NFS: ProStreet Wii CTS-V Review

[Bruce Nunnally]

NFS: Need for Speed ProStreet was released in Nov 2007, barely in time for the Christmas season. My Wife gave me a copy for Christmas, figuring it was a driving/racing game, so I would enjoy it.

I was unfamiliar with this release, although I had played earlier Need for Speed series games on the PC. Need for Speed is an Electronics Arts product; the first release in the series was in 1994 for the 3DO game system, and 1995 for the PC.

NFS ProStreet is all closed track racing, as opposed to racing in the streets with traffic and police as in some previous Need for Speed releases. Some of the tracks are racing tracks, and there are also some street courses. The races are divided into four main types of races. Each type of racing requires that you tune a car specifically for that type of racing. As you play, you win money and sometimes cars or performance parts. Winning events along the Career path also allows you to unlock more cars for sale, and more tracks on the Career Path. Each type of racing event results in a final contest vs a King of that type of racing, so that doing well at Drag events will eventually bring a challenge from the Drag King for example. Once you have defeated the King of each type of racing, you become the King of that type, and qualify to face off against the all-around King.

Conventional racing

Grip races are what you would normally think of as racing. Several laps around the track, first one across the finish line wins. Time Attacks are like qualifying events at a race track; there are other cars on the track, but whoever can turn the fastest single lap within 3 or 4 laps of opportunity wins. Sector Attacks divide the racing track into 4 sectors. Whoever gets the lowest time for each sector of the track wins that sector, with points awarded based on how much you beat the previous sector time for each sector.

Drifting

Drifting is a car sport in which you attempt to drift, or slide, the car around the track. The object is to go as fast as possible, with the car at a high slip angle relative to the track. I think of it as attempting to dance the car around the track sideways. I believe it is admired as a real-life sport because it is loud and dangerous. While drifing a car's rear wheels are almost constantly spinning.

Quartermile/Halfmile Racing

ProStreet has a very good Quartermile/Halfmile racing approach. Each race has 3 heats. Races are quickest to the finish, not index races. First, you heat up your tires by attempting to maintain engine revs in a target zone. Then there is a standard timing light and off you go for either a standard 1/4 mile or a 1/2 mile run.

High Speed Runs

High speed runs are very much like racing as well, but the courses are laid out so that the majority of the race will be at 175+ mph. Think Silver State Classic or other high speed, closed course races in real life. There are also

NFS ProStreet has a single Cadillac available, a 2006 CTS-V. This car is locked in Career mode at first, but can be unlocked with a successful win at the 2nd tier competition. As soon as I completed the 2nd tier, I picked up the 2006 CTS-V as my Grip car, and proceeded to use it stock to win grip events up to the Grip semifinals. The CTS-V is after all a fair race car out of the box, with a sport suspension setup and brembo brakes and adequate power (400hp!). My single complaint on the stock CTS-V is that the game limits the unmodified car to 155mph, when in real life an unmodified CTS-V is only limited to 163 mph. It may in fact be possible to win the overall Grip path with an unmodified CTS-V but you'd have to be a better driver than I have gotten to so far. At that point the competing cars are prototypes with 860+hp and racing suspensions.

So, at that point I was playing with the CTS-V for Grip, a Corvette for Quartermile, a Viper for Top Speed (won that one), and a GTO for Drifting. My Son jokingly asked WHY I was not using a CTS-V for all of these? So, back to the in-game store to pickup more CTS-V's. I did pick up a Murcielago in Cardio Doc's honor as my backup grip car (all black of course).

First a quartermile CTS-V. This one I modified with all of the in-game mods available. In the game, cars are rated from 1st tier for economy cars up to 3rd tier for super cars. Mod parts are also rated, similarly, with 1st tier being less expensive but adding less hp, to 3rd tier being more expensive but adding more hp or stability etc. 4th tier parts can only be gained as prizes for winning or dominating racing events. My quartermile CTS-V has a modified engine, suspension, supercharger, nitrous system, tires, body work, etc. It tends to run 8.4s quartermiles at this point. In real life, a racing CTS-V will run 11.1s quartermiles, but it is not setup as a quartermile car really, so I am not sure how unrealistic the game times are, but they are optimistic. My in-game car is setup with soft spring and shocks in front and rock hard in rear in order to help weight transfer during acceleration.

Similarly, my topspeed CTS-V is setup with all the mods available, but with tuning emphasis on stability and speed. On the Texas Motor Speedway on nitrous it will tour at 240 mph, slamming against the rev limiter in 6th gear. I probably need to make 6th gear taller, which is an available tuning option.

I have not added a Drift CTS-V yet -- have to get on that next. I have trouble relating a lot to drifting, but I do understand it better after playing this game than before.

Overall I have had a lot more fun with NFS: ProStreet than I expected. The graphics on the Wii are fine. There is a lot of customization and visual customization available. Each of my CTS-V's are a different color, with Cadillac in script along different parts of each car, etc. The track announcer in game is hilarious. He often quips about how odd it is to bring my CTS drag racing for example.

ProStreet is available on a variety of platforms, so if you don't have a Wii it may be available on what you do have. I do wish it included other Cadillac models, but the CTS-V is a fun car and I am glad that at least it was included.

[BigThermometer]

LOL this sounds exactly like what I do. I occasionally play my son's Xbox 360. My favorite game is Forza Motorsport 2 which has a CTS-V and I use it whenever I can. Even though it can feel kinda heavy compared to the Porsches and Ferraris which I'm straight up with on the straight-aways

Oh and something that made me proud was that when my son first got his xbox, he borrowed from his friend a copy of Project Gotham Racing 3 and downloaded the V-Series pack and earned himself an "exclusive" gamer picture which is a Cadillac badge. In order to get it, he had to rank within 100 in the world. He cut it close. 98th I think. But darn I know I couldn't do that! I'm becoming an old-timer by each day.

Thanks for the review!

[JasonA]

Bruce, thanks for the review. We have a Wii, mostly for our little daughter. The bowling is fun too.

Good to hear they're doing some racing games for it, or at least porting other ones to the Wii console. I love the Gran Turismo series games on the Playstation. I'm spoiled by the pretty accurate physics models and great graphics. If you've played those games before, how does the NFS game on the Wii compare, as far as realism? A lot of racing games are pretty "arcade-ish", meaning you simply push button "X" to go fast and that's it, cars bang off each other and jump 100 yards offf ramps, etc. How is the realism on the NFS game for Wii, and how easy is it to control with the Wii controller? Do you turn it sideways, and "steer" with it like a steering wheel?

[Bruce Nunnally]

Yes, to steer a car for a grip or top speed race you hold the Wii controller sideways, and steer as if the Wii controller were a virtual steering wheel.

I find this much more intuitive than using a joystick for example, and similar enough to using an actual racing wheel. I have a racing wheel and

pedals I use with PC racing games, and I prefer that, but the Wii approach works. The problem with a dedicated controller is putting it away and

getting it out for play each time.

For drag racing the Wii controller is used in a more normal orientation, with the B button as the throttle and pulled upward or downward for

shifts. This works well and the B button provides a responsive throttle.

Wii ProStreet uses a damage model running from cosmetic to light and then heavy damage, resulting in Totaled! as appropriate. For example,

slide into a telephone pole at 165 mph and the car is totaled; at that point you either have to pay the full value of the car to rebuild it or turn

in a rebuild chip won during racing.

The driving itself I find fun. The system allows for 3 different levels of computer support, from full stabilitrak-like help to full unassisted.

You have very good sight down track when the track is in line of sight, which is an important feature to me. Cars understeer or oversteer

as appropriate for the equipment and tuning done, speed, and track layout. At high speeds, the graphics blur somewhat, which is a nice

approach and fairly realistic.

The skill of the computer controlled drivers is set low until the higher races, so people who like a lot of wheel to wheel racing with the computer

may be disappointed unless you stay with a car that is a challenging selection for the competition/track. At races further along the Career

path I would find that the stock CTS-V was faster through the corners but slower down the straight than the computer-selected highly

modified cars (often my car had the lowest HP, sometimes by half at that point). This made for good racing though as I would have to

drive very consistently in order to gain and hold the lead.

So, in summary I enjoy the driving dynamics and find the game realistic enough for my purposes. The game is optimistic on how much

improvement cars get from a variety of tuning customizations, but the customizations are priced highly, so I am not sure that if you

DID spend say US$150K in modding a CTS-V you couldn't get it running right along. But the actual driving experience is fun, and the

use of damage modelling makes flat-out "bounce off the rails" racing unattractive.

Car audio is good. The game loves blaring rock soundtracks, but I turned that off and the engine volume up. Engine pitch and tone changes

with various engine mods for example, which is a nice touch. You can tell by the volume of their engine how close other drivers are catching

up, which is handy.

[JasonA]

Thanks for that further info. I may need to go rent this. Unfortunately, the Gran Turismo games (the latest is version 4 on the PS2) have no production Cadillac models. I need my Caddy fix, even on the video games.

[Bruce Nunnally]

Some Video from the game. Note some degradation in DVD capture->Youtube, but you can get the idea of drag racing in ProStreet.

I picked the colors and graphics on the CTS-V, so blame me for that.

Some of the races are 1/2 mile.

[Bruce Nunnally]

Grip racing the CTS-V at Texas Motor Speedway