Career mode impressions from the near-final build of the game.

by Chris Roper

With Need for Speed ProStreet revving its engine and about to roll up to the starting line, we ran through the opening sections of an almost final build of the game to see what's in store for us in just a few short weeks.

We've previously talked at length about how you can create a Race Day online for other players to jump in and play at their leisure. The single-player game works the same way, with events grouped into said Race Days and your goal being to win or even dominate each set of events. Each event in a Race Day, be it a Grip Race, Drag Race or what have you, earns you a number of points depending on your placement, how much you can beat a target time by and the damage total on your car. Once you've garnered enough points, even if you haven't completed all of the events, you'll be crowned the winner, and if you earn enough, you'll be deemed to have dominated the event, which earns you extra goodies.

Horsepower and skill are the keys to victory. When you've completed an event, you'll earn a cash prize as well as a mystery gift. Five "cards" will appear face-down on the screen and you can choose one at random. These prizes range from more cash to a new car to a repair ticket or more.

Car damage plays a part in your vehicle's performance. Rather than influencing all sorts of nuances to your performance, there are simply three levels to the damage that you can receive. Light and major damage affect your car's acceleration, top speed and handling in either minor or major ways, depending on what level you're at. These are full car effects, so no matter where the impact occurs, it'll affect you in the same ways. This is nice in that you always know exactly how much of a detriment a crash will be on your racing.

Beyond light and major damage, you can also total your car, which not only takes you out of the race but leaves your vehicle unusable until you get it fixed. With light and heavy damage, you can continue to take your car into races, though it'll perform at a less than ideal level. When it's totaled, you'll need to use a specific ticket that you can win in order to bring it back from the dead. Without said ticket, you'll have to rely on other vehicles until you pick one up.

GT2 versus a new GT-R. There's a total of 55 cars to be found in the game that range across a huge spectrum of performance. The tuning mechanics, which we've covered in-depth right here, let you tweak and change each and every ride in a multitude of ways. We managed to take a 2008 Porsche 911 GT2 and bump it up to over 1,000 horsepower. We then managed to take said rocket out to the track and record a 0-60 time of 2.19 seconds. If the game simulated the structural integrity of vehicles the car probably would have torn itself apart when we hit the gas.

Once you've built up a nice array of vehicles and dominated enough Race Days, you'll be able to challenge one of the game's four Race Kings. These drivers are the cream-of-the-crop and are your ticket to getting into bigger and better events. We haven't gotten far enough to challenge any of these guys yet, but they're next on our to-do list.

Need for Speed ProStreet is but a mere three weeks away, and we've got our racing gloves at the ready for its release. Check back soon for our full review.