Humam
True Gamer
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اللعبة صارت Simulation.. هذي شوية معلومات:
PSW makes with the tyre smoke with EA's genuine pretender to Gran Turismo's throne...
New, new, new. Everything about the very latest in a long line of Need For Speed games is brand spanking new. Except for the fact that you drive cars, obviously. Everything else, though, has been given a major revamp - to the point where John Doyle, producer of Need For Speed: Pro Street, starts spouting worryingly cod-philosophical phrases like "new continuum" and "new playing field" when we arrive in a rainy Vancouver to see the game in action.
OFF THE MAP
To illustrate his point, Doyle brings up a slide of a straight line, with driving sims like Gran Turismo positioned at one end and arcadey crash-abouts like Burnout at the other. Ah, we think. He'll put Need For Speed somewhere in the middle. But no - then he scribbles another line off it that so that it bears no relevance whatsoever to the first one and suggests that this new area is where EA Black Box, developer of Pro Street, is aiming.
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Tuner culture, where our recent titles have taken their inspiration from, is evolving," Doyle explains, standing in front of a PowerPoint presentation that looks more like a Richter scale readout than a barometer of today's racing games. "We want to be influencing that change and moving it forwards instead of playing catch-up."
And so we have Pro Street. "Real street racing," as Doyle puts it, which gives the impression he thinks previous Need For Speed games were big fat fakes. In a sense they were - all blurred neon trails and danger-free speeding, with a heavy emphasis on bling. Not any more. Now we have 'grown-up' street racing, where any alterations you make are purely intended to get your car to thunder across the tarmac faster, not to boost some cheesy respect-o-meter. There's no call for talking the talk, you've just got to walk the walk - by slamming the pedal to the metal and hanging on to the steering wheel for dear life.
CLOSED CIRCUITS
The biggest and most obvious change to the game is the shift from driving through moonlit city streets and canyons to racing around closed circuits in glorious sunshine. Gone are the fictional open worlds, designed as much for parading your ride as proving its mettle, and in several circuits lifted from the US Formula Drift championship. You'll be hurling half a ton of metal around real-life tracks in California, New Jersey, Seattle, West Virginia and more, with the idea being that you partake in a series of dedicated events rather than chancing upon random gatherings as in Need For Speed: Carbon.
There's a festival air to every event; you won't be turning up at a circuit to compete in a single race, you'll be entering a series of challenges which will test every aspect of your capabilities. There're lots of beautiful people mingling with the grease monkeys and a real sense of being involved with a cool club, yet it's all strictly for setting the scene, so there's no corny story driving the game along. You're left to race, modify your car and then race some more.
Pro Speed's objective is simple: fight your way to the top of the leaderboard, taking on champions of the various disciplines as you go, until a face-off with a mysterious figure called the Showdown King to decide who takes the overall crown.
On the way you'll turn your hand to Grip racing, which is standard circuit racing; Speed racing (on dedicated stretches of open highway, in the game's only departure from its closed circuit environment); Drift racing, where you'll be speeding side-on in close proximity to a competitor; and Drag racing, the ultimate test of your vehicle's brute power. There's a lot to learn.
HARD DRIVIN'
This enticing new structure would be as nothing without some decent driving action to be had, and crucially this is where Pro Street shows the strongest promise. Doyle refers back to his wonky line drawing: "It's important that we offer a driving model that appeals to everyone, be it the hardcore racing nut who wants to study corner apexes and entry points or the more casual gamer who simply wants to hit the gas and have some fun without thinking about it too much. The key is believability."
There are plenty of driver aids available to ease you into the driving, but we're not interested in that. We want to know how it feels driving by the seat of your flame-proof overalls. We want to believe, and we want Doyle to shut up for a bit so we can have a go ourselves.
He does, and we get to try Infinium Raceway in San Francisco in a Nissan 350Z, alone and with the damage effects and driver aids turned off (despite being around 80 percent complete, Black Box isn't ready to let us get our hands on everything just yet) - and it's bloody horrible! Not prepared for the realism of the setup, the car feels hugely unresponsive, the braking point for the first corner is more of an ambition than a reference point and the sound of gravel being churned up issues from the impressive surround sound set-up like someone's head being forcibly put through a meat-grinder.
HANDLE WITH CARE
Of course, grabbing the controls like a maniac and driving off thinking that the game would handle just like Need For Speed Carbon doesn't help matters.
Reality check! It plainly doesn't handle anything like Carbon does - though we're told that it will be a much simpler beast with all those aids on. Pro Street handles more realistically. There's a real sense of weightiness to our car, in contrast to the helium-filled vehicles of previous games, and a feeling that driving in Pro Street is something to be worked at and perfected over a number of sessions. We think that this time around, racecraft will gradually be honed rather than nailed in the first half an hour, thus giving loads more meat to the game's bones. The latest hardcore approach to driving will make or break Pro Street's latest iteration, and from what we've experienced, we'd say that this direction is the one to go in.
The action is pinned down to 30 frames per second, presumably to allow the high levels of car and track details to flow past smoothly, but Pro Street doesn't seem to be a great leap forward in terms of raw speed. It is fast, don't get us wrong, but it's not the next-gen step up seen with the visuals and gameplay features. A definite step up is the impressive damage system, which allows you to smash the hell out of shiny cars from 26 different big-name manufacturers - the biggest line-up of car makers yet.
While the damage you can inflict is impressive in itself, the real thrill comes from the fact that car makers have overcome their fears of seeing their creations being ripped apart. Scrapes and dents are to be "badges of honour", Doyle reckons; battle scars are to be shown off throughout an event. Doyle then takes the pad back and shows us what he means, scraping the 350Z along the crash barriers and colliding with walls even faster.
We'll admit to having a schoolboy crush on the 350Z's sleek lines, but when those lines get all crumpled and buckled, we nearly have a heart-attack.
There's much to be excited about with Pro Street. It's far from the annual updates we're used to seeing, and smacks of real ambition. The game drives well, looks ace and feels more focused on pure racing (even the extensive modding system tells you how much faster your car will go - see our Blueprint for Success box on p30).
Pro Street wants to be taken seriously. So does it have a certain genre-leading racer its sights? Is there space for two ultra-realistic track racers on the PS3? We collar Doyle again, asking if he wants to take on Gran Turismo. He grins. "You'll have to wait and see," he says.
