The chequered flag!
So what does Juiced offer us that makes it worth buying. The short answer is, sadly, not much. Where Juiced falls down is that THQ have bolted on so much else that you can’t see the race for the extras… or rather, you can’t have a race for the money. Which is the crux of the whole thing. The ability to buy cars, upgrade and mod them using cash you’ve won is not a new idea in racing games by a long way. What is a new idea is making it so damned hard to get any cash together to be able to race at all. It almost feels like Juiced is penalising you for playing by charging you for everything… all the time.
Yes, I know that all other racers make you pay for upgrading your car or doing repairs, but none of them are quite so obsessed about it and they all give you enough winnings to at least make it worth your while playing. Winning $5,500 dollars with a side bet of $1,400 dollars sounds like a lot but take off the $1,500 entry fee, the $947 dollar repair bill and then see that the next level of turbo costs $11,499 and you’ll soon see that getting the funds together is a major pain.
And I haven’t even mentioned the reputation system which dictates if you can attend certain races or not… and if you rub up an opponent the wrong way on the track, you could find yourself excluded from a race that person is holding… so its another one you can’t take part in, even if you have the cash! And suppose you don’t race but just want to place a bet with your limited funds? Well, if you bet too little then you lose more reputation points and end up excluded from even more races!
Juiced has to be the first racer I’ve played where the game mechanics work against you to stop you actually racing! You’ll spend most of your time flicking through the calendar looking for races you can attend and then looking to see if you can actually drive… and even then you have to think carefully about whether you can afford it after the race is over. Where’s the fun in that? It might be worth it if the races were any fun, but with the AI winning nearly every collision, losing you reputation points and costing you in repairs and with car handling that makes my wife’s J plate Rover 214 feel nimble and sporty, I just see no reason to bother with Juiced, especially if you’ve got either of the Need For Speed: Underground games.
If Juiced had been released a year ago perhaps some of it’s features would have been more fun and it would have offered something different from NFS:U2. But what we have here is a game so unbalanced that the very core of the game, the racing, has been obscured by the extras and turned into such a money focused experience that there’s no fun in it. If I wanted to be reminded constantly that I’m broke, I’ve got real life to do that for me.
Pros
Good soundtrack
Good sound effects
Comprehensive range of ‘extras’ other than racing
Cons
Rubbish crew AI
AI cars always win in race rubs
Races missed through lack of cash
Reputation system means you miss races
Cash system means you miss races
Not enough cash rewards for winning
Racing can leave you poorer than never having raced at all
Poor impression of speed
Sluggish car controls
Juiced is about as much fun as a bankruptancy hearing and in many places far too similar to one too.
