Dom Robinson reviews

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THQ

Price: £39.99 Players: 1-online Widescreen: No 60Hz: No Dolby Digital 5.1 sound: Yes Xbox Live-enabled: Live Juiced has been a long time coming, but was it worth the wait? The game opens with a very impressive CGI intro before the menu kicks in and you get to see the graphics that'll be more reflective of the actual gameplay. There are several different ways to play here. First up is the Arcade mode, which is simply explained. All you need to do is complete most of the races and/or sprints in each of the eleven Arcade series (around five tracks apiece) before unlocking the next. As you do this, more cars and tracks will also become available in the Custom Race section.

In the Career mode, other drivers will place bets against you to hold a race with them. Take the wager and get in your car. Win the race and then go on to buy more cars and customise them. Get advice on how to proceed, check your stats, the amount of respect you have from the others, build up a team of crew members and add other races to your mobile phone contact list. Note that you'll get challenged to such races only if you get enough 'Respect' from the other drives previously. No, this is nothing to do with the George Galloway political party, but you'll get no respect if you slam into the other cars at a moment's notice when such a collision could've been avoided. The Custom Race section involves selecting a model from any particular car class, modify it to your heart's content or let the game figure that out for you. Then head off for a Race, Sprint, Solo ride or a 'Showoff' in which you can perform basic stunts that involve staying firmly on the track (see the screenshot below-right for an example of this). And then, there's also Multiplayer - either six people on one Xbox, or go online with Xbox Live and try out all the different race modes there.

In all races in which you partake, you'll be guided as to when you should really brake, slow down, when you take the lead and when your lead is improving. There's a choice between driving automatic and manual cars, but the latter is the only choice of gears available in sprint mode. On the plus side, those are only a brief affair but you do need to practice in order to be successful. In addition, you can also take your career cars and crew online and race them. Juiced is a road already well-travelled. You know what to do when coming up to a corner. Run out of nitrous for that boost? Well, just head along fast enough into it such that you'll smack into an opponent, knocking them for six and pushing yourself off at the right angle to victory. Also, whenever you bump into the scenery, you bounce off it with the effect that it's having the same substance as every other piece, so hard metal pieces in the road to keep you on the right path have the same effect at 100mph as hitting a wooden fence, does it? As for the AI of other cars, if you let them get too far ahead then they'll seem to slow down enough to allow you to catch up, which seems a bit of a cheat.

My first impressions were that the graphics were arcade-perfect and fantastic - which they still are, but they do look nothing better than what we were viewing on Project Gotham Racing 2 back in 2003. As it stands, Juiced was meant to be released around a year ago and under the Acclaim banner, and I also met one of the guys working on the CGI intro at a casting studio in London last October, but Acclaim sadly went under and the game's been in limbo ever since, always promising to be released until now. Soundwise, cars in a game like this make no different a noise than in most other racers. It's all in Dolby Digital 5.1, as with all Xbox games, but its only saving grace in this respect is that it can all get very loud indeed, which at least takes you mind off the fact that what you're hearing, other than the soundtrack you might have added in the background, isn't much to write home about. Overall, Juiced is an enjoyable piece of entertainment for a time, but I'd give this one a rental first as you'd be hard-pushed to make it do much more than any other decent racer you've already played on the Xbox, and it's still more fun to play Midtown Madness 3.

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Review copyright © Dominic Robinson, 2005.