Back in April prior to this year’s E3 I was able to attend an event hosted by THQ in order to get an advanced look at some of the games scheduled to be released this year. Of the games arrayed, Juiced had by far the coolest setup. A projector mounted on the roof of one of the “pimped out” rides featured in the game beamed the game’s imagery in front of the windshield and the game’s audio was blasted through the car’s surround sound system. The actual car pedals were rigged up to the game and an XBox racing wheel was bolted on top of the real wheel. The end result was a very slick demo.

At the time I was skeptical, though. Was there any chance to compete with games like Gran Turismo 4 or Forza Motorsport? The answer I got at the event was that it was not meant to compete with those types of games. It was instead, meant to be a cross between simulation and arcade style, and most importantly it was meant to capture the essence of the street racing scene. Not being a street-racing aficionado I can only begin to imagine what it’s really like, but if it’s anything like Juiced then no thanks.

There are very few things actually wrong with this game, but for the most part, it comes off as rather ordinary. The arcade style racing is implemented well, if not extraordinary. The mechanics seem correct (for an arcade style racer) and you feel like you are in control of the car. Drifting is intuitive and not difficult to perform and the use of nitrous gives you that insane burst of speed accompanied by a nice looking blur effect to give you a sense that you’re really booking. The parking brake functions as it should and allows you to do various tricks in the game’s show off mode. The menus for upgrading the parts in your car are pretty easy to understand and you can see a noticeable improvement in your car’s performance with the various upgrades. There’s really nothing new here.

The game touts over fifty cars with thirty aftermarket manufacturers. With over 200 cars in Forza Motorsport and over 600 in Gran Turismo 4, Juiced pales by comparison. The tracks are quite unremarkable and very repetitive, unlike its competitors. You can add manufacturer decals and pick from a selection of decals built into the game, but unlike other racers there is no drawing program or decal editor to fully customize the appearance of your ride. To increase the apparent number of tracks, there are night races, rainy day races and races where you run the track in the opposite direction. But it is glaringly obvious that the number of tracks is lacking. This just further reinforces the point that the game is lacking in overall detail. Even for an arcade style game.

The graphics are by no means GT4 caliber, but the game is not horrible to look at either. The cars have a decent amount of detail and the different kinds of paint jobs you can get are rendered well. But it is still pretty much standard fare for an underground street racing game. The sound effects and voice-overs are decent, but nothing to go completely nuts over. At times, your opponents in the street-racing scene come off as cheesy and you find yourself interrupting the dialog to skip straight to the action, losing the game points in the audio department. The audio tracks rock as they generally do in racing games and add to the intensity of the game, but not so much as to be considered laudable.

So in most ways, this game is just another mediocre underground street-racer. But where Juiced really tanks is in its career mode. It begins like many other career mode racers. You start out with thirty grand and a few low-end cars to choose from. With your starting cash you buy a decent car and soup it up so you can win some races and street credibility. Except that for some reason you have to unlock upgrades before you can purchase them. This by itself may not be all that annoying, but the fact that nitrous is so critical to success and starts out locked means that you have to lose the first couple of races before you can even reasonably compete (and I’d consider reasonable to be a stretch).

The cars are divided into classes based on horsepower. Class 8 for example starts at 100 horsepower and ends at 199. The rules are such that you can only race against cars in the same class. So it’s obvious that you’d want to be at the upper range of the class in order to compete, but in Juiced it’s a necessity. What’s worse is that it’s often not enough. One particular case had me racing a car with 199 HP against a computer component with 151. We both had nitrous, yet when we started the race the computer left me in its tracks. Now it’s understood that horsepower is only one part of the equation that determines actual acceleration, but it’s the only thing that you can obviously customize to improve it. There are ways to customize the body of your car, but they don’t appear in the performance section so I can’t believe they have any real effect on the acceleration of your car.

As a result, there is no accurate way to know before a race that you have a chance to win. No way to hedge your bets against an almost perfect computer opponent. But for someone that likes a challenging game, why am I so up in arms? One word: Economy. The way you progress in the game’s career mode is by making money. Unlike other games, if you mess up you lose money. And it’s a lot of money. In the free-to-enter races you can win between five and six thousand dollars. But whether you win or lose, you can expect to pay more than half that to repair and maintain your car. Since the upgrades after the first level are in the thousands of dollars, you can imagine how long it takes to fully upgrade a particular car (including performance mods, neons, new body kits and snazzy paint jobs).

This ultimately develops into an exercise in frustration. You are broke for the majority of the game trying to scrape up enough money to upgrade your car. If you lack god-like omnipotence in racing games, you may even find yourself slipping backwards. The only way I found to consistently make money was to let a computer controlled team member race in quarter mile sprints. They don’t take a lot of time, they increase your teammate’s skill and they let you exit the race with only minor costs for nitrous refills. It’s not very fun, but it’s the only way I could amass any significant wealth without driving an ice pick into my eye.

You may ask yourself why would anyone put themselves through this much torture. The answer to that question is simple. So that you can put all your hard work and effort on the line by betting hard earned cash or even better your whole car on the outcome of the race. No thanks. The computer opponent is way to good to be considered an even match and online play is frustrating enough without some eight-year old cussing you out and laughing because he just robbed you of your pride and joy wheels.

This game could be fun if you stay away from the whole customize-your-car-then-put-it-all-on-the-line nonsense. Better yet, just stay away from the career mode in general. The only thing worth a damn in this game is the mediocre racing. Unfortunately, there exists a multitude of games that offer equivalent or better racing and a whole lot more. This is one game that is best left on the shelves.