Juiced

Juiced is a feature-packed racer with gorgeous graphics, lots of tuner-culture goodies, a great soundtrack, and a suitably stoic and serious sensibility, but what does it offer that we��ve not seen before? The answer, of course, is nothing, except perhaps the fact that it bizarrely lets you choose from one of six cell-phone types. It has all of the requisite and necessary events, online play, gambling, online gambling, teams, and a choice of cars that would fill up a good-sized lot, but we��ve seen all of this before. Maybe not all in the same place, but what Underground didn��t do, SRS did, or Midnight Club 3 just did rather nicely.

Like its contemporaries, Juiced has a gameplay style that falls quite heavily on the arcade end of the spectrum. It��s not quite Burnout crazy, but it has an extremely forgiving handling model that means you can point a 200-hp front-wheel-drive car into a corner at 80 mph and actually make it around without a boatload of understeer. The cars feel suitably speedy, and while Juiced won��t leave you dizzy like some recent racers do, the blurred textures make it look fast even when you��re not moving.

Juiced��s biggest problem, and this isn��t really Juice Games�� fault, is that it��s a little late to this particular party. If it had been out a year or so ago, it would have rocked our worlds much harder. Alternatively, if it were priced $20 cheaper, it probably would have scored a full point higher. Try it for a weekend��it��s a kick-ass rental game.

Juice: Tons of features, gorgeous graphics

Pulp:You��ve seen it all before

Pub. THQ

Dev. Juice Games

ESRB T

MSRP $49.99

Copyright © 2005 Ziff Davis Media Inc. All Rights Reserved. Originally appearing in Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine.