Juiced 2 on Xbox 360 - is it worth getting from the bargain bin?
Since NFS started to go downhill with every new release I turned on to other racing games with similar theme - illegal racing at night, fueled by nitrous and hot girls. I remember playing Juiced on my PC, and beside some flaws it was pretty decent racer. I kind of disliked the music and the fact that the game seemed to have no high speed feeling compared to NFS. I was also kind of lost by the menus, betting and all those little things that made the game worse than it should be. The sequel, as it's always supposed to, was to put all those flaws into an end. So I dropped at the nearest gaming shop, searched a little at the bargain bin and voila - almost new copy landed in my drive. So, where do I start? Let's take a quick look at the menus - they are basically... uhm... hard to read. There's an Evo X driving in some kind of tunnel and an up/down scrolling menu. Well it could have been done better, but it's not that bad. Also the devs kindly forgot to put any kind of playlist editor, and there is no way to change the track during a race which forces you to either listen to the track offered, or use your own music. Okay, so you start your first race, the graphics are outdated, but not that bad, and the cars are modeled nicely. Now to the most important thing - how good does the game play. The physics seem to be a mix of all the laws, the cars act like they are trams on multiple tracks, and you jump from on track to another. The racing is basically a boring run with unexpected twists like being overtook in front of the finish line. There's also drift - which is supposedly the new way to go.... yeah, whatever. Anyway, the physics here are more fun then ever - there are no laws whatsoever. Also the scoring system is just plainly awesome - you don't get any multipliers, you are forced to drift all the points to win - it's so funny to drift 50,000,000 points - and oh so realistic. All the other events are a mix of those two - either boring racing or drifting. I feel like Juice Games was paid by satan to create this game... or cars license are cheap.