As you hear the sound of the cops on your tail, you rev your engines to the full. Your car blasts off at breakneck speed and you barely avoid the oncoming traffic. You swerve round a corner, holding onto the wheel for dear life as the sound of the sirens gets nearer, but you're approaching the finish line. Overtaking the lead driver, you steal the victory, claim the bounty and drive away to race another day. This sort of event is a common occurrence in the Need for Speed series, and for the last ten or so games you've almost always had the police on your tail. Need for Speed ProStreet sets out to rewrite the franchise's rules - but is this a change for the better?

ProStreet's main single player mode comes in the form of the obligatory Career, where you play as Ryan Cooper, a former illegal street racer who dreams of becoming a pro at his favourite sport. He isn't the most charismatic of avatars and he always wears his helmet, but this doesn't affect the game. The main problem with having a single playable character is that his is the only name you hear throughout the game, something that becomes so annoying that you might want to stop playing altogether. The setting is a complete departure, taking place in the confines of a series of racing stadiums. There's no cruising the city streets in your pimped up ride, no causing mayhem on the roads and no getting chased by the cops - it's a huge change for the series and all the more confusing given the very misleading title of 'ProStreet'. The story is as minimal as it can be, providing just enough reason for the races that are taking place.

You begin your career at the start of a race day and you're thrown straight into a competition that can take a while to complete. You need to dominate the day to earn a car and race your way into the real matches. This sets you up for an overly long journey where you must win race days, each day consisting of up to five different events that all require specialised vehicles. The events that you compete in range from Time Trials and Sector Shootouts to simple Grip races around the track. Add Drag and Drift races into the equation and there's a nice variety of events. Despite this however, each of the event types gets old very quickly. The Drag races, for example, force you to perform a tyre heating minigame before every race - and when these can take up to one third of your entire race time they quickly become repetitive. The actual Drag part of these races doesn't do the game any favours either, with you doing the same thing every single time you take part - you might not think this is a big deal, but I'm pretty confident that everyone will find doing this three times in a row a nightmare to handle.

Most of the other events feel very similar to each other, due to them taking place on what seems like the same courses. The time trial feels like an easy version of the real races, where you can win by performing badly in the first lap, giving you the whole course to race on. The sector shootouts are even worse and the fact that the game barely explains what to do ruins your chances of success. The normal races can be fun though, giving you the chance to actually enjoy a plain old-fashion race. The only race type that stands out are the Drift races, taking place on unique tracks that are designed for you to skid around at high speeds. These are massively enjoyable and a breath of fresh air compared to the rest of the events on offer - it's just a shame that you have to get quite far into the game to unlock them, by which time you're already sick of the other disciplines.

The way these events are presented only adds to their repetitive nature, with race days being the only way you can access races. This means that to get a prize, and progress in the game, you have to complete all of the events in the race day. Points are earned when you complete a race, with a first place win giving you the maximum amount of points. With some days making you earn the maximum amount of points to win them, you will find yourself repeating the same events over and over again, which makes the game hugely repetitive.

This is a real shame, as the racing itself feels pretty good. The controls are as you'd expect for a racer and you'll feel right at home with them straight away. For the eleventh game in a driving franchise, ProStreet does a decent job of retaining the feel of the previous games. Your car speeds along nicely and you feel in control of it at all times; the handling isn't too twitchy and it feels great as you cruise down to the finish line, hoping that you don't crash into a wall on the way. If you do - and you probably will quite a bit due to the extreme high speeds - your car suffers from real-time damage. This can ruin your chances of finishing the race and costs you dearly when it comes to making the necessary repairs with the cash you've earned from racing, or by using repair markers. This makes you think before you hurtle into a brick wall at 200 mph.

People who enjoy the more 'hardcore' racing titles love a bit of customisation and in this respect ProStreet delivers. You can change any aspect of your car to make it perform better, the slightest alteration being the difference between first place and the rest of the pack. But if it all gets a bit much for you then a simple press of a button can upgrade one section of your ride. Customising your ride does make a difference to performance, but it doesn't remedy the problem or repetition that plagues the career mode.

With 'Street' in the title, you're probably expecting some 'urban' style menus. The game delivers on this too much, to the point that some screens are illegible. The main career mode menu falls victim to this, becoming disorientating with its outrageously over the top graffiti style selections. The videos are even worse, looking like a bad advert on drugs that tries to appeal to teenagers; making you sick while watching the screen shake around violently probably wasn't what the developers had in mind, but that's what has happened. Can't we just pick from a normal menu? You can in the race days, where you're presented with one dull picture of a car and a basic scrolling menu.

This would be bearable if only you didn't have to hear the most annoying part of the entire experience; the commentator will drive you crazy. He seems to have an obsession with your name, making one clichéd remark after another. You will hate this guy by the end and will blank out everything that he says. Played during the other maddening aspect of the game, the loading screens, he becomes your worst enemy and your bitter rival all rolled into one! Speaking of loading, ProStreet takes too long to do anything, with an eight second wait to start races and an even longer one to get back after them. You can't start to enjoy the races until you sit through a commentator speech that covers up the terrible loading. Some light comes in the form of the later voiceovers, but it's too little too late.

The graphics and sound in ProStreet are decent but they're not much of a step up from previous NFS titles. The PS2 suffers in both of these areas, especially as the next-gen versions all look nice and glossy. The cars sound fine and the soundtrack is standard EA fare, mixing urban and rock songs once again. The game doesn't disappoint in these areas, but it's hard not to crave the HD versions and even if the graphics are good enough, the locations are bland and desolate. Taking the game out of the streets and onto the racetrack gives a 'beige' feel; the only thing that keeps the environments even vaguely interesting are the adverts plastered everywhere. It's like EA got enough advertisement cash from companies that they didn't have to spend a penny on the game, there's that many! Even so, it doesn't affect the gameplay and so isn't a major issue.

The one thing that stands out about Need for Speed ProStreet is that it just doesn't feel like Need for Speed. By taking it out of the city and stealing elements from simulation racers, it loses its distinctive identity that fans have loved over the years. It's not a bad game, but it's having something of an identity crisis and the result is a title that just doesn't stand out from the crowd like NFS usually does. Hardened fans of the series will find something to enjoy, with some fun events and great handling, but you can do a lot better on the PS2. The fact that there's no online multiplayer makes this version almost obsolete - the PS3 or Xbox 360 versions are far superior in every way and if you have the option and are dead set on owning ProStreet then they're the ones to go for. Regardless of the system you play it on though, the structure of the Career mode and the repetitive nature of the gameplay results in ProStreet being a big disappointment and hard to recommend when there are so many better racers out there.

Reviewed by Sam Atkins for AceGamez (All Rights Reserved).