with some design decisions, the port is not horrible. Some UI and menu elements point to the low-resolution forefathers of the game, but you have to take a careful look to spot these, and overall the game looks fairly good even at high resolutions. The damage model is not quite as extensive as in Colin McRae DIRT or the Burnout series, but it gives the necessary amount of realism - and if you enjoy racing without dented panels, you can turn off the visual damage model; you can still total your car and end up out of the race, but the visual representation of car damage is disabled.

Most of the bumps result only in small dents to the car, but it's possible to completely wreck the car.

Optional driving aids include a helpful racing line indicator that even suggests when to brake.

Controls also follow the pattern of a console-developed game - while you could, in theory, play with a keyboard, a gamepad is definitely the best way to play ProStreet, simply because that's how the developers designed the game to be played. The Xbox 360 controller, while optional, is strongly recommended; wheel support is, I'm sad to say, completely abysmal. If you prefer to play your driving games using a wheel, then skip this - it's a "pad racer", with as realistic controls as you can expect from a such a style of game.

Page 1: IntroductionPage 2: Racing Modes & EventsPage 3: Gameplay problemsPage 4: Performance and VisualsPage 5: Final Thoughts and Scoring

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