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Many of you who are regulars at Electronic Theatre
will have built a relationship with the elusive Juiced long
before its arrival. Having witnessed the work throughout several
trade events, a change in hands at publisher level, PR meetings,
preview code and through a whole host of demo discs, Juiced
has finally arrived in the UK, bringing with it many promises for the
UK racing faithful.
After the title’s ever-increasing spin in development
hell, quite a lot is expected of Juiced. With Acclaim
touting the title as their saving grace (and eventually missing the
mark) THQ have grabbed the licence and ran with it. High-octane
racing, XboxLIVE! mayhem and a totally smooth
approach place Juiced in the league for
“coolest-game-of-the-year”. However, as we’ve seen before,
“cool” doesn’t always mean “good”.
Juiced features the standard Arcade mode as in most
racing games, which sees you racing through a variety of tracks,
proceeding to the next with each successful finish. The two-player
feature on a single system is fun, yet suffers from a little
slow-down and untidy visuals. It’s the Career mode where things
really heat up in Juiced. Having to begin with a relatively
small amount of cash and no vehicles, it’s up to you to work your
way through the calendar, competing in events to win races, money
and earn respect. Every event has conditions, such as specific Car
Classes and entrance fees, however your cars can be tweaked and
tuned in order to boost performance – each “mod” has three
levels of quality available plus a prototype model – and further
cars can be bought and tuned appropriately. Winning races will not
only earn you cash and respect from the AI competition - subsequently allowing you to race for their cars or the right to
host races on their territory - but also encourage additional AI
drivers to join your Crew – giving you the option to relax and
direct the action.
The races handle at a very nice pace – on par with BurnOut
3: Takedown with the exception of some minor frame-rate drops
when swinging round corners at high-speed. The tracks boast a nice
variety as well as the differing race types – Lap,
Point-to-Point, Sprint and Show-Off (pull tricks and drive at
high-speeds to earn some easy respect). With acceleration on the R
Trigger and braking opposing on the L Trigger, the cornering
certainly takes some getting used to and falls in-line with the
squeezing-esque control seen in the under-appreciated Wave Race:
Blue Storm. When utilising your AI Crew Memb ers to race you
have the ability to control their racing aggression level. Not
exactly as extensive as the Racing Director seen in Gran Turismo
4, you can select from low, medium or high with the text
changing from yellow to dark orange as they loose their cool. The
more races you enter your Crew into, the more experience they get
and the better than can cope under pressure – so throughout the
many occasions when you will find yourself with a selection of
fully modded cars, but no money remaining it becomes an inherent
ability to enter a fully-experienced AI member and earn a little
easy cash.
Taking your career onto XboxLIVE! allows you to
compete with human players in the some way as AI opponents –
racing for “Pink Slips” (the ownership of their car), money or
honour. There is little lag evident and finding challengers rarely
seems to be a chore.
Graphically, Juiced offers no less than any of the
competition. The cars shimmer and glisten in the sun and rain and
the backdrops are impressively expansive and well modelled –
putting Need For Speed Underground 2 to shame. The minor of
quibbles would be the damage your cars can endure. The in-race
damage, visually at least, is very limited – with only minor
denting and “wobbly bits” – whilst, upon exiting the race you
may have upwards of £2000 worth of damage!
THQ have managed a resounding “hmmm… it’s OK” with
the soundtrack for Juiced. Drifting between the averagely
pop-indie-esque tunes such as Kasabian through to pop-rock and
pop-dance, there’s little room before Custom Soundtracks become
order of the day. The speech-samples are pitch-perfect and appear
in abundan ce, and the crash effects are pleasing.
Juiced has graced the shelves of retail stores after
much will-it-won’t-it appraisal and has bought with some
high-hopes. Those hoping for the out-and-out Boy-Racer appeal of Need
For Speed Underground 2 maybe a little disappointed, however
those who feel their racing skills are better honed on the Xbox
than the road will not be disappointed. Easy enough for the
beginner to grab yet deep enough to satisfy most of the car
enthusiasts, Juiced has rewarded patience with a playable
offering that may not reach the dizzy heights of BurnOut,
but certainly puts competing Need For Speed and SRS
franchises in their place – at the back of the pack.
 
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