SimHQ.com - Motorsports Zone - Feature: Wheel Bad Driving

Shortly after I got the Saitek wheel, I walked into the Waco, Texas Circuit City and purchased EA’s World of Need For Speed. It came with four titles, NFS: Underground, NFS: Hot Pursuit 2, NFS: Porsche Unleashed, and NFS: High Stakes for the rock-bottom price of $19.99, a bargain for the new computer racer. High Stakes won’t be featured as it only ran on my legacy machine and it wasn’t all that impressive to begin with, but the other three deserve mention.

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Gameplay

Unleashed features most of the House of Porsche’s creations and for something so cheap (it was once given away in cereal boxes), this title can nearly claim the mantle of ‘simulation’ because of the wealth of features and sheer amount of gameplay.

Unleashed has what could be best described as ‘campaign’ modes, two of them, in fact. One is Factory Driver, which puts you in the shoes of a prospective test driver for Porsche. You are given a series of ‘missions’, like time trials and skidpad exercises, and all in ‘stock’ cars with no performance tweaks. These can be quite difficult to complete. Another campaign that was even more fun was the Evolution mode. You start with the very first 356s that Porsche designed and work your way through the decades all the way to the (then newest) 2000 911 Turbo, and then race these vehicles to your heart’s content.

But, it gets better. In Evolution mode, you purchase new or used vehicles and you can take your earnings to either purchase performance upgrades like exhaust systems, lightened flywheels, slicks, and more. You also learn to get really good at driving because like those really expensive antique shops your wife drags you into, you break it, you buy it. Mess up your car and you’ll pay a repair bill. It gets really fun when you make enough money to start buying all of the wrecked-out cars you can afford, fixing them up and selling them for a profit. I actually ended up spending more time and making more money repairing wrecked out Porsches and selling them than racing.

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Unleashed has more under the hood, including a startlingly real physics engine that does the best job I’ve ever seen of losing traction and sliding through corners. It felt more believable than GTR and GT Legends, at least to me. You cannot alter the physics engine to make the game easier, either. Also included is an in-cockpit-view that doesn’t look all that great (it’s blocky and isn’t all that impressive) but it’s a feature that you wouldn’t expect from such a budget title.

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Graphics

The tracks are a bit bland and drab to look at. As a matter of fact, the whole game’s graphics engine is a bit dated and clunky, but some effects like lens flare are believable. While it can be rendered in Direct3D, it’s not as attractive as recent titles, and while there’s not much variation to the tracks themselves, they can be startlingly accurate. For example, the track of Cote d’Azur is very accurate, right down to what looks like a French supertanker running aground off the coast. There is one track that is a rendering of the Autobahn that is a blast to drive, mostly because it’s pouring rain and you have to work even harder to keep the car on the road.

Sound

EA did a great job in at least trying to differentiate between the sound of a four-cylinder engine in a Porsche 356 and the non-turbocharged sound of a 1994 Carrera. Sound effects like tire screeching and scraping body panels were a bit weak, but the engine noise was spot on. While in the cockpit view, the sound from a convertible and a hardtop was audibly different since you’re either in an enclosed space or the top’s down. The sound was muted in an enclosed cockpit while loud as heck in a ragtop. Nice work, I think, and a lot more than you generally expect from such a budget-priced title.

Conclusion

Unleashed comes in at a close second on this list, and only because the graphics are so ugly. If you can get past that (and it’s not that difficult to do), it’s a must-own title for even the veteran racer. If you want something that’s fun but that offers some uncharacteristic nods to realism for a low-priced title, this is the one to buy.

Pros

Very fun, very immersive ‘campaign’ modes
Believable physics
Lots of cars to choose from, nearly every one Porsche made up until six years ago.
Lots of performance tweaks and garage work
Cheap

Cons

Very old graphics engine
Not much variation on tracks
XP causes some buttons to lose their function, but VERY few and far between

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