Speed and Greed
- June 21, 2004 14:57 PM PST
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With one of the deepest customization modes ever designed, a unique Respect-building system, and wild team-based racing, Juiced may fly by the competition in the street racing field.
Though its origins trace back to Depression-era races along Southern California riverbeds in vintage Fords and Chevies, street racing has really only seeped into the collective mainstream psyche over the past couple of years. Despite incredible racing sequences, Hollywood fare like The Fast and the Furious relegated the culture surrounding street racing to glitzy window dressing. So it has fallen to video games to transmit the thrill of underground racing and the communities built around it to audiences. With the success of Need for Speed Underground, the street racing subgenre has finally caught on with gamers, and now a NFSU sequel, along with Namco?s Street Racing Syndicate, are in the works. The proverbial dice have been thrown.But coming in under the radar, Juiced, the brainchild of newcomer Juice Games, could be the most promising representation of the very dangerous and very illegal sport yet. Featuring licensed cars from over 50 manufacturers, including Honda, Fiat, Nissan, and Mitsubishi, Juiced will hurl young, hungry speed geeks in nocturnal races for wealth, fame, and the immediate, unrestrained rush of thundering between darkened buildings and through deserted city streets. Between races, you use earnings and respect to buy and customize cars, contact other racers to participate in events, and?unlike in other genre entries?build a team that you control during races.
From Out of the Ashes
Formed in 2003, Juice Games is populated by refugee designers, programmers, and artists from developer Rage Games. Its ambitious project entitled Lamborghini was to be Xbox Live?s first racer before production got scrapped and the studio shut down. Now independent, members of the team regrouped and restrategized, hell bent on not only making a great game but also on progressing the racing genre as a whole. ?At Juice, we set ambitious goals for ourselves, which we are able to achieve due to our experience and our ability to overcome technical and creative challenges,? says Don Whiteford of Juice Games. ?Juice Games is the first time that we have been able to express ourselves through our own company.? Thus, Juiced is the first offering under the new moniker and will introduce never-before-seen, yet entirely logical, elements into the racing genre.
Just as precious a game currency as dollars, ?respect? in Juiced earns you the right to attend, bet on, and organize races, and is necessary to recruit racers to your team. How you gain respect varies from event to event. Some crews respect how you build your car or how well you perform stunts like drifts and donuts, while others are impressed by your team skills or your betting acumen. Gain enough respect, and other crews will call you on a mobile phone to offer circuit, point-to-point, drift, and drag challenges. But watch out?drive recklessly and damage opponents? cars, and not only will you have to foot the repair bills, but the racing community will also get wind of your behavior and ban you from events, adding another layer of realism to the whole experience.
Better Than You Crew
By far, Juiced?s coolest feature is its team-based races. When you begin Juiced, you race solo, but earn enough cash and respect, and you can recruit other racers to join your crew. Building a team is a slow process as you have to actually train members by entering them in races. But once you have your group in place, you can enter team races, introducing a destined-to-be-imitated tactical element to the genre as you can control up to two members during the event.
Before a race, you pick the best members of your team and assign them cars tailored toward the type of event and the opposing crew?s reputation. During a race, an onscreen HUD shows which driver you are controlling and his current level of aggression, which in turn is determined by a combination of how well your drivers are trained and how stress affects them. ?On the highest aggression setting, the drivers will use NOS if available, drive the fastest, and take risks in overtaking and cornering. They may also collide with opponents? cars in their haste to get ahead,? explains Whiteford. Drivers with lower levels, of course, tend to keep a steady pace and not take risks, which can be used to your strategic advantage. Though online support wasn?t yet implemented in the build we played, team members will be able to communicate and coordinate strategies via headset over Xbox Live.
It?s a Mod, Mod, Mod, Mod World
To the burgeoning throngs of carhacking racers, modifying a car using domestic and imported aftermarket parts is a unique form of expression; it marries a raw obsession for speed with the application of technical wizardry that enables the owner to create a mechanically aesthetic statement of individuality. No longer the sole domain of auto enthusiasts, according to Whiteford, ?modding has become a means for the young and streetwise to express their passion and creativity through car customisation.? Realizing the appeal of modding and successfully translating gamers is one of the core goals of the team.
In Juiced, cosmetic modifications like bodywork, paintjobs, neon, and tints provide eye-candy thrills, while performance upgrades to your racer?s suspension, air intake, exhausts, and wheels will affect its handling. After making mods, you?ll want to test your car?s performance on a rolling road as the tuning system developed by the team is so deep that haphazardly buying upgrades can hurt your chances in races. Skillful upgrades can qualify your car for more lucrative higher-class races, but overtune it, and you?ll wind up as a bottom feeder in a higher class and get creamed.
It?s this attention to detail that gives Juiced a depth that previous street racing games haven?t quite achieved. ?Given our unique customization features of the game, there will be thousands of possible vehicles to take on the road and online,? says Whiteford. ?The odds of seeing someone with the same car are virtually impossible.? Juice Games is focusing so much attention on between-race modding, in fact, that you can get so caught up in the intricacies of building, testing, and perfecting cars and easily forget that underneath it all is a scrupulously designed racing game. And that?s exactly the type of cultural immersion Juice Games is gunning for.
Juiced is also the first of a new breed of games that allow officially licensed cars to suffer damage. Up until now, manufacturers have been resistant to let their products get wrecked in games, but Whiteford says they are starting to understand that damage is an integral feature of any game. ?We still have to be careful of how we portray damage; we cannot destroy the passenger compartment, roll the car totally, or make it a write-off,? explains Whiteford. ?We can bruise it up badly, however, to the point where you?ll be sorry you didn?t drive more skillfully.? Though you cannot completely destroy a car, the game?s damage system does enable you to bang up the major body panels, while parts like fenders, spoilers, and skirts can fall off and form debris that can damage other cars that run into them.
Rolling Road Test
For all its peripheral features, Juiced is at its core a solid racer, and the playable build we?re testing boasts a driving system that beautifully balances the nuances of Gran Turismo?like simulation with the immediate rush of NFSU arcade-style racing. The tactical team aspect is challenging yet intuitive, and you?d think controlling crew members would be more difficult at speeds over 100 mph, but it works great. Juice Games is still working on fine-tuning the game and tweaking opponent A.I., but come September, this little-hyped outing could be the harbinger of much-needed innovation in the racing genre.
