Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed PC

Take a breath -- this isn't like Need for Speed 4. Those of you that played it can attest to the fact that the fourth in the series was a solid game, but at times felt more like an add-on pack than a full on sequel. Thankfully the designers have tried to take the series into a new direction by focusing on history of one car company, Porsche, and by adding new features like Factory Driver. The game succeeds in terms of propelling the Need for Speed series into a somewhat new direction, but at its heart it still feel a lot like one of the clan. Is that such a bad thing?

That depends on how much you love the series in general. Yes you can control a wide variety of cars in this game, and yes there are a good number of options, but Porsche Unleashed can never quite decide what to do with those options. Take Porsche Evolution, for instance. It's a great concept that capitalizes on the focus of this game, the Porsche line of cars. You start out with an early Porsche from the 50's and must complete a series of races, gaining access to later cars as you progress. You can buy and sell cars, repair the same car, tweak it with optional parts, or even keep it to resell for a higher price later. Most of the time you'll just ditch last year's model for the latest and greatest, especially considering the sheer speeds involved to win later races. The great thing about the mode is that you get to get a hands-on living history lesson in the cars, but unfortunately it's one that tops out at 70mph. Most of the tracks are designed for twice that speed, which means that for nearly half of the Evolution mode, you're stuck puttering out gazing at the scenery, waiting for a race to end. The buy/sell aspects feel similar as well -- you'll rarely keep an older car, especially if you want to win, and as for tweaking, usually buying the latest models will give you all the edge you need. Though the options are great to have in the game, they never quite work out well enough to make them something to come back to.

The Factory Driver mode is the most original of the new features (at least on the PC anyway), and it puts you through a series of brief but brutal tasks in order to progress to the next level. Most of the time this means taking on slalom tracks, avoiding cones, or accomplishing tasks like pulling off a perfect 360 spin, but later they can get a lot harder. Because they're so short they lend themselves to repeated playing, and are fun and frustrating enough to keep you going back in order to better your time, and learn the skills you'll need to win the actual game. I was a little disappointed that there wasn't more instruction for beginning racers that don't know the protocol for pulling slides, quick turns, or any of the advanced tricks demanded by the mode.

The graphics continue to push the NFS series into the upper heavens of beauty. You'll see waterfalls pump mist through covered bridges, you'll see ocean side villages and ice-covered roads with drifts of snow, and you'll see the hard concrete of the Autobahn careening under your tires. No expense has been spared, unless you count framerates and a few glitches. I could never get the dashboard textures to appear, even after the first patch, and I had some framerate problems with a few of the courses like Monte Carlo. Still, I was consistently stunned by the scenery involved with the game, and the textures are better than ever, which is saying something considering how fantastic NFS 4 looked. The moving head/dashboard feature promised by the game doesn't seem to change the cockpit mode as much as I'd like, but it does add some subtle movement when you turn corners or climb hills. The ability to peek at cars in the showroom was nice, as was the car comparison feature -- as usual, NFS provides you with all the information you'd want about the cars, and more.

The music is very standard EA techno, which ranges from nice and funky to disturbingly horrible german television rave style tracks which cry out to be turned off on some of the courses. Fortunately, there's a nice hum to the cars, and you'll enjoy seeing and feeling them take on the road. Speaking of feeling, I was a little disappointed by the force feedback in the game, which on my WingMan wheel was inaccurate, and way too mild, even after some tweaking. After playing some great racing games lately, I was sad that the designers didn't take more time to fill out this feature a bit more.

As for putting the cars in motion, they look great, and they drive... like NFS cars, which means that they never quite grip or react as nicely as you'd expect them to. They certainly aren't sim cars -- they can take a nice beating, but they definitely aren't arcadey enough to use drift techniques or gear mashing tricks. You can win races by keeping a keen eye on the tracks and using a combo of switching gears and brake/gas before and after corners, but I would have like to have been able to use the provided handbrake more accurately. As it is, you get some good speed and competition, but you rarely get the breakneck cornering that you would in other racers, and that has as much to do with the tracks as with the controls. The tracks themselves are slanted towards eye-candy rather than skill of wheel, which means that you'll spend a lot of time taking mental snapshots of all the amazing sights in Europe, but not a lot sweating over particularly disturbing corners. The Monte Carlo track is the one exception, being that it is Monte Carlo and all -- I think that even the kids in public school have to walk down sharply angled hallways and steep curves just to get to class in that city.

The Multiplay experience was at best, limited. As of this writing, I still wasn't able to get online to race other players, and there wasn't a site up in order to download the new cars, or get a heads up on anything going on with the game, at least not one that linked from the in-game hotkeys. Instead, Dan and I set up games using IP addresses because for some odd reason, it wouldn't allow us to select a LAN game. I beat Dan nearly every time though, which is what really mattered, despite his complaints that he had actually never had a chance to play it before. Whatever. Though EA promised that they would launch with full multiplayer support this time around, so far it seems to be only half-implemented, which is sad considering the money put behind this title.

The series is still a lot of fun, but you can feel that this game was designed by committee, and it lacks any of the brilliance of games like Gran Turismo or Powerslide, titles that have a guiding force to push them into new territories. Because it's more an arcade racer than a sim you should expect some off the wall tricks to keep you interested, but NFS:PU keeps a straight B average, never excelling, but never quite letting you down, either. Because the team isn't willing to take the slightest risks in terms of gameplay you're left with a gorgeous, gigantic, beautiful title that never pushes you too hard on courses, never pits you against opponents that are too ruthless, and never ups the skill level enough to let you pull off the high-end road tricks that make games like Midtown Madness or Gran Turismo worth playing.

Still, the pluses are good enough that the game warrants checking out, especially on the PC where fast action racing games are few and far between. The addition of the circuit tracks is great, and the Factory Driver mode puts the game into some great bite-sized pieces for you goal-oriented racers out there. The control scheme might not be to everyone's liking, and some may not enjoy the Porsche-centric angle of the game, but overall Porsche Unleashed is a crowd pleaser. Though it's, sadly, not a big leap for the franchise, there's enough here to warrant a good look.

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