GC '07: Need for Speed ProStreet Hands-On Preview

LEIPZIG, Germany--According to EA, the risk of street racing has recently forced racers to become more organised in order to make their sport more legitimate. With fines of $10,000 in the US, even the most financially secure racers are banding together and moving on to dedicated racing tracks. With its latest Need for Speed game, Electronic Arts says it's preempting this move and interpreting where it thinks street racing will be in a few years' time. The result is ProStreet, and with the game set for release at the beginning of November, we managed to get a hands-on with an advanced build at this year's Leipzig Games Convention.

The general theme for the game this year is "cars as weapons," meaning that you'll have to buy many different vehicles for all the various race styles. Whereas before you could buy car parts to adapt to various racing styles, now you will have to utilise entirely different vehicles to perform the same task. Entering a variety of straight races, drag races, speed challenges, and other races will allow you to complete the main task of becoming the street king. This alone is set to take most players around 15-20 hours to complete, while completists will find 30 hours of gameplay in beating the kings of the individual disciplines. A 100 percent complete level should take around 50 hours according to EA.

One of the most impressive parts of the game on the Xbox 360 and PlayStation 3 is the particle system, and particularly how it affects gameplay. At the beginning of the race you can perform wheel-spins that will produce vast plumes of smoke from the rear of your car. These clouds will remain for several seconds, ruining the view of any poor racer who happens to be behind you. The beginning of the drag races is actually dependent on your ability to wheel-spin, because you have to heat your tyres up as part of a new minigame.

Real-time damage also makes a welcome return in ProStreet, with scratches to the paintwork leading up to dented and broken panels. You can adapt your car as always with cosmetic and performance-related enhancements, and then take it into a wind tunnel to see how it copes with the demands of aerodynamics. After you've finished tuning your vehicle, you'll be able to take it racing on one of the 14 different locations, which include Japan, North America, and Europe. These tracks will include some of the more notable ones from previous games, as well as some officially-licensed ones such as Willow Springs in Los Angeles.

Need for Speed ProStreet looks like it will offer all the thrills that we've come to expect from the series, and although it looks to have shaken off its underground edge somewhat, there are plenty of technological advancements in the game that take advantage of new hardware. The game is set for release on the PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PC, Nintendo Wii, PlayStation 2, and Nintendo DS at the beginning of November, with a PlayStation Portable release following in February 2008. We'll bring you more details as soon as we can.