Teutonic Automotive Pornography (Need For Speed Porsche 2000 (PC))

Member Name: yhwman

Product:	Need For Speed Porsche 2000 (PC)
Date:	06/07/01 (3173 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: The best racing game ever

Disadvantages: Still not perfect, BAAAAAD music

Need For Speed: Porsche 2000 (Or Porsche Unleashed depending on whereabouts in the world you live) is the fifth game in the series of games that drives us petrol heads wild. This time round though, Electronic Arts went for something a bit different – something that put me off the game for ages. Rather than take a bunch of random cars and random tracks, group the cars according ability and the tracks according to difficulty, chucking a few different kinds of racing in and calling it a game as they have done previously. They instead took you on a fifty year journey through the history of one of the worlds most famous performance marques, Porsche in case you hadn’t worked that bit out. But despite having a bit of a soft spot for German cars I didn’t buy this game immediately, I thought a game consisting entirely of one make of car would be dull. I only bought the game by chance, I saw it for £10 in the HMV Christmas sale and though “yeah, why not”. Good job I did, as the fifth Need for Speed is also the best.


* Graphics *

The only complaint I had about the graphics in Need for Speed 4 (High Stakes or Road Challenge, again depending on whereabouts you live) was that the cars look very showroomy. Everything gleamed so much you could see the track reflecting in the cars! Oh, that and the headlights only appeared to be on when you were looking directly at them. These are all sorted out in Need for Speed Porsche 2000 (NFSP2 from hereon). The cars change appearance is effected by their surroundings but you won’t catch people checking their hair in them, also headlights are always visible and simply glow more if they’re pointing straight at you.

But just because nothing else was wrong with the previous game’s graphics doesn’t mean that they can’t be improved though. Should you be travelling slow enough to notice, the environments that you race through in NFSP2 are incredibly detailed.
Charging through the farmland of Normandy people are sitting on their porches in rocking chairs, lush fields roll off into the distance. Failing that you could be skimming bricks in the incredibly detailed old town of Auguvrne, or perhaps you will pull up at the beautiful waterfall just outside the town and admire – or maybe the Roman ruins would be more your thing.

The only complaint I have is with the car interior, while it’s nice that it’s ALL 3D (Dials and all, sometimes you can watch the car speedo from OUTSIDE the car!), the dials aren’t readable like in the other games, where I’d turn off the HUD and just use the car instruments – also nothing lights up when you turn your headlights on. Minor quibbles though, but with a game of this quality that’s all I’m going to find wrong with it!


* Playability *

This is one area where NFSP2 particularly shines over it’s predecessors. You have a choice of four modes of gameplay. Factory Driver, Evolution, Singleplayer and Multiplayer.

Factory driver is large amounts of fun and frustration in equal measures. Basically you go and work for Porsche, taking new cars around the skid pan, testing out four wheel drive systems in the Alps, deflating the ego’s of the other drivers by beating them in races and at one point even filming a Porsche TV commercial! It can get annoying though, when you execute your double 360 spin and slalom in 30.1 secs when you need to do it in 30 secs. However, once you’ve finished Factory Driver that’s it. You have to create a new game character if you want to play it again.

Evolution is my favourite mode, basically it’s career mode. You start off in 1950 with just enough money to by a Porsche 356 and then make money by doing well in various races. You can then start customising your car with the winnings as well as investing them in entry fees for races with bigger winnings.
As you win various races you gain more money and time progresses. Duely new cars and modifications come out which you can purchase and if you wish you can deal on the second hand car market. For me though, the true beauty of this section is modifying cars – you can’t really do it properly in the other modes. Sure you can tweak what you have in Multiplayer mode but Evolution is where you can buy and sell new parts. It’s great when I get a new car tweaked just how I like it, go out and win a race by just throwing the car round in a manner that would put me in a wall were I in an unmodified car.

Singleplayer I don’t tend to play much now, I have sufficient cash in Evolution mode to use it like singleplayer mode. But you get the choice of single race, tournament and knockout. Unlike the other games though, you don’t win anything by completing these game modes. The only way to unlock all the game is to go the distance in Evolution mode.

While multiplayer is a lot of fun, it does seem to be a bit of an afterthought. You can’t add road traffic or computer cars to the race, you can’t watch replays to decide on whose fault all those racing incidents were. All you get is a straight race between you and your 1-7 competitors. How much fun that is of course, is down to the opponent.


* The Cars *

The cars pretty much handle differently. Obviously the 356a 1100cc and the 356a 1200cc aren’t going to be massively different, but if you look at sensibly (Different models) then it’s great. You’ve got the 911 Carrera 2.7 Turbo – a car that requires so much respect it’s possible to loose control in a straight line. There’s the all conquering 2000 911 Turbo which is the car I hold most records with as it handles pretty much perfectly. There’s the various four wheel drive Carrera 4’s whose ability to recover from little mistakes (Never mind romp off into the
distance in the snowy Alps) always amazes me. Final mention though goes to the ludicrous 935 K “Moby Dick”. The 935 is a racing version of a 911 from the 70’s, but the K version was a one off made for Le Mans. Basically it’s two turbos, four gears and huge wings. While it’s not the easiest car to drive, it is one of the fastest and one of the most fun!

The detail of Porsche’s history is bizarrely chequered. The two collaborations with Volkswagen are there (The rather ugly 914 and the 944’s) but the car that won Le Mans for Porsche several times, the 917, is strangely missing – as are quite a few racing porsches. Shame that.

You can download extra cars from the net, as you could from NFS3 onwards but this time round only the official Electronic Arts ones will merge seamlessly into the game – home brew ones have to replace existing cars. It’s a shame as I’ve downloaded some great cars for NFS3+4 but don’t want the hassle of messing about with the original game so I haven’t for NFSP2.


* The Problems *

Well I never said it was perfect! I’ve already bemoaned the car situation (It’s good, but it could be very good!) but there are a few other things. When you race along mirrored tracks (ie, left hand corners become right hand corners) EVERYTHING mirrors. Including speedlimit signs which just looks daft, as well as the stereo image which is just confusing. You hear a car coming up your inside and then suddenly it drives past on the outside.

There are also two very annoying bugs – both on the Normandy track. Due to the fact that I have a GeForce graphics card, I have to turn off lens flare or the game freezes in the latter part of the track. Due to no reason I can figure out, but I have to turn off 3D sound or the game locks at the first corner. And I was so looking forward to using my brand new speakers in this game, sob!

>Oh yeah, almost forgot to mention this because I turned it off months ago – but the music is very, very bad. But then the engine sounds provide all my ears need!


* The Future *

I have to say I’m now quite taken with this marque history idea. In my dream world, Electronic Arts would now go on to do similar games on marques like Ferrari, Chevrolet etc. But, all the games would work together so all the tracks and cars could be shared. Remember the Memory Lane tournament in NFS4 where NFS3’s tracks suddenly arrived in the game? That was great. Unfortunately I don’t think it’s going to happen, the next Need for Speed game is going to be an online game based on American Muscle cars. Yawn…

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