Anti-Climax Boss: Almost all of the Kings (with the exception of Aki Kimura) have a reputation of being much easier to beat than their teammates in the preceding Elite races.
Prior to facing Nate Denver, you have to beat Nitrocide's speed events in Autobahn, Ebisu, and Nevada, with the race at Nevada being infamously difficult due to its tough opponents (one of whom, JP Laurent, is a Boxcut member running a Pagani Zonda F, a very fast supercar capable of easily reaching the 400km/h speed limit when tuned) uneven terrain, and high overall speeds. Then after that, comes Nate Denver... whose 1967 Pontiac GTO (which is specced-up with all Level-4 performance parts, to boot) is, for the lack of a better word, underwhelming.
Ray Krieger's M3 E92 is rather terrible compared to his fellow Grip Runners' cars, and before facing him you have to dominate the Willow Springs G Effect race day, which is filled with technical tracks, and you have to face off against Ray's fellow Grip Runners- Rudy Chen, one of them, uses a Porsche 911 Turbo, which is very fast and grippy, so even the faster GP Circuit events are no joke. Then, you face off against Ray... who is positively pedestarian in his pace in comparison, and in the final race it's very possible to lap him.
Contested Sequel: Some fans weren't keen that the game became a more sim-style game about daytime sanctioned events instead of the arcade-style, illegal street racing-themed four previous games, but other fans were keen on the game due to the full customization being there, along with improved damage modeling.
Ray Krieger's teammate Rudy Chen, the Grip Runners driver with the Porsche 911 Turbo, is rather popular due to being far more difficult to beat than his boss- he is a major headache for players during the Willow Springs G Effect Race, and some players have even stated that they would love for him to be Grip King over Ray. The reason is that Ray is nowhere near as difficult as the story makes him out to be, while Rudy is capable of beating the player if they are not careful.
JP Laurent- the Boxcut driver in the Zonda F- is popular for many of the same reasons that Rudy is.
Genius Bonus: Karol Monroe being the Drag King. A Drag King is the Spear Counterpart of a Drag Queen; that is, a performance artist (usually female) who dresses in masculine clothes and personifies male stereotypes in an exaggerated manner as part of a routine. As a woman who competes in the usually male-centric sport of professional racing, that ends up being an apt monicker for Karol.
Good Bad Bugs: At the beginning of Drift event, that car ahead of you may head straight to an object without steering once. In the next round, that car will be totaled and eliminated from the race.
High-Tier Scrappy: Released as post-launch Downloadable Content, the McLaren F1 is easily the most overpowered car in the entire game. Even bone-stock, it boasts top-class grip and acceleration past the first couple of gears, and can easily reach its 240 MPH top speed on almost any track with at least a quarter-mile long straight. With upgrades, it's capable of remaining planted and stable at a near-constant 250 MPH, which is the game's speed cap for all cars. While the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360 versions made a token attempt at balancing it by setting its price to $1 million in-game cash, the PC version made it, and most of the Booster Pack cars, free from the car lot. Online lobbies were soon dominated by F1s specced in Speed and Grip, while almost every career mode race day could be trivially won by a fleet of these things. Oh, and it's not even properly implemented, as all versions which include the F1 have multiple errors like missing engine sounds.
Low-Tier Letdown: No matter which way you tune or upgrade them, using classic muscle cars for anything aside from Drag racing is setting yourself up for frustration. Boat-like handling, oddly poor acceleration, and generally underwhelming performance would be bad enough, but on Speed Challenges they're some of the bounciest and most unstable cars. If Nevada Highway's races were tough enough, as seen above, muscle cars stand basically no chance at winning. Coincidentally, one of the Street Kings, Nate Denver, drives a '65 Pontiac GTO, with enough upgrades to reach 250 MPH... and basically no stability when turning or handling jumps.
Downplayed with the base game. It had some framerate issues, but it didn't make the game unplayable, in comparison to the complaints its follow-up Undercover received. One example of this is the Tokyo Expressway track, which was released in a near-completion state with missing details and surfaces all over the track, but nonetheless it's fully playable.
Played straight with its Downloadable Content. Many of the cars have unbalanced stats, poor culling (half of their bodies disappear, either with distance or after installing a bodykit), wrong sounds, and in the case of the PC version, a majority were free to buy from the car lot.
Older Than They Think: Prior to ProStreet, High Stakes and Porsche Unleashed where the two games that had mechanical damage and would require in-game cash to repair it. For the latter's cars, fine-tuning already existed to that point.
The PSP version of ProStreet is perhaps the worst offender in the franchise, since it throws out the plot for a generic career system. Ironically, the PSP version of Shift would later get major flak by many fans (especially players who get used to console versions) for recycling ProStreet's plot into a PSP title, claiming that they can easily get tired quickly save for That One Boss.
The official V1.1 patch for the PC version not only capped the framerate to 30 fps, but after online functionality was shut down, players were met with a critical bug wherein the game no longer responds to inputs after finishing a race. In some cases, it got so frequent that it was impossible to even finish the remainder of the race day, potentially making the game Unintentionally Unwinnable. It took the better part of a decade for community mods to finally address these issues.
Spiritual Successor: The Shift sub-series takes many elements from ProStreet, such as cars and tracks (albeit using more realistic driving physics). Several drivers from the game also appear in the first Shift as random opponents.
The Nitrocide: Nevada Highway raceday event, even for the experienced players. The lineup of cars running every race in the said event include the entire Boxcut crew (with one of them running a Pagani Zonda F), two of the hard hitters from Ryo's Apex Glide team (Ivan Tarkovsky in his Evo 9 and Paul Trask in the GT-R R34), and two random street racers with cars that can go up against them on equal grounds (sometimes including a Murcielago LP640. And that's not even counting the highway track itself which is one of, if not the hardest speed course in the entire game: narrow, winding highway roads with frequent patches of cracked asphalt; lots of deceptive jumps; and steep crests to one side or another for most of the track, means that small mistakes can easily One-Hit Kill your ride. In fact, it's not uncommon to be the Sole Survivor on such tracks - because the AI wreck themselves before they can finish!
The Tokyo Expressway Speed Challenges, added post-launch, are potentially even worse than Nevada Highway above. It's the most technical Speed course, with many elevation changes that can send cars airborne even from moderate speeds. Couple this with blind corners that fit better on Grip races, and some devilish Speedtrap placement either just after a jump, or right before tight chicanes, means that racers have their work cut out for them trying to just make it to the finish line in one piece.
The Ebisu Speed Challenge in the PS3, 360, and PC version is litered with several hazardous road objects around the city sector where even a single hit could ruined your car and your opponents too. Thankfully in the PS2 and Wii versions, these objects were completely removed due to hardware limitations.
The Willow Springs G Effect race is no slouch either. The lineup includes Apex Glide's heavy-hitters Ivan Tarkovsky and Paul Trask, Ray Krieger's Grip Runners crewmembers (Rudy Chen- the one driving the 911 Turbo- is infamous for being very difficult to beat), and street racers who have cars that can go toe-to-toe with them. In addition, the race day includes a lot of technical courses which are nerve-wracking to navigate through, while the high-speed GP course events are not much consolation because now the aforementioned cars get to use their full powerband against you.
They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: Some fans weren't keen that the game wasn't an arcade-style racing game centered on illegal street racing like the previous four games and was instead about daytime sanctioned events.
Vindicated by History: When the game first came out, some fans weren't keen that it wasn't an arcade-style racing game with an illegal street racing theme like the previous four games, to the point EA's CEO, while promoting the following game Undercover, stated that the previous release was "not good". However, ProStreet has since gotten a lot of retrospective praise for taking a risk on a drastic departure to the series' formula rather than resting on its laurels. Its visceral sense of speed, event variety and "street art music festival" take on track racing gave the game a lot more character compared to its simcade contemporaries at the time and would end up being a huge influence on later games like Dirt 2, GRID series and Forza Horizon. Even EA themselves appear to have taken back their own self-criticism, as not only would they revert back to simulator-style legal track racing with the Shift sub-series after Undercover proved to be even more divisive than ProStreet, but Aki Kimura, the Drift King, would come back in Payback as a supporting character.
. However, ProStreet has since gotten a lot of retrospective praise for taking a risk on a drastic departure to the series' formula rather than resting on its laurels. Its visceral sense of speed, event variety and "street art music festival" take on track racing gave the game a lot more character compared to its simcade contemporaries at the time and would end up being a huge influence on later games like Dirt 2, GRID series and Forza Horizon. Even EA themselves appear to have taken back their own self-criticism, as not only would they revert back to simulator-style legal track racing with the Shift sub-series after Undercover proved to be even more divisive than ProStreet, but Aki Kimura, the Drift King, would come back in Payback as a supporting character.