Juiced

Juiced has traveled a bumpy road. Just as the game was about to be released last fall, Acclaim, its publisher, went under. That left Juiced in limbo until THQ picked it up. Now, after all the wait, Juiced finally sees the light of day, and turns out to be a decent, albeit unexceptional, street racer.

Juiced is fundamentally an arcade-action racer. You get an exciting sense of speed from the game (barring the occasional jerky slowdown) as you roar down straights and slam through corners. Still, you do need to finesse things a bit since the tracks can be tricky, and the A.I. competitors put up a strong fight. The cars also tend to be twitchy and prone to oversteering, requiring a sort of finesse that shouldn't be needed. The damage modeling is almost nonexistent, so you might blow out your nitrous system, but that's about it, other than cosmetic dings.

Like so many racing games these days, Juiced tries to cash in on the hip street racing/tuner car scene, but hits some design potholes. On the one hand, you trick out your cars with fancy decals and neon lighting and battle crews of street racers, trying to earn respect (one of the game's chief forms of currency, alongside cold, hard cash). That's all well and good, but the street tracks in Juiced are all closed-off circuits, not open roads taken over by the racers. Some races take place at purpose-built venues with giant grandstands ... as if it were a Formula 1 race. It's great that Juiced doesn't honor the illegal activities of a lot of real street racers, but at the same time, the game lacks any sense of danger, edginess, or style. The presence of a few characters with dubious accents and affected attitudes doesn't do much to create a vibrant underground racing scene.


Juiced may lack soul, but still offers a good range of race modes. You get an arcade mode, but as with so much of the game, you have to unlock most of the tracks and cars. Race types include multi-lap circuits, point-to-point matches, sprints (multi-heat drag races), and entertaining show-off events, where you perform wild tricks like high-speed, rubber-burning 360s. Along with the arcade mode, you get a custom mode where you set up events using the cars and tracks you've unlocked in the arcade mode. Here you choose the venue, the number of laps, time of day, weather conditions, and so forth. There's also an online multiplayer mode, which is decent enough as far as the racing goes, but marred by a clunky console-style interface. (Unsurprising, considering the game was just released for the PS2 and Xbox as well.)

The meat of the game is found in the career mode. Here you buy and sell cars, modify their performance and looks, enter races (host your own if you want), place bets, and more. There's a lot to do, but many headaches, too. Car upkeep can get very pricy, not to mention race entry fees, buying mods, paying off lost bets, and so on. One short run of bad luck can devastate your bank account, effectively ruining your career. Another problem is that you can't attend many races on the schedule because you don't yet have the needed cars or respect points to enter them. You can still bet on some of these races, but then you have to sit and watch the A.I. drivers compete for the whole race, which is just as boring as it sounds.