JSRF: Jet Set Radio Future

"It isn't terrible."

Jet Set Radio Future is a game on the XBOX. It's kind of fun, but has a whole lot of flaws that just plum piss off my powerful self and prevent little old me from giving it a super sexy score.

We'll start with
Gameplay Score: 7/10

In this game you move fast and that makes it more fun than it should be. It isn't too hard to move around, but there are quite a few problems.

Ah hah... The aim of this game is to run around on inline skates completing various nonsensical tasks, mostly tagging over other gangs' ''nasty'' graffiti with your own equally ugly tags, which can be customized through a painful process of painting with the thumb pad. Tagging is the main meat of the game and you accomplish this by picking up spray cans and running past the marks while holding the R trigger, which keeps the game moving at it's fast pace (in Jet Set/Grind Radio on Dreamcast, you had to stop to tag). I really wouldn't hate doing it as much if the damn camera didn't move every time I start spraying.

Sometimes you'll have to kill a few policemen by tagging their backs after you knock 'em over. The camera's also a pain in the buttocks here because there's a lock on feature to help battle those nasty coppers, but it seems to hurt more than help since you press the ''Center Camera'' trigger to activate it, making it darn near impossible to run from your enemies. That sentence was too long. I should consider revising it, but I won't.

Doing tricks and stuff is more difficult than it should be. To do a handstand on a half-pipe, you'll need to hold the ''X'' button while running up it. When trying to get some air from the half pipe, you press the jump button, which is not the X button. Somehow the game confuses the two every once in a while. The fact that the camera is a bastard when jumping around doesn't help, either. And did someone say platform-jumping on inline skates? YEEHAAAW!

Grinding rails sucks too. It's practically impossible to jump off of a rail without falling an incredible distance. After you do, you'll have to climb all the way back up--something that happens quite a bit. If you start grinding in the wrong direction you're pretty much screwed.

Each character has his/her own stats, and some characters are just plain better than others. For example, one guy has a slightly lower life gauge than the other guy, but three of his other stats are much better and the rest are equal. It don't make no sense, son.

Story Score: crap-on-a-log/10

YO YO YO, What up homies!? The city of Tokyo is bein' mad oppressed by some whack foo' named Gouji Rokkaku, and you need to get yo' soul in gear and paint the town in those funky colors of yours while MURDERING POLICE WITH YOUR DEADLY SPRAY CANS! Under the guidance of DJ Professor K, who resembles the devil (yes, I've met him before), you'll need to put a stop to Rokkaku's evil plans.

Audio/Video Score: 4/10

The sound is HORRIBLE... unless you like hearing the same few terrible songs repeated over and over again (like Crazy Taxi only much worse, if that's possible) while grinding and hearing your character's high-pitched voice chanting ''hup ho ha hey yeah tight cool sweet gnarly bodacious radical word uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu-p!'' Running through crowds of people is fairly annoying, with various screams and accusations of sexual harassment. You can turn off the sound and/or music, so that keeps me from giving it a zero here. ...Grinding..... AUGH!

The graphics, as you probably already know, are done with pretty cel-shading. There's horrible slow down though, especially in your Garage (which isn't even a garage, by the way). Civilians are a whole lot less detailed than your characters, but that's to be expected.

Replayability Score: 8/10

After you're done wandering your way through the main game, you can try to grab all the Graffiti Souls and unlock every character. That takes time, but not enough. When that's done, you can play the various half-assed multiplayer games. Everyone has the same top speed, so racing and ''Tagger's Tag'' (tag each other's back until one of you dies) will take a very long time to finish and I often just lose interest and quit. There's also flag grabbing, which just isn't fun at all (follow the arrow to the flag and grab it before your foe does) and Death Ball.

Death Ball is somewhat interesting. You pick up a ball and run a lap around the course to win, throwing the ball to your teammate if things get ugly. This mini-game's only ever any fun with four fairly competent players and since I have no friends, it's automatically marked ''boring'' by me.

To buy or rent? Rent, I would say.

Despite the fact that you're often left without instructions in the single player mode, it won't take more than a couple days to finish. Getting all the Graffiti Souls can be done in under a week, and the multiplayer mode ain't a whole lot of fun.

Jet Set Radio Future is a fast-paced game with an unruly camera--not a good combination.

Average Score (rounded up): 5/10

Flame me if you want, but I hardly ever post or read messages and I don't remember my e-mail address, so it would be a waste of your time. Stay in school, hombres.

Reviewer's Score: 5/10, Originally Posted: 03/23/02, Updated 03/23/02