Series Review: Juiced

Game: Juiced
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Juice Games
Release Date: 13th June 2005

Juiced was the first game I chose with my brand new PS2 slimline back in 2005. Having seen many adverts for the game in the adverts breaks of 'Pimp My Ride' on MTV, I was convinced that this was the ultimate racing/tuning game, and that I had to own it. I've played through the beginning of career mode in the game many times in the past 10 years, and feel as if I know the game inside out, but I've never bothered to complete it fully.

In addition to Career Mode, there's an Arcade Mode which challenges players to complete racing series, but in essence offers a cross-section of play from Career Mode with randomized cars and opponents on gradually harder tracks. Career mode is based on gaining respect from each of 8 gang leaders, in order to be able to host racing events on their 'turf'.

Players compete in races organised by other gangs, or can host their own races and earn money in order to buy new cars and parts. Each gang is impressed by a different aspect of racing such as the player's performance, car collection, or betting. The more respect a player earns from a gang, the more they can interact with the gang's leader and their race events. The major respect milestones are attending and participating in regular races, being able to arrange pink slip races, and finally hosting races on that gang's turf.

Respect builds fairly quickly for the gangs which are impressed by the player's racing, but for those who want to see a large amount of betting/pink slip racing, it'd take an awful lot of each to reach a high level of respect (an estimated 25 pink slip races alone to host on that particular gang's turf). There's no real end to career mode, as players aim to get 1500 respect from each gang, but can continue indefinitely after this point.

Racing itself can be pretty fun; there's a wide variety of cars available in the game all of which can be customised in a decent amount of ways. Cars are arranged into classes with Class 8 being the least powerful, and Class 1 being the most. Races are contested within classes and as such, players end up developing a rather substantial collection of cars considering there are also team races which require 3 cars of a single class; to be completed prepared that's 24 fully tuned cars required.

The handling feels arcade-like and there's plenty of room for drifting techniques within gameplay. More powerful cars are far harder to drive, and this makes later races in career mode fairly irritating as the AI also struggles to control their vehicle and can ruin races by simply bumping the back end of the player's car. Having said this, each car seems to have an individual way of handling and there's a good sense of speed overall.

Car customisation is a large part of the game, and there's a good range of visual upgrades that can be applied. Each car has a choice of 3 different front and rear bumpers as well as spoilers, window tinting, under-car lights and metallic/pearlescent paintjobs. As for performance parts, these must be unlocked by racing the car that you want to unlock parts for and finishing in a good position. Completely unlocking the upgrades for each car should take about 6-8 race wins in total, but tuning a car too much can result in it moving up a class, and being ineligible for some races.

Another concept in the game is crew racing; as players make their way through career mode they'll receive offers from strangers to join the crew and race alongside or for the player. At first these drivers are unskilled and easily ruffled, but they gain experience with each race entered and are fairly easy to train into unstoppable machines for AI beating, especially in the high BHP Class 4 to 1 races.

Graphically, Juiced looks great for the era it came out it; I was particularly impressed with the lighting effects and general atmosphere of the game's tracks. There's nothing too special about the car visuals or other details, though they resemble their real life counterparts pretty well. Musically the game features a selection of fitting music for racing, most of which made its way onto other games of the time also.

Overall the game suffers from having a rather broken system of progression in its main mode. The respect system is easily exploited in the case of some gangs, and others demand winning several types of the same race to gain enough respect to be able to attend any races. Before I played Need For Speed Carbon, I was under the impression that Juiced offered a good range of visual customisation, but just 3 bodykit options aren't enough. Besides this it's a pretty average racer with little that's unique to set it apart from the crowd.

Rating: 63/100
Grade: C

Game: Juiced: Eliminator
Console: Sony Playstation Portable
Developer: Juice Games
Release Date: 28th June 2006

Juiced Eliminator can easily be described as a watered down handheld port of the PS2 original. It features 8 new gangs, all new tracks and a couple of new cars but this doesn't fix any of the issues with progression through the game, limited customisation options or the decidedly average racing. If I was being generous I could say that the PSP version has a lot of similarities to the original game, but it's the parts that are missing and that have been changed that impact most on the experience.

Firstly racing feels a lot less fun; the powerslide-based arcade handling is gone, and replaced with chronic understeer for almost every car. The AI is at about the same level of difficulty, but players are forced to bet with other gang leaders, which improves the performance of whoever you've bet with, making it harder to win. Crew Racing now only entails setting your crew's intensity level before a race; meaning that they either race too hard and spin out or don't try at all.

Graphically the game looks a lot worse; cars and textures have much less detail and many of the circuits just aren't as fun to drive around. There's a more limited amount of visual upgrades for each car, and on the whole there seems to be a lack of effort to make things look good. Musically there's an assortment of licensed tracks, which are different from the original game but work in much the same way.

Overall Juiced Eliminator shares many features with the original game and there's no real need to play it, if you own a copy of Juiced. It's definitely not the worst thing they could have done to the franchise, but the only real addition to the game is eliminator races, which have been a thing in Need For Speed for as long as I can remember. Perhaps a different experience for handheld users would have made more sense than essentially re-releasing the console game with atrocious load times.

Rating: 47/100
Grade: D

Game: Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights
Console: Sony Playstation 2
Developer: Juice Games
Release Date: 17th September 2007

Juiced 2 is a fairly different game to its predecessors, abandoning the respect system in favour of a league system based around fulfilling various conditions to move upwards through the various leagues. Once players have completed the inital race and bet tutorial (similar to the first race in Juiced), they're asked to pick a car and can then upgrade it, both in terms of performance and visuals. Performance upgrades are unlocked via "challenges" which resemble the crew challenges from the original game, which previously had little purpose besides gaining respect.

Each league consists of a number of races, in which various targets must be met. Initially these targets include incredibly easy things such as "Compete in a drift race" and "Finish in the top 3" but as time wears on, they become harder to achieve. In a lot of ways it's similar to the respect system in that it forces players to concentrate on every aspect of the game at some point, but it's a definite improvement.

Another new concept to the series is that of "Driver DNA" which evolves as players continue to race. With each overtake, use of nitrous, and corner the player's stats improve though I'm not sure in what way this helps, as you're allowed to drive well from the beginning, despite having no record of Driver DNA. At most it helps players to compare themselves to the AI, which tend to be pretty easy to beat in most if not all early races, and some of the later ones. Drift racing is a new addition also, replacing showoff events, and working similarly to the Drift mode in Need For Speed games.

The racing itself is pretty average; players gain nitrous by powersliding around corners so much of the game is spent attempting to powerslide around the game's tighter corners rather than actually taking a sensible racing line. Most of the circuits are built with this in mind, and although the cars handle a little differently to eachother, it's not quite as varied as in the original. Ultimately this is the most disappointing aspect of the game, as it makes the entire experience decidedly average.

Graphically the game is pretty poor, although some effort has been made with the cars and amount of decal options. Perhaps more effort was put into the 7th generation console versions, but on PS2, a lot of the textures and locations are sloppily put together and the constant motion blur effect is distracting. Musically the game features a large range of licensed music, with some good tracks nestled in there somewhere.

Overall Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights fails to continue the legacy of Juiced's concept and feel, but also fails to establish a new and original concept outside of trying to be like a Need For Speed game. By 2007 most racing games featured free roaming in their career mode with races dotted around a map, rather than a menu based progression, and Juiced 2 made me remember why we abandoned the old way. It's not awful but I'd recommend just doing yourself a favour and popping in Need for Speed: Carbon.

Rating: 60/100
Grade: D