Need for Speed ProStreet Hands-On

The Need for Speed series is staying with street racing, but it's taking the streets much more seriously this time around. Underground street racing? Razor Callahan? That's for kids. ProStreet makes it official by taking some of the standard street racing events that have been in the past few NFS games and puts them in an all-new environment.

The goal of the game is to become the king of street racing, which you'll accomplish by excelling in different race disciplines, such as drag racing, drift racing, grip racing, and speed challenges. You'll travel to different events in about 14 different locations, and you'll be able to take on multiple races for each event. Racing is much more serious this time around because your cars can be totaled. If you total too many cars at one location, you'll have to start over.

While the 360 version of the game was shown off back at the E3 Media & Business Summit and is still looking good, we were able to get a look at the Wii version of ProStreet. As you might expect, you steer the cars by holding the Wii Remote sideways and tilting it side to side. Unlike Need for Speed Carbon, there won't be any other control schemes to choose from, but to better acclimate players to the sensitivity of tilt steering, the game has three levels of assists. Family mode is the easiest of the bunch, which has the game take care of braking and some of the heavier steering jobs. But it only kicks in when you need it, so if you totally blow a turn, the game assists will kick in and keep you from flying off the side of the road. Racer-level assists are similar to family mode, but less so, giving you more manual control of the action without letting you get too far off the mark. King mode disables most of the assists, also giving you the option to disable antilock brakes, stability, and other car assists. King mode, giving you the highest level of control, will let you get more out of your cars because it won't be kicking in and braking for you.

The Wii version of ProStreet handles quite well, overall, and it also looks quite a bit better than Carbon. While you probably won't confuse it for the Xbox 360 version of the game up close, the Wii version already seems to have a good, smooth frame rate and the sense of speed you'd expect to find in a modern racing game.

ProStreet is currently scheduled to be released this October on the Wii, Xbox 360, PlayStation 3, PlayStation 2, PC, and Nintendo DS.