Have a bad circuit, and you may be scraping together the funds to fix that broken bumper and those squeaking brakes while your cohorts upgrade to the beautiful Mercedes CLK-GTR, or the Lamborghini Diablo SV.Ĭompetitions in career mode are broken up into three different flavors: Tournament, Knockout, and High Stakes. Take a first place trophy, and maybe you can ditch that BMW Z3 for a 911 Turbo. You may not have to take first place to move on to the next circuit, but you'll certainly be feeling the pain for not being the best. Instead of simple winning races to get the fastest times, career mode focuses on winning cash and prizes to become the best racer in the world. The biggest change is the new career mode option, the main focus of High Stakes. This is certainly not a step down from NFS III, but at times it's hard to differentiate between the two, despite some appealing new additions to the formula. Need for Speed has an unfortunate EA curse - it's pretty, it's slick, but it's nothing new. Get the shiny beast on the freeway though, and you'll find that though it runs nice, it feels a lot more like a station wagon than a sports coupe. "We're talking more cars than ever - that's a great dollar value! Nineteen tracks standard! Now tell me, where can you beat that?" "This year's model has fantastic new features that make it a must have for any driver," he'd make sure to add as he slipped you behind the driver's seat. "Isn't it pretty?" would say the first salesman to sniff you out on the show floor. Plush leather interface, air-conditioned graphics, ample room for extra cars, hidden tracks, and bells and whistles - what's not to love? If software stores were more like car dealers, you would be pretty safe in assuming that Need For Speed: High Stakes would be an easy sell.