Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights Review

Edelbrock, Comptech, Tein, Spax, Mintex, Falken… there are people out there for whom these names mean something. Something important. These people are the ones that you see driving around your local supermarket car park just after dark with neon lights under their cars, in vehicles with ultra-low profile tyres, all-over bodykits and exhausts the size of your average household drainpipe. I’m talking about the car modders. They’re a crazy bunch, and they’re growing in number.

Quite why someone would go buy themselves a car as unexciting as a Citroen Saxo, or an old Vauxhall Nova, and then spend roughly what it would cost you to buy a half-decent Ferrari on upgrading the engine, tooling up the suspension, decorating the outside, and making the interior look like a gangster-rapper’s wet dream is beyond me, particularly when they could simply spend the money on… well, on a half-decent Ferrari for one thing, but then I’ve never really been good with cars. Driving them? No problem! Fixing them up? If I tell you that I get excited if I manage to change a spent headlamp bulb without having to resort to calling the man from the RAC, then you’ll get some idea of the level of my car mechanic skills. And yet I still enjoy this game, which is aimed firmly in the direction of the mod-crazy petrol heads who seem to be multiplying like rabbits on Viagra across this fair land of ours.

For Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights is basically a racing game with ‘bling’. Pick your basic car, then compete in various different types of races to earn money with which to buy upgrades for your vehicle, then choose exactly what brand of parts you equip your car with. For the petrol-heads, this is great, as they’ll actually know the difference between a Tein… er, head gasket and a Falken… fuel pump (like I said, car mechanics is not my thing!). For those not so inclined, it doesn’t actually matter, as all the parts seem to have the same effect on your car’s performance. Disappointing to the petrol heads perhaps, but fairly essential for all those not looking to complete an NVQ in ‘pimping their ride’ before playing this. And the car freaks can still spend hours suping up their vehicle in other ways anyway, with the internal specs of the car just one of the aspects that can be modded – everything about its appearance, from colour through decals to body shape can be played with too, so hopefully everyone will be happy.

Basically, what you’ve got here is a decent enough racing game with absolutely tons of different races to be unlocked, and loads to do to the cars. Unlike games like, say, Burnout, the cars don’t take damage, so if big explosions is your thing then look away now, but the cars themselves handle well, and there are plenty of different types of race to keep you going, including multi-vehicle races, a variety of time trials and – of course – ‘drift’ races, where the idea is to completely rub all the tread off your tyres by sliding it round corners for as long as possible. Which I feel I should point out is very bad for the tyres, AND the road surface, and probably shouldn’t be tried in your local Sainsbury’s parking area.

Apart from the ‘shiny side up’ issue that often plagues games with cars licensed from real manufacturers (of which this has many) there’s not much else to complain about. The cars are fast and handle well – and you can increase the speed and handling by unlocking and purchasing various mods, each of which requires you to complete its own special challenge race – and the rival characters in the game do seem to have their own personalities and actually drive differently. How you and they behave in a race is apparently dictated by something called ‘Driver DNA’, and this ‘evolves’ as you race, but aside from a ‘DNA evolved’ message appearing on screen every few seconds during a race, I couldn’t really see that it changed the playing experience any, so I’m not going to do more than just mention it’s in there – if you figure out how it actually works, let me know! (And you might want to drop THQ a line too, as they didn’t explain it all that well in the manual!).

Sarcastic gripes against weird game elements aside though, Juiced 2 is a more than satisfactory racing game that offers some fun car stuff, all packaged up in a presentation featuring lots of busty girls in small amounts of tight clothing, which – speaking as a hot blooded male – is never a bad thing. Not something to exactly endear the game to the female market, but from personal experience (and everything Hollywood movies have taught me), it seems that the majority of petrol heads at the moment are male, and the female involvement tends to be limited to wearing tight clothes, draping themselves across the vehicles at the start line, and offering their ‘favours’ to the guys with the ‘hottest ride’… like I said, not my opinion: Hollywood’s! With a range of wireless modes thrown in for good measure, there’s plenty to keep the ‘modders’ out there amused, so if you like cars, you like girls with big boobies and you like to slide round corners rather than taking a proper racing line like a grown-up driver (you young scamps!), then this is definitely the game for you. Any fans of Burnout-style car carnage… and any girls (unless they’re ‘girls who like girls’), should probably look elsewhere though.