Juiced Updated Hands-On

Originally scheduled for release in September 2004, Juiced is the street-racing game that Acclaim Entertainment signed when it lost the Burnout license to Electronic Arts, and that was subsequently picked up by THQ when Acclaim filed for bankruptcy and a tentative publishing agreement with Take-Two Interactive was never finalized. It's been an eventful 12 months for Juiced, then, but the good news is that through it all, UK-based developer Juice Games has been putting the time to good use. We recently had an opportunity to check out the same PlayStation 2 and Xbox playable demos of the game that will be mounted on the covers of magazines in the coming months, and were impressed by just how much the game has improved since we last played it.

The playable demo of Juiced that we got our hands on consists of two races taken from the start of the game's career mode, and because we were given a decent amount of money to play around with, we were able to fully trick out our Skyline GT-R in between races. The first of the two races took place at night, and saw us going head-to-head with a character named TK, who is the leader of the Urban Maulers, one of the numerous racing crews that have made the fictional city of San Ricardo their home. Before the race, TK offered to bet a significant amount of money on the outcome, and we had the option to decline the wager, accept it, or offer to raise the stakes. In the finished game, TK's responses to your decisions will vary according to your history with him. If you've been consistently beating him in races and relieving him of cash, for example, he'll become less eager to put his bank balance on the line when the two of you meet.

The city circuit that we raced TK on looked great at nighttime, and was certainly comparable to those in EA's Need for Speed Underground games in terms of the quality of the visuals. The race proved to be quite challenging on our first attempt, but once we learned the track (and figured out that the apexes of each corner were marked with green lights, making them infinitely easier to see) we were able to beat TK quite comfortably. The vehicle handling in Juiced definitely falls somewhere between the arcade and simulation styles, and actually made for some really satisfying driving once we got the hang of it. We found that we could perform some quite spectacular powerslides around corners if we slammed on the brakes a little later than we really should have, but the quickest way around the course was definitely resisting the urge to show off and instead following the correct racing line.

After beating TK (and pocketing a significant amount of cash in the process), we were taken to a garage screen, where, once we'd made the mandatory repairs to our car, we were able to turn our showroom model into a bona fide street racer. As was the case in the version of Juiced that we played last year, we found that we could improve our car's performance by adding licensed parts such as induction systems, suspension setups, exhausts, brakes, tires, turbo kits, and nitrous injection systems. We also noticed a new "class modifications" option that will allow you to automatically make the best performance upgrades available to you (many of the parts will need to be unlocked) without exceeding the horsepower limitations of your chosen class. The options available to us in the demo were to continue racing in class six with a 398hp vehicle (400hp being the upper limit) or to progress to class five with a mere 414hp (the upper limit being 500hp)--we opted for the former, and then got down to the serious business of customizing our car's appearance.

Got the Horn?

Since our GT-R was a very plain-looking silver by default, the first thing we decided to blow a portion of our money on was a new paint job. The color options available in Juiced are practically infinite because, after applying a base color from anywhere within the color spectrum, you'll be able to do the same thing with a metallic coat of paint and, if you're feeling particularly wealthy, repeat the whole process to add a pearlescent finish. You'll also be able to paint many of the licensed wheels in the game to match the rest of your vehicle, although the color options for wheels are much more limited.

Once the new paint job was taken care of, the all-important process of adding oversized body kits to the car got under way. The options available to us felt a little limited compared with those in certain other street-racing games, but they all looked really good, and we're assured that additional kits will become available as you progress through the finished game. The last thing that we did to our car before progressing to the second race was to add decals to it, and we were a little disappointed to see that Juiced is still somewhat lacking in this department. It's true that many of the simpler designs can be applied to your car in any color that you choose, but a number of them simply aren't very appealing, and the anime-style full-color designs that are available are an acquired taste at best.

The second race featured in the demo was on the same circuit as the first, but took place in bright sunshine, which made for a very different experience. The race also pitted us against three other cars instead of just one, including two rear-wheel drive muscle cars that were much faster than our tricked-out GT-R on the straights but were easy to gain ground on through the corners. The race was much more challenging than the first, and to win it we had to put both the new 3D track map (which appears in the lower left-hand corner of the screen, and shows the position of opponents), and the arrows that appeared behind our car to indicate the position of opponents who were close enough to attempt an overtaking maneuver, to good use.

It's unfortunate that the Juiced demo was so brief, but we certainly had a lot of fun with it. The differences that we noted between the PS2 and Xbox versions of the game were purely cosmetic, and it's worth noting that while the Xbox game looked noticeably better (largely due to some excellent environment mapping), the PS2 game was certainly easy on the eyes. The audio in the two games also impressed us, and the Juice Games representative who was showing us the game pointed out that the developer has recorded real engine sounds (that will alter slightly as you modify exhausts and such) for all 52 of the licensed cars in the game. You'll also be able to choose one of several different horns for your car, so that when you're harassing other players online, they'll know who it is behind them.

Juiced is currently scheduled for release on the PS2, the Xbox, and the PC in May. We'll bring you more information just as soon as we get our hands on a more complete version of the game.