Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights

Shame old same old

That said, the main bulk of Juiced 2 isn't exactly crammed with variety. Once you've played a few circuit races and a few drift excursions, it all starts to feel a tad samey, and if you've been playing all the Street Racing games over the past few years, it starts to feel quite tired quite quickly. Simply put, the incentive to trawl through the scores of ridiculously easy early events in the early leagues isn't there. If you don't win most events on your first or second attempt, then you should seriously question your gaming abilities. Problem is, after 30 or so of these you're probably so bored you'll want to put on a game with a bit more edge to it. After the eye-bulging hours on SEGA Rally and Colin McRae DiRT, Juiced 2 feels polite. Pedestrian, even.

Indeed, even on a technical level, Juiced 2 doesn't really cut it against its determined next-gen rivals. It's perfectly serviceable, but there's nothing on show that hasn't been done equally well before. The whole talk of 'concert atmosphere' is all rather meaningless in reality. Like every other night-time street racer ever, it's a blizzard of neon lights, oily-looking roads and loud noises. The crowds are, as usual, comprised of badly animated, low-poly goons, and you'll take very little notice of the peripheral detail the minute you're actually racing. In that regard, the cars and tracks are typically over-shiny and nicely detailed, but there's very little attention to the damage-modelling and no real attempt to vary the track conditions or dabble with the effects of weather. In truth, Juiced 2 has the look and feel of a high-def last-gen game - as in it looks 'nice', but that's damning it with faint praise. To stand out these days you have to do something different and take things further. Harsh as that fact it, it's the truth, and one of several reasons Juiced 2 feels like it's been left behind.

There is, of course, a solid online implementation that has the potential to give it a point of difference over its rivals - but the key word here is 'potential'. The ability to play the entire main career mode online with up to seven mates is a fabulous idea in theory, because it removes the rather sterile AI out of the equation and replaces them with real people you can develop a genuine online rivalry with. Among a group of mates, the most ordinary race could become an excellent battle of wills, but that's if you can round up enough people. In my experience (no doubt hampered by the release of Halo 3, SEGA Rally and FIFA - nice timing, THQ) there were less than a handful of players in the world in the lobbies, making it basically impossible to even start a race, never mind develop a career.

That may change as more people buy it, of course, but given that our attempts took place during the weekend of its release (typically a good time to play online, you'd think), that doesn't bode well for the future. Still, if you fancy forming a Juiced 2 club and arrange regular race meets, there is actually scope to make Juiced 2 a more interesting proposition than merely facing off against fairly dull AI.