Need for Speed: ProStreet

Need for Speed: ProStreet from 2007 marked a major change of direction for the series. Instead of the illegal street racing that defined the previous Underground and Most Wanted installments, the game moved the action to legal closed circuits, where the player competes in four disciplines - circuit Grip races, drag, drift, and the autocross Speed Challenge. The career progresses gradually through all types of competitions, the player builds a reputation among the individual racing "crews" and invests the money earned into car modifications through the Autosculpt system, which allowed visually shaping the bodywork and bumpers according to one's own vision. For the first time in the series, vehicle damage was also realistically modeled - bent bodywork and disrupted aerodynamics after a crash noticeably changed the car's handling on the track, and in extreme cases a car could end up totally wrecked after a serious accident. The career was accompanied by its own music selection via EA Trax and online multiplayer, in which players competed in the same disciplines as in singleplayer and compared times and results with each other.

The PC version was released on the same day as the console releases and was completely identical in content - the same tracks, car roster and career structure, with no exclusive content for this platform. It differed mainly in controls: besides keyboard and gamepad, it also supported force-feedback racing wheels, which noticeably improved the feel of driving and precision in the drift and drag disciplines for a racing game of this type. On a more powerful computer, it was also possible to set a higher resolution and texture detail than the consoles of the time offered, and thanks to this the game could handle a larger number of vehicles on the track without significant frame rate drops.

The difference between the PC and console versions thus lay purely in control comfort and graphics settings, which the player could adjust according to their computer's performance, not in the content of the game itself - no track, car or game mode was tied exclusively to PC, nor was any left out of it. The choice between PC and console in 2007 was thus more a question of preferred controller than of what the player would actually get to play in the game.

Why play it: For the same content as on consoles - no track or car is left out on PC or added extra - just with the option to fine-tune the graphics and controls to your own computer and preferred controller.