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Juiced, as in life, is all about the car. Style comes
in a close second to speed, and Juiced offers thousands of
real-time modding combinations that empower players to create
their ultimate personality-infused street machines. But it
takes more than a fresh coat of pearlescent paint to earn
respect on the road; it takes the ball bearings to go up against
the trash-talking, nitrous-burning faithful who want to strip
everyone of their cash, cars and pride...
We
received a copy of Juiced to review two days before
it's official UK release date. This was a game I was eagerly
anticipating, but maybe I had built this up a little too much.
I found it to be a poor cousin to the Grand Turismo series
of games - same basic idea, but transported to the streets.
The
game features more than 50 licensed vehicles, including Toyota,
Honda, Nissan, Dodge, Ford, Mazda Mitsubishi, Pontiac, Holden,
Volkswagen, Fiat, Renault, Subaru, Peugeot and Chevrolet;
Hundreds of authentic aftermarket parts from leading manufacturers
such as A'PEXi, AEM, Bridgestone, Ferodo, Konig, Alpine and
HKS that provide players with thousands of personalised vehicle
customisation combinations; Progressive, non-linear gameplay
that enables players to build their characters and cars, and
gain respect and notoriety by winning races and cash; Unique
blending of simulation and the high-octane appeal of arcade-style
racing; Ability to build custom racing crews that work together
as a team to win races; Authentic car physics and damage;
and Online head-to-head play.
I'll
get the good parts out of the way first: To start with the
paint jobs you can give your car are pretty neat - as are
all the add-ons you can attach to make it look the business.
Having
individual racers that you can interact with and bet against
reminded me, ever so slightly, of that old classic (to me
any way) Playstation game Porsche Challenge. The animated
characters range from pretty cool to pretty awful. But they
do add something new to this genre.
It's
also fun to race against drivers that you slowly build up
a relationship with - especially if you have no friends to
play with, or don't want to be bothered with online play.
Betting you can beat one of the other drivers is fun, as is
betting your car against theirs - but be warned! If you go
down this road (no pun intended!) a driver who you could easily
beat in a street race, suddenly seems to pick up the pace
when their car is on the line - and you'll be left on the
starting blocks as they zoom off into the distance.
Now
for the negative points, and there are quite a few: Firstly
all of the roads look identical. It looks like someone has
jazzed up an old '80s arcade racing game's backgrounds. There
is nothing here that makes you go: "Wow!" And it
would have been nice to have had the odd stray car going about
it's business - if this is real street racing, where are all
the other cars - or parking at the side of the road to make
your job harder.
The
handling of the car is one of the worst I've ever seen. The
car floats above the road and handles like a brick. Not only
that, but the other drivers don't seem to be able to see you,
and insist on ramming you and then moaning at you for crashing
into them. And don't even get me started on racing in rainy
conditions - all the other cars drive as though there was
no rain and your car handles as though you are driving through
treacle.
And
the biggest moan of all... it's way too repetitive. In the
Grand Turismo series of games there were huge races
were you had to pit several times in order to complete a level.
In Juiced all of the tracks are very short and look identical.
So you spend your entire time competing in, what feels like,
the same race over and over again.
Doing
a quick trawl on the Internet I discovered that quite a few
US reviews were floating around. After reading them I begun
to wonder whether we had been sent the wrong game. A lot of
the reviews gave 8/10 and applauded the games realistic graphics
and gameplay - something which I couldn't possibly agree with.
Sure
you can have fun customising your car and pushing that nitro
button to burn off your competitors, but at the end of the
day this falls far short in the racing department - which
is a shame. I really wouldn't race out and buy this.
Pete
Boomer
Buy
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£29.99
(Amazon.co.uk)
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£37.99
(MVC.co.uk) |
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£32.99
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All prices correct at time of going to press.
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