REVIEW

Critic Score

GamingTrend : 60 / 100
Gamer : 7 / 10
HonestGamers : 6,5 / 10
GamingExcellence : 6 / 10
TotalScore : 6,5




Every platform gets a piece of the avalanche of advertising that permeates the game. Sure, races in real life are heavily sponsored, but ProStreet takes it too far--there's nary a stretch of track where there's not some sort of advertisement for motor oil or car insurance. It doesn't seem possible, but 360 and PC owners get to enjoy even more advertising thanks to dynamic ads that will be downloaded when you start the game up for the first time. Even better, some of the achievements are sponsored by a car insurance company. It's too bad that the cost of the game and the ridiculous amount of advertising isn't making EA enough money--on the Xbox 360 (and according to EA, soon on the PS3) you can use real cash to unlock cars and upgrades. Every single time you go to buy a car, you're asked if you want to use in-game cash or real money. You don't even need to have unlocked a car to be able to purchase it with real cash, which is really unfair since you can use that unlocked car to zoom right to the top of the leaderboards on the early courses.

If you've got a rig that can handle it, the PC version of Need For Speed looks just as good as the PS3 and Xbox 360 versions. With all of the visual options enabled the game looks very nice--particularly its cars, which look fantastic. They look great when they're shiny and new, but they look even better when they're all smashed up. It hurts your wallet when you total a car, but it sure is entertaining to watch the windshield shatter, the bumper fall to the ground, and the hood peel away like a sardine can lid. Unfortunately, enabling smoke effects, car damage, and bumping up the detail causes the game to run poorly. As mentioned earlier, the game doesn't give off a tremendous sense of speed, even with all of the bells and whistles turned off. This is partially because you'll spend a lot of time driving slower cars, but also because the frame rate isn't very fast and is frequently choppy. Everyone gets in on the terrible career menu, which is ugly and difficult to navigate. We also experienced numerous crashes, regardless of the visual settings.