A clumsy PS2 port?
I’d like to say that the extra time Juiced has been in development has obviously been spent on tweaking things here and there to give a brilliantly polished game, but as you have already read, that’s not quite the case and the same can be said of the graphics. Being generous, you could say that the visuals are acceptable but not really much more than that. Hold Juiced up next to Need For Speed: Underground 2 and Juiced looks more like a PS2 game running on a PS2 than something running on a PC. Sure, it has all the bells and whistles such as speed blurring for when you hit your nitrous and reflections mirrored on the car and all that, but compared to NFS:U2, Juiced is the poor imitator rather than a competent rendition of racing game.
For some reason everything just looks so, well, grainy, even at high resolution… NFS:U2 has a far more polished, smoother look. Even Juiced’s static opening screens have jaggies all over them… I know this is a PS2 port, and there’s nothing wrong with that… Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas is a PS2 port and suffers nothing for it… Juiced just looks and feels like a sloppy PS2 port with little if any attention given to the PC’s greater processing and graphical power and Juiced suffers for that.
The biggest problem is the impression of speed you get from the driving. In NFS:U2, a race, even viewed from above and behind the car had that essential thrill of stupidly fast speeds, especially when you were nearing the car’s top whack on a sloping bend with oncoming traffic… the screen shakes, things are starting to blur… it was like riding a greasy rocket on steroids. Though Juiced uses the same tricks as NFS:U2, it just doesn’t pull them of as well. If anything, Juiced might have been better off not bothering with the graphical trickery and just concentrated on getting the basics right. The backgrounds look grainy and almost comparable to a PSP screen blown up to monitor size. Now throw in Juiced’s versions of visual effects and you get something that feels like a myopic bike ride down a shallow hill.
Strangely enough, the audio fares a lot better than the graphics do. I found the sound effects in NFS:U2 to be too muted for my liking, as if you were listening to everything through a couple of layers of foam. I’m pleased to say that Juiced has got the sounds just right, though the music/sound effect balance has to be fiddled with as the music can drown all else out. Turn the music off and you take away a large part of what gives the races their edge. But you are rewarded with some quality effects with engines giving off a satisfying throaty rumble building up to rasping scream at high revs. Similarly, locking up your wheels turning into a corner brings out a nice squeal as you lay some expensive rubber down on the road. But as good as the sounds are, they’re not enough to rescue the rest of the game.