Why we need more games like NFS ProStreet!

Games simply are not what they used to be, especially car orientated games! The internationally connected car community continues to grow at a phenomenal rate and demand for more exposure doesn’t seem to be going any where, so how come game developers are forgetting about us ? Need For Speed was at the core of every car junkie’s down time. It gave us the opportunity to mess around with cars most of us will never be able to afford. With ProStreet, it pushed this boundary to a whole new level. It added the deepest level of customisation I have ever experienced in any flagship title. Forza for the XBOX has some amazing mechanics and it is fun to see just how far you can push the car of your dreams, while Gran Turismo puts most of its detail directly into the cars themselves. Forza has an amazing online community and is at the focus of many YouTube channel’s content, most of these content creators are car lovers themselves, not just your average Joe gamer. Need For Speed entered into it’s reboot last holiday season and the new line of games open up uncountable opportunities to bring car culture onto the current generation of gaming consoles … with a few tweaks, of course!

ProStreet had a massive range of customisation options. Both your cosmetic and mechanical preferences affected how your machine performed. Its downforce, drag, camber, weight, ride height and tire pressure all actually mattered. In a way that felt detailed enough to be real. With the latest title, NFS just feels like those options are purely to cause a placebo. Imagine using a racing setup - wheel, pedals, shifter and seat - with Forza level detail to physics and having complete control over a car that feels real, yet still won’t cost you anything more than electricity and the game! Drifting tournaments with realistic output into your wheel that kicks back when you mess up and it locks, or retaining a manual gear shifting opportunity on stick seeing as more automatic, pedal shifters are hitting the market!

What PS also had, was a major community! Both inside the game and out! You had proper events inside the games narrative with a range of racing styles and a crowd to watch, just as you would have at an annual race day or car meet. The internet lit up in 2008 with forums dedicated to PS where people shared their latest build, track times, funny glitches and montages of their best moments and it was alive! The internet has matured in the past 8 years and is now bigger than ever. More people use it and if CT is any indication, those people are more competitive than ever. A PS like game with a modern community would not be a state of the art gaming experience, it would be the art itself! People could set up teams and it would add a really interesting dynamic to car gaming culture that has rarely ever been seen.

There was also the realism behind it. That you could blow your engine, that you needed to heat your tires before a drag for maximum efficiency of your grip, that the damage was gradual and a real consequence not just for your wallet, but could also end your career prematurely if not kept in check and of course, it had a clutch and manual gear mechanic. Not only did you have to time your gear changes perfectly, you had to time your clutch too. PS was more than just a game, you had to be smart. You had to know how a car actually worked, well, unless you put it on amateur mode with all the assists. The use of dyno tests and wind tunnels meant you could spend absurd amounts of time really focusing on getting the best out of your car down to the finest detail.

A successor to those types of games in the current generation of console gaming could be a major boost to the online car culture and the use of mass online servers, could connect us to each other even further regardless of the distance. Sharing car tips, stories and just having fun together. It would also be one of the only places, except for in the hands of pros or major enthusiasts, that muscle cars could dominate the drift scene and tuners could dominate the drag scene. Competitions could be set up, teams could compete, controllers would be thrown across rooms and bad language would be rampant. A leader board could be set up and the person on top of the different board types could be given titles like “Drift King” and so on.

Tell me what you guys think, but to me, this is something I feel we need. Not mostly because I’m a massive game nerd and am not too shabby with a simulation setup.

You can also find this article on my WordPress account, so if any of you could give it a click below, I just like seeing where you guys are in the world! WordPress gives you a map that highlights all visited countries, personal mission to fill it as much as is possible! Aldo helps me out a bunch, you can find my other social media on my CT profile!

https://arkademovie.wordpress.com/2016/01/20/why-we-need-more-games-like-need-for-speed-prostreet/