Need for Speed: High Stakes

Need for Speed: High Stakes
Developer(s)	EA Canada
Publisher(s)	Electronic Arts
Series	Need for Speed
Platform(s)	PlayStation, Microsoft Windows
Release date(s)	PlayStation EU 1999 NA March 1, 1999 JP June 17, 1999 Microsoft Windows NA September 29, 1999 EU 2000
Genre(s)	Racing
Mode(s)	Single player and multiplayer
Rating(s)	ESRB: E

Need for Speed: High Stakes, released as Need for Speed: Road Challenge in Europe and Brazil and Over Drivin' IV in Japan, is a 1999 racing video game, developed by Electronic Arts Canada and published by Electronic Arts. It is part of the Need for Speed series, once again featuring a host of exotic sport cars and tracks located in Western Europe and North America. It is notable in the Need for Speed franchise for being the first installment to include a damage model and a career mode where the player earns money by winning races and can spend it on more cars, upgrades, or repairs.

Gameplay

As in its predecessor, Need for Speed III: Hot Pursuit, High Stakes retains standard races and police pursuits in game, as well as introducing a new form of tournament (High Stakes), and two new pursuit modes (Getaway and Time Trap). The game also introduces a Career Mode, as described in the subsequent section. The physics are improved compared to those in Hot Pursuit, which included for the first time damage modelling which affects both the appearance and performance of a given vehicle.

Career Mode

Career Mode has a chronological set of tournaments that challenges the player to complete a set of races for trophies to unlock bonus cars and tracks. This incorporates a monetary reward system that allows a player to purchase vehicles, performance upgrades, and repairs with the money they earn by winning tournaments. In addition, most "Tiers" (selection of 1 to 5 individual competitions) require that the player compete against one opponent in a "High Stakes" race, where they bet their current car. There are more tournaments on the PC version, and they are different from the console one - for example, the PS version separates the Career into two separate modes, Tournament and Special Event, with the second being optional.

High Stakes Mode

High Stakes race is a challenge, wherein the winner of the race will obtain the loser's car, while the loser loses his car. On PlayStation it is a separate 2-Player mode, which required 2 memory cards inserted and deleted the loser's car immediately after the race to prevent re-loading. On the PC version, High Stakes races are only found in Career Mode, where most Tiers include at least one High Stakes race mode, where the player bets their car against an opponent with a car of similar performance. The player must own more than one car to participate in a High Stakes race.

Hot Pursuit Mode

A police pursuit in High Stakes. The then newly introduced car damage is evident with slight damage on the player's car and pursuing police vehicle.

Hot Pursuit mode, which was first introduced in the first game, remains in High Stakes. There are three modes in total, two of which were new to the series.

• Classic: Classic mode is essentially similar to the Pursuit mode in Need For Speed 3, which allows the player to race against another opponent in a track filled with police cars, or drive as a police to arrest all the racers in an event.
• Getaway: High Stakes introduces Getaway mode, in which the player must evade the police alone within a set amount of time, or if the player plays as a policeman, they must arrest the speeder in a certain amount of time. If the speeder has not been arrested when the time is up (whether the player is a speeder or a cop), the player has the option to quit to the Race Results menu or to continue play for as long as possible. The PC set amount of time is 2 minutes.
• Time Trap: There is also a new Time Trap mode, in which a player, as the racer, is required to complete a race within a set amount of time; while playing as the police, a player is required to arrest all racers within a similar time limit. In the Play Station version, you have to arrest 10 speeders within a set amount of time. The player there can also call for backup - a feature not available in the PC version, as well as setting up spike strips and road blocks is different from the PC version. In multiplayer Pursuit Mode, the players can either race against the police, become cops themselves or, alternatively, one player can be the cop and the other can be the speeder. Also in the PlayStation version, if the player is the police, his/her car will not be at the starting line behind the speeder, like it is in the PC version, but instead at various hotspots, like the AI police.

Computer A.I.

Pursuit AI and tactics in High Stakes are very much similar to that of Hot Pursuit, with the exception of several improvements. Jersey barriers, hay bales, traffic and flares are added into roadblocks, while a new form of police vehicle, the police helicopter (also a bonus playable car only in the PS version's Test Drive mode, that is unlocked with a cheat code or after 10 speeders are arrested with the Pursuit Diablo SV) is introduced, allowing the police to trace the player's car from the air, using a searchlight at night. The helicopter is, however, unable to detect the player hiding in buildings or tunnels, which do not appear in the PlayStation version. Police vehicles remain relatively diverse, with inherited police cars from Hot Pursuit, as well as several new rides, including Porsche 911, BMW M5 and Chevrolet Caprice-based models of color schemes corresponding to their geographical location. With a command in the PC version, one could even drive any of the said vehicles while "being the cop" in Pursuit Mode. In the console version, if the player is racing in Hot Pursuit Mode in single or duel races, and during the race, the normal police cars are outraced, an AI officer with a supercar will join the chase in an attempt to stop the player.

Police radio chatter is also unique to the country the tracks are set in, with police accents in Scotland and England or Australia (in the Australian version, on the Durham Road track, the cops will still speak with the British accent, despite being set in Australia) distinctively different from each other and to those from the United States or Canada, and can be toggled on/off and replaced by American/Canada police chatter in the track options menu in the PlayStation version. Exceptions to this include police based in non-English-speaking countries, which are substituted by American/Canada police chatter. However, in the PlayStation version, in the track options menu, it can be set to Local Police Mode, which allows European police chatter in German and French.

Damage engine and upgrades

Another innovation is the introduction of damage models. The player's car, those of the opponents, traffic and police vehicles are susceptible to physical and visual damage, ranging from broken taillights, wobbling wheels and a dented bodywork, to performance penalties in the form of damaged suspensions or a battered engine. Such damages are easily inflicted by hitting objects (including signboards), landing too hard, or rolling over, and may hamper their performance and victory in races. Vehicle damage can be toggled on or off in standard modes, but Career mode permanently enables this feature, requiring the player to spend cash on any repairs after completing a race in the tournament. This mode also allows players, for the first time in the franchise, to upgrade cars, although the feature simply consists of switching between three upgrade levels for each car, each differently affecting the performance and look of the vehicle. In the PlayStation version, damage is a bit different in some areas from its PC counterpart. Unlike the PC version, the different damage includes losing spoilers and lightbars on Police Cars, which would automatically turn them into Slicktop units. Also, unlike the PC version, damage is automatically repaired in Tournament and Special Events modes, depending if there is enough money in the player's account after the race.

Race Tracks

The race tracks in Need for Speed: High Stakes are from seven races with three extra ones called "Raceways", they are:

• Landstrasse, Germany
• Route Adonf, France
• Kindiak Park, Canada
• Durham Road, Australia (England in some of the PS1 versions)
• Celtic Ruins, Scotland
• Dolphin Cove, U.S.A
• Snowy Ridge, U.S.A
• Raceway, Italy
• Raceway 2, U.S.A
• Raceway 3, Spain

Music

In High Stakes, instead of the mixture of electronic and rock music genres from Hot Pursuit, only electronic music is available. The interactive music feature, including pursuit music, was also dropped and themed tracks were no longer used (re-introduced again in NFS Most Wanted). Instead, the playlist randomizes racing music on each circuit. In the Sony PlayStation version, a pop-up notification appears in the corner of the screen to signify the beginning of new music track, along with the name of the track and the artist that composed the track that is similar to EA TRAX pop-up in NFS Hot Pursuit 2.

PC version

Official system requirements[1]
Minimum Recommended Windows Operating system Windows 9x/ME/NT/2000 CPU Pentium 200 MHz Pentium 266 MHz Memory 32 MB 64 MB Hard drive space 50 MB of free space 350 MB of free space Graphics hardware 2 MB VRAM 8 MB VRAM Sound hardware 100% DirectX 6.1+ 100% DirectX 6.1+ Network Internet Option available.

Incompatibilities

High Stakes installs successfully onto Windows XP, but fails to run on some XP installations, displaying the message Not a valid Win32 application, or something similar. But due to its popularity with the Need For Speed fans, many unofficial patches have been produced to not only make it work successfully on XP, but also to increase the maximum poly count on cars in the game (the original game crashed in car selection menu if the vehicle had more than 5000 polygons due to mirrored floor and the patch removes the mirror effect; also even with fixed menus, the game can crash during loading or even when the race is in progress, if high-polygon cars are used; this does not apply to the cars present in the game and with official add-ons), generally improve the graphics and to fix some errors, such as not saving options and constantly appearing only 1Mb free warning.

EA released official 4.50 "Internet Beta Test Patch", that enables the game to run on XP without any errors, albeit the high poly patches are still needed in order to be able to play with some detailed fan-made cars. Also, the patch does not update the 3D Setup, so the game cannot recognise most videocards and sometimes is lagging. This can be helped with replacement of d3da.dll by the more modern version, notably by the one from the next NFS game, known as Porsche Unleashed in the U.S. The game will still not recognise more videocards that it had though, unless the fan update of 3D Setup is installed. Such an update is available in the form of an archive named spotpatch.zip.

Note, that in the version of the game before 4.50 it is impossible to add new cars, even the official EA updates.

It is possible, though unofficially, to play the game under Vista using a tutorial on NFScars made by "LukeSkillz", and videos on Youtube have also shown that the game is compatible on Windows 7.

Player-made downloads

There are many downloads for High Stakes made by players, such as cars, tracks and utilities. These come in large quantities and are available on many websites such as NFScars. This has greatly added to the replay value of the game, as many modders have created current cars. For example, players can download cars such as the Bugatti Veyron, Ferrari Enzo, Pagani Zonda, Porsche Carrera GT, and Saleen S7, even though these cars were built years after the game was made. A new mode to High Stakes is also currently being produced called GT-Mod, although no final release date has been shown. Another new mode to High Stakes in the works is known as LM-Mod (Le Mans Mod, named after the famous 24 Hours race). This mod will have famous circuits from around the world in place of the EA tracks and will replace the EA vehicles with famous Prototype and GT sportscars. Another mod, now released is the FM mod, replacing the standard cars and tracks with more graphically updated equivalents. There are a total of 48 cars, as many as High Stakes allows. The FM Mod can be downloaded at fmhsmod.wordpress.com, and is currently at version 3.5 with 3.6 in progress.

Online Gameplay

In 1998, Electronic Arts developed a beta version of an online gameplay server called Electonic Arts Online Racing for Need for Speed 4. Despite numerous problems requiring unending patience on the part of the players, the Online version of this game developed a loyal fanbase. When Electronic Arts took down this beta server, as well as the online server for Need for Speed 5, Porsche Unleashed, in October 2003, several of the fans of these games united to create their own online system to support the two games. The IPLounge program, coupled with the High Stakes Online Scoring System (HOSS), has been serving a small diehard community of fans of racing High Stakes online since October 2004. Today it is still a popular online server.

Expansion Pack

The post-EAOR online racing community has put together and refined an unofficial Expansion Pack (EP) that may be used online, and activated/deactivated via an external mixer program (also included within the EP). The EP cars include several user made cars, all of the 'official' EA addon cars, and all cars that appear in various international versions of the game. The tracks included in the EP include all but two NFS2SE conversions (which will be included in the next version), several TNFS conversions, and several user-made tracks. The EP also includes all the patches necessary to get the game up and running from a fresh install on Windows XP, as well as some Vista support and the IPLounge client.

References

1. ^ "Need For Speed: High Stakes for Windows". Electronic Arts. http://www.gamespot.com/pc/driving/needforspeedhighstakes/tech_info.html. Retrieved 2010-01-31. 

External links

• Need for Speed: High Stakes at MobyGames
• High Stakes Guide to Online Racing