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Visual customization is one of the few things that hasn't really change in Need for Speed ProStreet and that unfortunately is not a good thing. It is more or less the same as in Carbon, where you could pick one of three wide body kits, hoods, spoilers, roof scoops, rims, paint, window tint and a few other properties. The amount of parts is about the same but it is possible to autosculpt all of them. But autosculpt does come in as pretty useful this year as it affects the top speed / downforce ratio. Whole bodywork tuning is done in a wind tunnel where you can see the top speed / downforce slider move instantly as you apply different parts and autosculpt them. This will be very useful for making specific race mode cars; you'll need as little drag as possible for the fast races like speed challenge and drag, but a lot of downforce for the grip.

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[i]Autosculpting a spoiler[/i]

The vinyl and decal placement system has improved a bit since last year, but is still limited to more or less the same basic categories as before: stripes, flags, tribal, unique... There are no basic shapes or letters and the amount of layers is only a bit greater than in Carbon (30 if I'm correct). So don't expect miracles like in Forza. If you want to place a decal or a vinyl on the other side of the car you don't have to move it through the whole car - there are preset positions which you can select and then move and stretch from there. You'll love that fact that in career all vinyls are available from the start which means you can make a nice little rice rocket right at the beginning. From the customizing garage, as well as from in game, you can always jump to photo mode, which is again the same as before with three commands: rotate, zoom and take picture which then gets uploaded to EA.com instantly. I'd like a bit more, like brightness and contrast settings, shutter speed and focus. But they are promision on publishing car data on EA.com (like total hp, 0-60, top speed). Should be a nice addition to our showroom.

As you know damage has been advertised a lot, but I believe it's impact is not as much visual - visually it's pretty basic more or less limited to parts falling off - but it really makes you think a lot when you race. Now you really have to be careful taking turns and especially on tricky sections of tracks: one little mistake and you can total your car which can also mean race day is over. Smoke is another pretty hyped up feature, but it is also a feature I didn't pay much attention to at all. Since I use the hood/bumper car, I didn't notice it much except at starts. It will however be noticeable in online drift especially if you start in second place. Drifting in a cloud of smoke behind your opponent can be a bit more difficult.

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[i]ProStreet has a large car list with euro an japanese tuners, american muscles and quite a few supercars[/i]

The game has its flaws and it has it's advantages but overall I think it is a big improvement over the previous series. Sure it's not perfect (can't remember any NFS game that was perfect), but the good features definitely outweigh the bad ones especially because the main point of the game - the racing - is actually done superbly and is almost without flaws (I did notice some fps drops in the dev version, but I'm sure they will fix that with the full version). The driving really rocks and that counts the most in a Need for Speed game.

Previous: ProStreet Preview Part 3: Racing

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