Franchise Focus - Need for Speed : Porsche Unleashed

The time has come to bid farewell (for a short while) to our time on the PS1 with this franchise. Need for Speed : Porsche Unleashed is the last entry on this generation of console, and it's quite the shift from High Stakes.

All the previous modes return, with only one new one added. Everything else suffers very minor tweaks to how they play and what you can do with them. First, the generic Single Player mode still gives you the option to do single races, fully customizing what track you're on, who's in your field, number of laps, etc. Knockout mode returns as well under the same pretense of a tournament of all races, with the racer finishing in last place for each race being eliminated from the tournament. Now, there is also a Quick Knockout mode (while it's listed as it's own mode, I still just consider this a tweak). In Quick Knockout, the same feature applies in a single race. Whoever crosses the finish line last on each lap will be eliminated from the race until there is only one left.

The rest of Porsche Unleashed is broken up into two career-like modes. One called Evolution, and the other called Factory Driver. And both center around the one big and key change that occurs with this game. Every car available to drive as, is a Porsche. 

Evolution focuses on a more tradional styled career. All the cars are broken down into three "Eras" : Classic, Golden, and Modern. Each era comes with it's own series of races, which you need to progress through to unlock the next era, and then the last one. You can purchase a car, put your winnings to either new cars or upgrading your current one. 

Factory Driver brings a little bit of a story mode to the franchise. You enter the role of a nameless driver, applying to work at a Porsche as a test driver for their vehicles, completing tasks, delivering cars, and participating in races. All of your skills will be put to the test in this mode, particularly our stunt driving with crazy spins and slalom courses for you to rip through. This mode is also the only place in the entirety of the game where you'll get to see any sort of police action. 

As usual, there are changes and improvements to the vehicles themselves as well as the handling, and the "leveled" upgrade packages are back as well. While Porsche Unleashed saw a decent amount of changes, they (again this in my opinion) weren't as great of changes as they were last time, but let's break them down and look at them anyways.

Changes

Porsche Only -It's a cool concept, paying tribute to a particular brand of car. However, it might have been more suited for PC's at the time as just an expansion. Or even if there were a series of games where each focused on the lustrious career of a sports car company. Having it as a one and done, though, really makes the game feel limited and, to be honest, a bit boring. I loved every single thing about High Stakes, and then to follow it up with this? Ultimately, I'm on the fence about this decision. I can love and appreciate everything about Porsche, but only being able to choose from their cars lost it's appeal very quickly. So I would have to say that this one doesn't help or hurt the franchise. I do like that the developers were really able to super-focus on everything about the cars and give them some real dedication, but it would have been nice having other options as well.

Limited Police (again) - Once more, the police chases get an extremely minimalistic role in a Need for Speed game. I'm happy it was included at all (looking at you Need for Speed 2) but it left me craving more of it. Combined with the point from above about dropping all other car brands from the game, Porsche Unleashed felt like it lost two of the main things that the franchise was starting to build on : a feature of exotic sports cars from all over the world, and trying to bust out a race while avoiding the po-po. I definitely feel like this change was a hurt to the games.

Story Mode - This...this is definitely the highlight of the game for me, and the one change that was a big help. Nowadays, every game that comes out seems to include some sense of a story. Whether it's a simple racing title, hell even Madden is doing it now. Sometimes it's been a bit overdone and farfetched (looking at you Fight Night Champion), but other times it works, and it fits. Which ends up being a huge benefit because it gives the game more of a sense of purpose, saving the game from just being that one you take out when you have friends over to either play together or pass-and-play. What really makes this stand out too is the fact that it's not just a repackage of another tournament style career. You get to put your actual driving skills to the test, pulling crazy spins and zig-zagging. Yes there are some races as well, but there's more, and it is a lot of fun. 

It may have had some setbacks, but it obviously didn't kill the series as there are a lot more games to cover in Need for Speed. I'd like to think that generally a lot of people felt the same about this game, because I completely had forgotten this one even existed until I went on the hunt for all these games. But, alas, our time on the PS1 now comes to an end, next time we'll be on the PS2, so let's see what a new generation of games can bring!

Up Next : Need for Speed Hot Pursuit 2