The Fast and the Furious

"It had promise, but failed to reach its true potential"

I really wanted to love this game. I read review after review, hoping someone could give me a reason to play this game, to convince me it was worth my time and money. I found none. Did that stop me? Obviously not. So here I am, writing this review in an attempt to stop some other poor soul from making the same mistake I did.

GRAPHICS
It's actually pretty hard to tell what this game looks like. Everything is so dark in this game, it's hard to separate one thing from another, especially if the car isn't painted a fluorescent hue. When I stopped my car in a well lit tunnel I found out that the general darkness of the game is an obtuse attempt to disguise the horrible, horrible graphics of the game. Jaggies are so abundant that there isn't a straight line on the car. What makes it even worse is that fact that unless you paint your car some unbearably garish color (in true Fast and Furious fashion) you won't be able to see any of the body modifications you've done.

GAMEPLAY
The whole premise of the game revolves around you, an up and coming racer (boy that sounds familiar) trying to knock off all the street racing teams in Tokyo to become the best. There are sixteen teams to challenge, each made up of four or more racers. Unfortunately, you'll be racing on the same stretches of road over and over, since the map is about as big as half of one of the cities in Most Wanted, but with all the kinks and curves straightened out. And that, ladies and gentlemen, ain't big at all.

There are only three types of races in this game, Drift, Grip and Speed. Basically grip is when you drive down a drift course without drifting, in order to cross the finish line first. Speed is exactly what it sounds like. Two cars try to go as fast as possible and whoever gets the highest speed before crossing the finish line wins. Unlike the races from Most Wanted and Carbon, this doesn't involve any talent, as there are no turns on the highways on which the races take place.

Drift is where it's at (what little of it there is to be found, at least). It is exciting and the game teaches you the real life techniques and mechanics of drifting. Unlike the Need for Speed games you won't just hit the emergency brake and rack up thousands of points. This game requires a little skill and practice. When you finally learn how to do it, drifting becomes a somewhat gratifying experience and the sole reason to play this game.

Unfortunately, you'll spend most of your time waiting for things to load. This is particularly irritating because nothing in this game should give the PS2 hardware any problems, but somehow it bogs down every time. Even worse is the fact that the autosave feature is on from the start. This is troublesome as well, because saving in this game takes twice as long as usual (and it usually takes a while).

CARS
It surprised me that all the major automakers were present. Toyota, Subaru, Mitsubishi and even Honda, who usually doesn't lend their cars to street racing games. While the cars in the game are mostly of Japanese origin, you can get some cars that are American made. You can get the American version of some cars, 350Z for instance. You can even pick up some really new high performance cars and old muscle such as the Dodge Charger, SRT4, Dodge Viper and Corvette ZO6. Pretty much any car related to the tuner scene is present.

CUSTOMIZATION
Aside from the drifting, this is the other surprise of the game. It's awesome. Unlike in other street racing games, where you get some crazy kits and body pieces the developers have made themselves, here you get REAL parts from REAL manufacturers, which is wonderful. Included in the manufacturer line-up are Veilside, which means you can recreate the orange wide body RX7 from Tokyo Drift and the numerous 350Z's, as well as Top Secret.

Unfortunately the when you get to the paint and vinyl part of the process the game once again becomes an exercise in mediocrity. Basically what you get is a series of primitives and the rest is just a bunch of weird designs that look like crap. Plus most of them are black, so you can't even see them on your car, due to the lighting problem mentioned earlier. That's not to say there aren't a lot of vinyls to choose from, it's that none of them are any good.

THE VERDICT
Like I said before, I really want to like this game. It had so much potential, but the developer couldn't deliver. Granted they made some great strides that I wish other street racing games would incorporate, namely the realistic drifting techniques and real world parts manufacturers, but everything else fell far short. Really, it isn't a game you should even consider renting except under one condition, and that being this; if you have a car and want to see what a certain kit looks like. Other than that, you should stay away. If you still aren't convinced, I strongly advise renting it. On the sole fact that the drifting is good and the real body kits I give it a 5.

HIGHS
- Extensive car list
- Great drifting
- Real world body parts

LOWS
- Ugly graphics
- Tiny world
- Long load times
- Non drift races are boring

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 07/31/07, Updated 06/29/08