Look Ma, a Porsche. And another one…and another one! Review

Look Ma, a Porsche. And another one…and another one!

People who collect exotic cars generally aren’t known for wanting to drive the

hell out of them. Exotics are investments, not the kinds of vehicles you keep

in your one-car garage and work on every other Saturday. Therein lies the irony

– these vicious road-eaters sit in pristine garages, never to see a drop of rain,

never to feel the sting of gravel, never to get past third gear.

Face it, most of us will never even get a chance to smell the interior of

a Porsche 917 K Short Tail. It’s a sad situation, really. Those with the will

to let these cars do what they were designed to do never seem to have the means.

The Need for Speed series has built a reputation for providing a way

to exercise that will. Even if you can’t smell the interior, you still get to

show a Short Tail who’s at the top of the food chain.

Although the 911 has made an appearance in a couple of previous Need for

Speed ventures, Porsches were never a staple of the series, which offered

a variety of rare machines from the Lotus GT1 to the McLaren F1. Electronic

Arts seeks to remedy the lack of Porsche presence with their fifth and latest

effort, Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

For the most part, the in-game graphics look like what they were turning out

for the Playstation three or four years ago, with just a touch of reflective

surfacing, sparks and smoke effects thrown in for good measure. As this game

is based around Porsche vehicles, that’s all you’ll be driving and they don’t

look as good as they should. In fact, if you aren’t a Porsche aficionado, you’ll

be left wondering what all the hoo-ha is about. These are Porsches which, come

to think of it, aren’t that exotic after all. You see them on the freeway all

the time, usually with a balding orthodontist behind the wheel.

NFS:PU boasts collisions and damage modeling. Collisions have been

a hallmark of the NFS games, reaching their apex in NFS2, but

they are definitely at their nadir with Porsche Unleashed. Once airborne,

the cars have all the weight of a piece of dry toast. The cars actually twirl

before being immediately reset, something several tons of steel and fiberglass

should never do. The collisions are a moot point anyway, as your car will probably

be the only one doing any crashing.

Car damage is formulaic. You’ll find the same dents in your vehicle with little

regard for the cause of the damage or its location. However, the damage does

have a negative impact on performance. It is not impossible to win a race with

a near-totaled car, just harder.

Refusing to abandon lapped courses in favor of point-to-point courses, the

tracks have been a weak spot in the series since Need for Speed 2. Porsche

Unleashed does a lot to correct this situation, opting for more realistic

environments over some of the more fanciful ones in the earlier games.

This new pseudo-realism is a welcome relief to those of us who still think

of this game as a sim and not just a flashy arcade racer. The result is an odd

mix of drab looking tracks which have more realistic curves and less of the

winding, twisting road angles that plagued earlier NFS games. Unfortunately,

the shoulders have become pitifully slender and hazardous. The dips and jumps

of the previous NFS games are a dying breed.

Porsche

Unleashed offers a variety of play modes in an attempt to satisfy both casual

and committed gamers. The Evolution mode is Gran

Turismo-esque by requiring you to purchase and maintain your vehicles. But

unlike Gran Turismo, there are no upgrades for your cars. Aside from

tweaking the gearbox settings, your cars are not customizable beyond a paint

job – and some of the cars cannot be painted, making for exciting races in which

every car on the track looks exactly like yours.

Another addition is the Factory Driver mode, in which you become a Porsche

employee working your way up through the ranks to become a top test driver.

Think of it as the license tests for Gran Turismo, but with no license

for a pay-off. Capture the Flag and Chase modes are reminiscent of similar and

better modes in Driver.

The Chase mode is particularly disappointing when compared to the Police Pursuit

modes in the last two NFS offerings, Hot

Pursuit and High

Stakes. The cops don’t need to stop your car, they need only touch it and

it stops on its own, ending the race. Since when were police chases so polite?

There is also a mode in which you can take your vehicles out and drive around

town with traffic and police. Here you get a chance to fly through town and

wreak havoc on unsuspecting civilian drivers. Yet ramming cars at high-speed

almost invariably results in the opposing car flying weightlessly backward while

your car is seemingly unaffected by a 120 mph head-on collision.

Porsche Unleashed‘s most apparent shortcoming is the lack of AI. Your

opponents are mere opportunists. They aren’t bad guys. They just want to get

in front of you, though they don’t take risks and they never dive into shortcuts.

In fact, they drive so tamely you’ll be hard pressed to find them leaving dust

clouds and skid marks. Frankly, they drive like a pack of 69 year-old retired

fry cooks who have saved all their lives for these cars.

This lack of aggression is devastating for a racer that doesn’t give you more than three cars at a time for opposition. The game is mind-numbingly, insultingly easy.

Although the game’s replay feature is the best in the series with a variety

of smooth camera angles, it is a wasted effort. There’s just nothing worth seeing.

Need for Speed: Porsche Unleashed is a forgettable racer with all the

depth of a shallow puddle, better suited for a rental than a purchase. It’s

more a footnote to the Need for Speed series than a chapter in itself.