by
Ted Kritsonis
Faze Video Game Editor

Street racing video games are starting to become as common as reality TV shows, and Street Racing Syndicate is yet another game that takes “The Fast and the Furious” and incorporates its elements into a video game.

Unlike some of the other street racers on the market, SRS uses whatever it can to simulate the underground world of illegal street racing, whether it be performance and cosmetic upgrades or girls as ornaments on your car. The formula is a popular one these days but that doesn’t automatically translate into success, so where does SRS stand in this regard?

Well, the premise contained within the game is a good one, but there seem to be plenty of holes in the way it all comes together. Roll Up Races are your basic on-the-fly street showdowns where you find cars with flags above them and challenge them by flashing your high beams. Respect Challenges are all about hooking up with girls and earning respect, and Street Challenges within Street Mode are races on your opponent’s terms. Eventually when you do get a girl, you can trade her for another or make her dance, which leads you to a real-life video clip. The models are hot, but it’s hard to see how this adds anything to the game.

The Street Mode is really the only way to go in the beginning because of all the unlockable content, and collecting cash by winning races is the only way to get it. You start off by racing in your buddy’s car, but after the first race, you’ll have enough cash to buy your own ride. From here, you can visit the garage as often as you want to soup it up, so long as you have cash to pay for it.

The whole process is engaging, but it’s nothing that hasn’t been done already. There are plenty of options in both the performance and cosmetic categories, so you should have no problem making your ride drive like a bullet and look good doing it. But the problem is that your car will never look like a bullet because the illusion of speed is sorely lacking in SRS.

When you think about the speeds that souped up cars like these should be hitting, the environment surrounding them should never look the same as when they do on the starting line. This happens all the time in SRS, and is a huge problem for the simple fact that it’s a racing game. If your car is going 120 mph, but you feel like it’s going 40 or 50, it doesn’t really seem like you’re in a race, does it?

Things don’t get much better when you factor in the AI. In one case, I had raced flawlessly, never spinning out or crashing, and yet I lost the race at the very end just before the finish line. At first, I assumed the AI used a nitrous boost, but after watching the replay, I realized that it just passed me without any boost at all.

Street Racing Syndicate sparked my interest initially because it was a street racer that was considered to be in the top class, but after playing for a few hours the reality tells a very different story. There’s a lack of polish here that hurts SRS in so many ways. Had more of a focus been put forward to make the racing part of the game look and feel like the world of street racing, SRS might have had a chance. But as is, SRS will disappoint even the biggest gearheads.

Publisher:
NAMCO
Developer:
Eutechnyx

Platform:
PS2

Rating: 6/10