Lifestyle racing?
Ok, let’s pop the hood and take a look under Juiced’s bonnet to see what makes it go. (Oh yes, I can keep these car analogies going all day!). What on the surface looks like being a standard street racing game appears to have much more depth than you’d first suspect, as becomes apparent from the opening screens where you choose a driver name and then pick a crew name and then choose a logo and then even choose a mobile phone… There’s so much to choose before even getting near a car you wonder if this is a lifestyle game more than a racer.
Much of this frippery is just that, pure frippery. Yeah, it’s a nice touch to be able to have a logo and a crew name, many other games do it, but a mobile phone? Of course, the more cynical amongst us would question how much Nokia, Sony Erricson and the others paid to have their phones featured, but I’m not like that and wouldn’t dream of suggesting that the only reason they’re in there is to make some cash and advertise products, oh no, not me.
Anyway, once you’ve done all that, the top dog of the game, TK from the Urban Maulerz crew, challenges you to a race. You can have a little bet with him too if you like and then it’s off to the track to thrash it out. This section is very similar to NFS:U2s ‘dream race’ at the beginning where you get a souped up, modded monster to drive for one race to whet your appetite and tease you as to what you can do with your own car. And right here is where you slam head first into one of Juiced’s first problems and it’s called ‘autosave’. Well, the autosave itself isn’t the problem but the inability to re-run a race is… couple THAT with the autosave and what you’ve got is a one way progression through the game where you have to live with all your failures whether you like it or not. You might be wondering why this is a problem, well, read on and find out.