Juiced

"Only partly fufilled it's destiny."

Juiced. Another street racing game out there in the world. The street racing genre has evolved ever since NFS and The Fast and the Furious into a whole line of games, including this one. But, does Juiced compare to other street racing games such as Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition and the Need For Speed: Most Wanted series?

Well, when you start out you are an unknown. You must work your way up to the top of the ranks by tricking out your rides and winning races, thus generating respect for your crew. You start out picking your name, your crew name, your symbol, and your cell phone (this wasn't a needed feature. Who cares about what cell phone you have?). Then, you pick out your car and race. Races are seperated by groups and classes. In order to race, you must get enough respect from the group holding the race (there are 8: Urban Maulerz, A.W.B., The Vixens, The Wild Cats, Omega Tao, Public Chaos, The Lordz, and Legion) in order to race. If you get high enough respect you can race for their cars and even hold events in their turf. Also, there are eight classes determined by horsepower. If you don't have the right class, you ain't racing.

Now, in a race, it is much different from Need For Speed or Midnight Club 3, which was a pleasant surprise to me. The handling of the car isn't "wishy washy". You have to brake for turns, and drifting will GUARANTEED slow your car down to about 25-50mph, depending on how fast you were going and the size of the drift. Also, if you hit someone in a race, you lose respect points, and if you crash, you have to pay for the damages (unless you don't have enough, then they get repaired for nothing). Also, the track is a closed track, so there is no traffic interference. Also, if you don't want to race, you can just watch a race and bet on the drivers, if you want.

There are many different kinds of races, at different stakes. There are circuit races, point-to-point races, and sprint (drag) races. You have to use manual in the sprint races. You can race solo, or race with up to 3 crew members. Also, there are different stakes. You can get into a race for free, or you can pay. The more you pay to enter the race, the higher you take home. Also, you can bet with drivers on the grid. If you just beat the person you bet with you win double what you bet. If you don't want to burn too many days, you can call someone up (if they are on your phone list) and get a race/challenge going. You have to have the right car to do a challenge, and if you succeed, you automatically get 50 respect points from that racer crew. Also, you can race for pinks with that racer group (if you have 600+ respect with that group). If you lose, you lose your car. If you win, you win your opponent's car. Only enter these if you are sure you are going to win. A loss of respect points is good compared to the loss of a car. Also, if you win a pink slip race, your respect with Legion goes up and vice-versa. Also, if a racer is too stressed out (indicated by a red name), they will spin out, often stopping another racer, or more. The races are repetitive, though. It's the same thing over and over. Enter a race, finish it, fix and customize your ride, possibly buy a new ride, repeat.

The car selection in this game is great. This game has only ONE Skyline (Thank God) and a bunch of other cars you wouldn't normally see in other street racing games (such as the new Pontiac Firebird, the VW beetle, The '02 Camaro, The Acura NSX and Integra, old and new, and even Australian cars). Some of the cars are used, and if you buy a damaged one you have to fix it (for about 1.3 grand, usually). However, these cars are a lot cheaper than the new ones, but they sell for less. This game has more concentration toward ricer cars, but there are some nice cars in there (such as the Viper and the Corvette), along with a few pre-70's muscle cars. Some cars you can get for real cheap (such as a damaged Honda CRX for 2,200$). I like the selection, but it's more of a toss for you to like it.

The customization... I have to be nice. It isn't the best. You have a choice of three bumpers, hoods, side skirts, and rear bumpers, and some cars don't offer them at all. The rim selection fails in comparison to Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, but it's okay. You can apply really dark black tints to the windows, but that's about it. You can lower the car 60mm, which is good. Some of the things you can customize are pointless, such as the horn and the radio. The vinyl selection is bad, I mean, you can't even pick your own colors for the vinyls! However, the paint selection is AWESOME. You don't have pre-set colors with a pallette to buy for 500-1,000$, it is offered when you buy the custom paint job. Also, for more money, you can add a metallic/pearlescent (color-changing) paint job, with the same palette. You can also change the rim color, but the selection isn't all that great. You are offered a tuning shop to tell you how to best customize your car to fit the class you want, but it isn't price-modifying so often times you will end up with a 20,000$ performance package when you only have 5,000$. The performace selection is pretty good, and you can choose your brand (some have higher performance than others, bur cost more). There are three levels of performace for everything, including NOS. What is cool is when you add on a performance part, a decal of the logo automatically goes on your car. Pretty sweet, eh?

Your crew. Not much to talk about here. When you gain enough respect, you are assigned a crew member. You get three; Vito, Amber, and Chief. When you go into a race, you can just assign one of them to race for you (if they lose, you still lose respect points). There are three levels; low, medium, and high. When on low, stress is reduced quickly, but you race really slow. On medium, you lose stress slowly and race at a medium speed, and in high you race quickly but gain stress. Don't gain too much stress or you will spin out! Also, you can race in crew races with your crew. In order to raise their skill level, you have to race them.

The graphics for this game are pretty good. Some details can be touched up to make the environment and the cars more realistic, but the graphics for the landscaping is pretty good. The people, though, look like crap. Most of them, anyway. They don't peek my interest at good looking, and the girls are okay-looking. If they touched up the scenery a bit and re-did the faces of the people, then you might get a higher rating.

The sound. Sound effects are good, the ALL ULTIMATE customizable horn is not that ultimate. The car sounds are good, but you either get the bassy american engine note or the Japanese engine note that sounds like a blender. The tires squealing and the crashes sound pretty realistic, though, so that's a plus. The voices are pretty good, although Vito sounds a little... Off. His voice is too high. The soundtrack is okay. My favorite song is Club Foot by Kasabian, but there are some other okay ones on there. I don't like it, though. It's nothing compared to Need For Speed and is completely demolished by the soundtrack in Midnight Club 3: DUB edition [Remix], but you aren't buying the game to dance to it.

OVERALL:

10
-1 for lack of customization
-.4 for graphics touch-ups
-.6 for not-so-good soundtrack
-.3 for not making the idea of crew races more fun
-1 for repetitive races

MY RATING: 6.7
GAMEFAQS RATING: 7

MY OVERVIEW:

A good game. Maybe if they entered in a cruise mode to make it less repetitive, made the customization more vast, touched up the graphics, made the soundtrack better, and inproving the entire idea of crew races, it would be an all popular game. I would say to rent this first to see if it fits your fancy, because I can already tell that this game will not make everyone happy.

TheeMikester, signing out.

Reviewer's Score: 7/10, Originally Posted: 07/14/06