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After the ever so slight disappointment of the last NFS, Carbon (where was the drag racing?), EA Black Box has got some work to do to make this next iteration of its racing franchise stand up against stiff competition from the likes of PGR4, Burnout Paradise and Forza 2. After talking to the developer, however, we’ve got a feeling that it might just surprise a few people.

Worries that EA may be rushing to get ProStreet out the door so soon after Carbon can be dismissed. It has been developed by a core development team, mostly from scratch, since the end of work on Most Wanted, while the rest of the team went off to create Carbon. ProStreet has therefore been in development for some time, and it certainly shows.

Black Box is once again tapping into the shifts in tuner culture, this time from lawless street racing to an all together more organised structure. Don’t worry, NFS hasn’t become all about 40-year-old men preening themselves in the pit lanes of yet another oval track. Oh no, this is still all about balls-to-the-wall racing. With attitude (and none of that dated, Fast and the Furious nonsense).

Gone are the freeroaming cityscapes, gone are the speed-spoiling traffic cops and gone are the neon-tinted night races. In come the all-weekend race meets and wind-tunnel, performance customisation. “What we do have is a lot of real locations on the street side and a lot of licensed tracks,” John Doyle, line producer on NFS ProStreet, told us on a recent visit to the Black Box studios.

“It’s not standard motorsports,” he explains. “This is about a particular attitude, a mix of rock concert, rave and race weekend all in one. The idea is that you’re immersed there as a player; this is where the front end is, this is where you’ll spend most of your time when not racing. You’re there not to run a single event, but to be the best multi-discipline racer in the world.”

The arcade styling of previous Need For Speeds is almost forgotten; what we’re looking at now is street racing grown up. Not strictly a sim, but definitely not a throwaway arcade racer.

Although Black Box was unwilling to divulge any of ProStreet’s multiplayer elements, we reckon John Doyle might have dropped a few hints. “When people show up to these track events, they’re not interested in the traditional rulebooks that have existed around racing before,” he said. “Bring your cars to the track, run against everyone else there, set up a series of rules, make them your rules, do whatever you want on the track, but get out there and race.” Player-created Xbox Live race meets, anyone?

The Autosculpt feature from the last game is very much in evidence in ProStreet’s customisation model, but it has been heavily tweaked to take advantage of the new physics engine. The goal of customisation is to have every change, cosmetic or performance-orientated, to have an effect on the track. This deep tweaking of your car is made accessible through the wind tunnel that gives feedback on every change. This version of NFS also marks the first time we’re allowed to customise the BMWs in the game. And crash them...

The new physics engine is really the building block for the entire game. One whole team from the studio spent over a year perfecting the engine, making sure the player feels the raw power of the car, that there’s a heightened sense of speed and yet not overly punishing. The resulting engine allows the cars to react the way they should, damage to be created procedurally in real time, and the player to soil themselves. Says Doyle: “It’s more realistic and authentic than you’ve seen a Need For Speed game in a long time. Probably ever.”

The race weekends are the front end of the game, where you’ll spend your time tuning your cars to get the most out of them for each discipline. There are the typical NFS street races, drag and drift races and the new grip, or track, races. Each type will require a different setup to get the most out of your car, but to make things easier you’ll be able to download other people’s setups thanks to the blueprint system. This allows you to save and upload particular setups or swap with other players.

As if all of this wasn’t enough, Black Box has also confirmed that the drag racing – criminally absent from last year’s Carbon – will indeed make its white-knuckled return in ProStreet, only now the consequences for overtaking too recklessly will be far more deadly thanks to the new damage model that will leave your car primed for the scrap heap in the blink of an eye. The damage system factors in things like speed, individual car parts and environmental obstructions when calculating the crashes, and the damage is also persistent, meaning that you carry paint scrapes and fender dents like badges of honour throughout your racing career.

There’s plenty more to come, and we’ll keep you up-to-date as news unfolds and code is released.