Need for speed Pro Street [demo]

[charlesr]

Tried the two missions:
fastest through the checkpoints (total speeds)
first to do two laps

I've not played Need for speed for a long time, but it still feels like the same 10 year old PC game, with prettier graphics. And worse controls. Am I missing something? I chose hard mode and instantly won both missions. It's like they aren't really selling it on the right levels or the game is fantastically easy. There's some odd frame rate stuff going on too (I think). Sometimes it seems reallllly smooth and then the next minute it's chugging along. Actually not sure if it's frame rate. Might just be what happens in corners. Don't know. Thumbs down from me.

[Hohum]

The series went downhill after Hot Pursuit in my opinion... haven't liked any of the newer releases. I tried the Carbon demo on PC, and after 10 minutes it got binned; cars handled ridiculously, and I really hate that slowdown button they implemented. God knows what they were thinking.

[merf]

we grabbed this yesterday and not very impressive, the handling felt horribly heavy and the cars didn't seem to like bends much.

looked fairly pretty but by rights should struggle against the considerably better driving titles available.

it won't of course, xmas chart number 1 again ?

[ne0star]

Yeah I thought this was pretty dump as well. Its hard to give a decent impression as the demo doesn't exactly give you much to go on.

Looks alright, some nice particle affects when you do burnouts and stuff, but I won both races on my first atempt simply by holding the accelerator down.

The desert stage parped along at a fair old rate, but the framerate chugged a lot on the city stage.

You would have to be really dedicated to your driving games to buy this over PGR4.

[ChrisF]

Oopsie. Didn't realise there was already a thread for this (tagged my comments in the marketplace thread).

I quite enjoyed it. But the thing froze on me twice which wasn't very enjoyable. I had to fiddle around with the view as well. I prefer chase view, and it seemed the more you accelerated, the further the camera moved away from your car, basically giving you a view of where you've been as opposed to where you're going - i.e. useless.

I certainly thing its way better than Carbon though, and didn't mind the handling at all. It's not a serious contender to the PGR/Forza 2s of the world (i.e. PGR and Forza 2), but I thought it was fun none the less.

Probably pre-occupied with Burnout when this thing arrives though.

edit: guess not if Burnouts not out till next year!

[doodledude]

Had a go of this demo on the PS3 and as usual for EA the presentation is top notch, however the framerate is really jerky.
When people talk about framerates I usually can't tell the difference between 30/60fps. However, this appears to be less than 30fps because it was making my eyes feel weird after playing it.
There's definately got to be better racing games on the horizon than this, that have got to beat this like Burnout and GT5.

[Hohum]

Ah well, tried the PC demo, and it pretty much delivered what I expected: slick presentation, but half arsed gameplay. The car handling model is so vague that I couldn't reliably avoid hitting other cars, and I really struggled to keep to a racing line when going around corners. It made me feel crap at gaming for a minute, then I remembered I have no trouble with better racers out there, so it got uninstalled.

EA really need to be putting some passion into the games they create, rather than constantly churning out half baked rehashes of previous games. I don't have a problem with sequels as such, just when they are worse than earlier efforts it makes you wonder just what they are playing at. Of course, they won't change their ways, not while they can release titles such as this and still expect a tidy profit regardless. Money makes that EA logo spin around and all that.

[spinpug666]

Was at a big car show in Dublin at the weekend and EA had a stand showing this off.
First thing i noticed was every system (360,Wii,Ps3) was running in composite on LCDs LOL. Why oh why are these not set-up to show the best possible picture to the public, Monkeys!

Didn't have a go myself (didn't like the demo) cus they were only playing 2-player split screen and it looked terrible.

[Eight Rooks]

It doesn't surprise me it would be way too easy. Haven't tried the demo yet, but Carbon was a walkover until the final boss, who I just couldn't beat no matter what and against whom I more or less irreversibly screwed up my car settings. Couldn't be bothered playing the game through again.

I like the whole import tuner aspect, but not so much the glittering neon look - Most Wanted was the only title in the franchise I've ever really got on that well with. Still, I may try this at some point.