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Juiced Preview

We get hands-on with the PS2 and Xbox versions of Acclaim's upcoming street racer.

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When Acclaim lost the rights to Criterion's Burnout series, the publisher could have been forgiven for bowing out of the street racing genre completely. But no, just 24 hours after word reached us that Electronic Arts would be publishing Burnout 3, Acclaim confirmed that it had secured the worldwide publishing rights to the previously unannounced Juiced from UK-based Juice Games. We've recently had the opportunity to spend some quality time with the PlayStation 2 and the Xbox preview builds of Juiced, and we're pleased to report that we've not only found the game to be enjoyable, but we have also found it to be surprisingly varied.

Acclaim's hitting the streets with its new racer, Juiced. Hit the "stream" option for a larger view.

Almost all of our time with Juiced has been spent playing its all-consuming career mode, partly because that's where you'll get to purchase and customize your own licensed vehicles, but mainly because progressing through it is the only way to unlock some of the game's most innovative features. There's so much to the Juiced career mode that it's difficult to know where to start talking about it; perhaps the beginning is as good a place as any. You'll commence your Juiced career without any wheels of your own, but after borrowing a car, betting on, and preferably winning your first race, you'll find that you have more than enough funds at your disposal to purchase your first car. In fact, there's a good chance that you'll have upwards of $75,000 to play with the first time you visit the garage. However, it's worth noting that the running costs for vehicles in Juiced can be pretty high--particularly if you're prone to damaging them and you don't win many races.

All of the licensed cars available to you initially will be "class 8" 100-199 bhp models and, although your funds will easily pay for enough modifications to move your first vehicle up a class, doing so will only make the game harder by forcing you to compete against better cars and by excluding you from the relatively easy class-8 events. The randomly generated and very limited selection of cars you're offered at the start of your career will most likely include at least one that's brand new, one that's used, and, if you're lucky, one that's sitting on the scrap heap after sustaining damage in an accident. Given that you'll almost certainly want to change the paint job when you start customizing your chosen vehicle, the only real difference between new, used, and damaged vehicles appears to be that the new ones cost a lot and often come with pearlescent paint; used ones are cheaper with regular paint; and damaged ones, even after you pay to have them repaired, cost you next to nothing.

Once you've taken your first car into the workshop, and it's in a good state of repair, you have the option to customize both its appearance and its performance. Cosmetic upgrade options for autos in Juiced include front and rear bumpers, hoods, wheels, side skirts, rear spoilers, neons, tinted windows, decals, and the like. The options feel a little limited compared to those in Need for Speed Underground, particularly those for decals, but there are more than enough licensed items and paint colors available to ensure that your vehicle is one of a kind.

Performance upgrades are also relatively limited in terms of variety, and each available part is rated either as stock, level 1-3, or as a prototype. Stock parts are those that are fitted as standard; level 1 parts become available to purchase as soon as you own the car; and more advanced parts for any given car are unlocked as you progress through the game and continue to drive it. Performance upgrade options in Juiced include induction systems, suspension, exhausts, gear ratios, brakes, tires, turbo kits, nitrous injection systems, and variable ride height and fine-tuning settings. The Juiced garage will also allow you to test your car using a dynamometer that automatically measures its top speed, power, and torque.

Many of the cars in Juiced are barely recognizable once they're fully customized.
Many of the cars in Juiced are barely recognizable once they're fully customized.

You'll also have the option to test-drive your vehicle at any time if you want to see how noticeably your modifications are improving its performance; but be warned that any damage you sustain during a test-drive will have to be repaired (and paid for) before you're allowed to race. You'll have to pay to refill your nitrous oxide tanks anytime you use them, and since the tires and brakes suffer wear and tear every time you drive, you'll also want to keep money aside for swapping them out when necessary. In short, running a Juiced car can get pretty expensive. With that said, the relatively realistic and extremely varied handling of each and every car in the game can take some getting used to, so it's definitely worth taking any new or recently customized ride for a quick spin before you put your respect and your bank account on the line by racing in it.

Money is Power

Fortunately, there are almost as many ways to make money in Juiced as there are to spend it. Winning races is the most obvious way to keep your coffers looking healthy, and often you'll be invited to make side bets with opponents that can make finishing in first place even more profitable. Any race meeting you attend will also let you bet on any races in which you're not competing, and you'll find that every racer or two- or three-man team pays different odds based on their driving skill, their ability to recover after a mistake, and their cars. Another great way to make money is by taking part in pink-slip races and winning cars from opponents that you can then sell if you decide not to keep them. Lose these races, though, and it's you that will be walking back to the garage a set of car keys lighter.

When you hit the nitrous oxide in Juiced, you really know it.
When you hit the nitrous oxide in Juiced, you really know it.

Next to money, the most important thing in Juiced is the respect you command from the eight other racing crews that have made the city of San Ricardo their home. At the start of your career, the only crew even aware of your existence will be the one with whose leader you enjoyed your first race. You'll be able to race at that crews' events right off the bat, but it'll be a while before any of the others even allow you to attend their meetings as a betting spectator. As you gain respect with any given crew, you'll gain "attend," then "race," then "pink slip," and eventually "host" privileges on their turf. The first three let you compete in the respective race types, while the last gives you the ability to actually organize your own race meetings, choose the race types (more about those later), set car restrictions, and even charge entry fees. Earning the respect of most crews requires you to do little more than perform well and not trade paint with them in events at which they're present. Each crew is unique, though, so while one might be terribly impressed by the fact that you have a great collection of cars, others will only be interested in, for example, how good your best car is, how good you are at betting, your willingness to participate in pink-slip races, or your skills in a particular race type.

In addition to conventional street races, which don't involve regular traffic or police cars, incidentally, Juiced features sprint and show-off events that require you to master very different sets of skills. The sprint mode, as you might expect, is essentially a drag race in which you're forced to use manual gears and race over a short and, for the most part, straight course. Sprint events are contested over four heats and, more so than any of the other race types, your success will largely depend on how well your car is set up. The show-off mode, as its name suggests, requires you to show off the car of your choice by coaxing it into performing donuts, drifts, 360s, U-turns, J-turns, and so on. The show-off events take place on regular circuits, but your only goal is to rack up as many points as possible within a time limit. Stringing moves together in combos can increase your score dramatically, but sustaining any kind of damage or repeating the same trick once too often will have the opposite effect.

Fortunately, there are no other drivers present on the circuit when you're in show-off mode because, as you'll quickly come to realize, once you start racing, they occasionally seem to go out of their way to make life difficult for you. In fact, the main issue we have with Juiced right now is the fact that CPU racers occasionally appear to be blissfully unaware of your existence on the circuit. Trade paint with any of them and you can guarantee that you'll lose respect with the crew at the end of the race. However, more often than not, the collisions we suffered were a direct result of having CPU drivers ram us off the road. None of the cars in Juiced feature terribly convincing or dramatic damage models right now, but while any damage you sustain might look like little more than a loose panel, a paint scrape, or a flickering neon, the effects that collisions like that can have on your race and on your bank account are much more significant. Aside from having to pay for repairs at the end of the race, you'll find that your problems on the circuit can and will include nitrous oxide leaks, turbo failures, and damaged steering, to name but a few.

The more you customize your car, the more likely you are to impress other racers.
The more you customize your car, the more likely you are to impress other racers.

When you bet on a race and are then forced to watch it until the last car finishes (which is no fun when the race lasts over 10 minutes in some cases), you realize that the CPU cars, unfortunately, just aren't driven very realistically for the most part. The overall feeling we got from watching the races we had bet on was that the result was decided before the race started, and the drivers would then do whatever was necessary to get the results they wanted--even if it meant having a driver who was way out in front make an unforced error, crash into a barrier, and then take a painfully long time to get back on the circuit. On one regrettable occasion we even witnessed a first-place driver do an inexplicable U-turn, drive into a wall, and then effectively do nothing to recover the situation until every other car was safely past.

San Ricardo or Bust

Slightly more enjoyable than sitting through races that you're not involved in are the races in which you decide to enter a member of your crew. It was quite a while before we had a driver ask to join our crew, but in many ways we'd have to say that it was worth the wait. With a second driver in our crew (out of a possible four), we were not only able to start entering some of the team events, but also had the option to have him (his name was Vito) compete in races that we didn't particularly like the look of ourselves.

The CPU drivers have almost perfected the art of causing accidents.
The CPU drivers have almost perfected the art of causing accidents.

When a member of your crew is racing, you'll control how hard he pushes by using the up and down controls on the directional pad--even if you're taking part in the same race. Initially Vito was only able to push hard for short periods of time before he would lose concentration and do something stupid, so we would constantly have to rein him in by dropping his level from high to either medium or low. The more we used him, though, the better his skills became, and the more inclined we were to actually have him race in our place on circuits that we were struggling with.

Every circuit in Juiced is set in one of eight locales in and around the San Francisco-inspired city of San Ricardo. Each neighborhood is controlled by a different racing crew, so before you can race anywhere you need to earn the respect of that particular crew. The eight locales in the game are: San Ricardo, Downtown, East Angel Island, West Anderson, Southside Beach, Campbell Hills, Angel North Central, and Angel Westside. In terms of both scenery and circuit designs, these areas are actually more varied than you might think.

Progressing through the career mode and gaining access to all of the different areas is made considerably more difficult by the game constantly auto-saving your progress to prevent you from being able to return to your last game save. We'll admit to trying to cheat the game on one occasion when, for the first and last time, we lost a pink slip and were forced to give up a totally tricked out Toyota Supra that we'd won from another opponent and spent a little of our own money on. The result of us resetting the console after the third of fourth sprint heat was no different than if we'd raced the fourth and done the honorable thing. When we reloaded our profile, the Toyota Supra was no longer in our garage.

In addition to the career mode, Juiced features a pretty conventional arcade mode in which you can unlock precustomized motors to play with without having to worry about a bank account or what other racers think of you. All three versions of the game will also boast a number of online gameplay options, but unfortunately, we've been unable to put them to the test.

All of the cars in the game are licensed and feature rather understated damage models.
All of the cars in the game are licensed and feature rather understated damage models.

The PS2 and Xbox versions of Juiced that we've had access to are, for all intents and purposes, identical. Predictably, the Xbox version looks a little better and didn't suffer any of the occasional drops in the frame rate that were evident on the PS2. The frame rate issues should be addressed before the PS2 game ships, though, so we're not overly concerned. We'll bring you more on Juiced as its early September release date approaches.

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