Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed Review (no fat)

Game Description

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed is a singular event in the history of the NFS series, an experiment for the people at Electronic Arts. But even for all its promise promise, it was later on abandoned for later and greater things.

But when Electronic Arts moved on from this series it seemed to leave a few of Porsche's features out of the next releases, maybe for more mass appeal, or for whatever reasons. The fact is this game is unique among the series, with a whole pack of distinctive and interesting features.

NFS: Porsche Unleashed Gameplay

The first thing you notice about Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed is it's different physics engine. While it doesn't try to be a perfect simulation of what the real life driving of a Porsche would be like, it doesn't stray too far either. However, it does, at some points sacrifice realism a bit so as not to make the game too hard.

The cars in this game absorb damage, which is both visibly available and affects the performance of your automobile. However this behavior can be tweaked from the option menu to your liking (so you can disable damage altogether if you're an arcade kind of guy or a Carmageddon fan)

Yes, the cars all belong to one manufacturer but that doesn't really take too much away from the game's beauty. There are plenty of models on a chronological scale of Porsche's evolution (about 80 of them to be a bit more precise) and the wonderful thing about this game is how different these cars feel as you're driving them. A newer model will feel better then an older one as you're driving it and it will steer and brake better as well.

There are multiple camera modes available and when you play with a camera view that resides inside the car you can see how the care moves as a whole when you're in a curve. It's where the engine really shows off its qualities as opposed to other games where you feel as if you're standing still and the earth is moving around you.

You can drive in a quick race or go through evolution mode where you get to drive all Porsche models from the 1950s up to date. While this lets you fully appreciate Porsche's evolution and history, it also has a downside: you have to drive through a lot of old models which don't handle that nice until you get to the good stuff.

You can also play in 'factory driver' mode, where you play as a teen driver for Porsche, and are given missions by your boss or teammates ranging from taking a few curves properly to delivering a car to a customer in a very short time frame, without getting any kind of damage. The missions can get a bit tedious but they're often very entertaining and challenging.

NFS: Porsche Unleashed Multiplayer

The game supports networked multiplayer in a LAN with up to 8 players which works flawlessly but it requires a patch to allow for Internet play besides a direct modem connection between two users.

NFS: Porsche Unleashed Graphics

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed benefits from a new graphics engine from its predecessors and that shows. Cars look definitely better, more realistic, and in garage mode you can turn your camera around a car, pop the trunk open or look at the interior of your vehicle.

You can also rotate around the car from a 360 degree angle as you're playing race replays and this looks very impressive. The tracks are nicely done as well and there are a lot of cool effects that this graphics engine supports.

NFS: Porsche Unleashed Sounds

There are two parts to a game's sound and that's ambient sounds and the game's score. While the car sounds are absolutely stunning, and sounds a lot like the real thing, the songs that accompany you through driving are a bit bland and you feel that the music could have actually done more as a stimulant for your driving skills.

Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed 2cent

This is one of the finer racing games to have come out over the years, mostly because of its wonderful engine and because it's extremely customizable. Except for being, maybe a little bit 'slippery' (and rather hard to control) you can't help but feel amazed at how these cars handle…all in all, kudos to the developers behind Need For Speed: Porsche Unleashed.

NFS: Porsche Unleashed Pricing

Porsche Unleashed currently ships for as little as $3.65