NFS ProStreet

We got to see an example of one of the "hub events" that the series will hook its game play around. This was a desert event thrown by the Nitrocide team, who are all about speed challenges. The team's color scheme and design sense dominated the event, from the loading/event selection's screen choice of music to giant inflatables. According to Pro Street's Scott Nielsen, which team is throwing the event will also determine what racers show up and in what cars. It'll even determine the girls who make appearances.

The game will feature drag, drift, grip and speed challenges, arranged within these massive race weekends. We got to go hands-on with the speed challenge, our early favorite. The entire goal of the speed challenge events is to actually let you open up these amazing race cars and get them going at incredible speeds for long drags, rather than force you to drop to turning speeds after, at best, a few moments of exquisite velocity.

With the controller in hand, the first thing we did was play with the game's highly touted smoke system. Using an advanced particle system, the smoke that these cars generate as they tear layer after layer from their tires is a sight. It wraps around the rims, billows out behind you in a fog, and distorts light realistically. There's still something not quite "right," with the smoke's distortion looking a little more like water's than it should, but overall it's technically impressive.

Once we finished doing wheelies to make smoke rings, we let our BMW M3 E92 rip. The goal of speed mode is to capture the tremendous power of the cars in the racing scene, and the potential for even a tiny error to send you catapulting to certain defeat when you've got one doing 200+ KMH. Tearing through the track of slight turns and long straights set in the middle of the Nevada desert, the team has definitely done that.

With the game's new procedural destructibility, Pro Street also captures the fact that these machines are built of fiberglass and sheet metal, not indestructible polygons. Scraping against another car left us with a long series of paint scrapes for our trouble, as we battered our way through our race, the changes to the car went way beyond scrapes. By the end of our race, we'd knocked off both bumpers, shattered most of the glass, and had a literally flat front end, grille exposed. You can all but drive these cars down to the frame.

As a nice bonus, Nielsen also confirmed that the game will feature the Nissan GTR Prototype. This is the first time it's appeared in a game, and it will be exclusive to Pro Street. Overall, the circus-like atmosphere of girls in themed costumes, giant balloons, and "street" or "thug" event organizers seems a bit too gaudy, but we're pleased with everything else we've seen from Pro Street so far.

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