Need for Speed Porsche 2000

Herald rating: *****

Electronic Arts

PC

All ages

$99.95

Review: Peter Eley

A Porsche is one of those timeless status symbols - a car that brands its owner as someone who doesn't flip burgers in a fast-food joint, as well as turbocharging the dating and mating stakes.

Most of us can't afford one of these Teutonic totems to male libido, let alone the insurance, but EA's latest incarnation of Need For Speed helps us to imagine what it would be like if we could.

NFS Porsche 2000 is a departure from the pure racing games in earlier versions.

It chronicles the history of the classic marque from the 1950 Coupe Ferdinand 356 to this year's 911 Turbo, and lets you drive more than 80 models from this 50-year span.

NFS games have great car physics, which give about as realistic a ride as you get on a PC monitor, and Porsche 2000 is no exception.

To be fair, there are a lot of very good racing games on the market.

What gives Porsche 2000 the edge in a crowded market is its intense focus on one make of car.

Each of the cars has a long list of technical specs on engines, drive trains, tyres and so on.

You can even join the factory development team, and test drive prototype models.

The cars reflect the technology of the time they were built. The 1950 356 is much harsher, and in many ways more satisfying, to drive than the latest 911.

Note: switch off the annoying soundtrack so you can hear the throaty roar of these fabulous engines.

A new graphics generator gives a high polygon count, which allows impressive detail of the cars' interior and exterior and various driving environments.

There are nine open road courses set in Europe and five purpose-built tracks, which are stunning with all the options cranked up too high.

We had one or two problems with incompatible Voodoo 2 drivers, although that sort of messing around is the bane of running games on a PC.

Once sorted out, Porsche 2000 ran flawlessly, although long screen loading times can be annoying.

Required: Pentium 200, 32Mb Ram, 4Mb 3D card. A Pentium 300 with 64Mb Ram and 16Mb card are recommended.