Review by: Bob Mandel
Published: July 19, 1999

In the long-running Need for Speed series from Electronic Arts, 1998 was a banner year. Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit received wonderful reviews from the gaming press and sold very well. Here at The Adrenaline Vault, I gave it a Reviewer’s Choice award and it was named the best racing title of the year. The police chase mode was so well implemented that, when combined with the excellent graphics and production values, pretty much everyone loved the product. Even with the unprecedented number of racing releases last year, Hot Pursuit was firmly at the top of the heap.

The dilemma of what to do next when a game in a series achieves this level of success is not an easy one to resolve. Many racing fans have been waiting with baited breath to see whether Need for Speed: High Stakes, this year’s installment, would top its hit predecessor. Now that it’s out, I can say EA decided to do more of what they did in the days of “Special Edition” releases a few years back: they went for a release with small improvements in every area, but no revolutionary features. To this, some customers will respond with a positive “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” feeling, while others will have a “Been there, done that” negative response. I myself am far closer to the second of these two attitudes.

The career mode is new in High Stakes and is the key to understanding the second half of the title. You begin with $20,000 in your pocket and try to win races to earn cash prizes; you then use your earnings to customize your car, buy new vehicles or pay for damage. The high stakes component here is, if you lose the race, you lose your car. For this reason, you may only enter the intense competition if you own two cars. The option of earning money through winning races to upgrade your vehicle may be new to this series, but it has been done just as well many times before in other offerings. Furthermore, the manner in which this mode is implemented makes it very likely that you will have to replay tournaments over and over again to earn enough to repair and upgrade or replace your vehicle.

It is great that the cars now show polygonal damage after collisions with other competitors or environmental objects, affecting their appearance and performance in body, engine, steering and suspension. But the physical portrayal of major damage is not particularly realistic. (Having just been in a major car accident myself, believe me, I know). What is nicely implemented is the ancillary cosmetic damage, such as broken headlights and smashed bumpers. That said, I still feel Sierra’s Viper Racing has the best damage model, in terms of both its visual appearance and its impact on vehicle performance, of any racing title I have played.