…Back in the real world, you’re in a small dark room, the most sensual relationship shared with a half eaten bag of crisps and a slightly sweaty controller. Sigh…

Eye candy or muddy water?

Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift has been released in line with the third in the series of pretty successful films (albeit not successful enough to retain Mr Vincent Diesel - but that’s beside the point). Come on, seriously. Expect the plot of a moderately creative blue movie. You, the driver, have met up with a Bansai-American friend and immediately have been introduced to an abnormally noisy yet pretty nippy (fast - to you brethren over in the Land Of Freedom) car. In this first challenge, simply race against another similarly offensive-to-elderly-people car on an arrow straight road. To win? It’s the pedal on the right. Remember that and you’ll be fine.

Eye candy or muddy water?

The first shock to my overly sceptical mind is the graphics, which appear pretty damn good! The dark is pierced with street lights aplenty, car neons and other Sunday drivers who refuse to change lanes. From here cometh the first gripe: To change your driving view from either the front bumper, within the car or above the car you have to (and wait for this) pause the game, navigate through 3 menus and select your choice. Even then, you cannot see a preview of what it will look like until the game auto-saves (tick tock) and plunges you straight into the racing action.

Although I was impressed by the night time graphics, obviously to aid in the “atmos” thus improving the likelihood of copulation, as I progressed, the game introduced me to the lesser-known-or-understood-by-Americans concept: The Corner. From this point, the visuals were as much use as a square wheel. You just cannot see that far ahead.

Guide yourself to victory:

The controls are as logical as any other racing game. Use your right thumb to go while occasionally stabbing the neighbouring button to slow down and your left thumb to steer. To add a little depth, shoulder buttons control your nitrous boost (if fitted – and if you equip nothing else, equip nitrous) your manual gearbox and your clutch. The last is an interesting addition allowing you to dip the clutch in order to increase the revs of the car. But why? This is a handy tool to help you induce a drift or simple leave a satisfying wheel spin mark on the road.

What’s the chuffing point?

Fast and Furious is all about earning money and completing stages in the form of: Destination Battle; whereby you drive faster than someone else until you reach a designated point (to you or I, a race), Top Speed Battle; where you must reach a greater top speed than your opponent (even if it lasts only a split second prior to smashing into another pesky Sunday Driver), Drift Battle; where you must score more points than your opponent through various sliding tricks and finally a Grip Battle whose existence, I must confess, completely eludes me – something about getting more points than your opponent… Winning these battles allows you to proceed to allegedly harder challenges and earns you money to buy further cars, performance modifications, pretty lights or big stupid spoilers and wings to scrape along the tarmac.

Here, Electronic Arts have tried to get a bit clever: In the ever-growing market of car modifications and racing us primates desire more. More power, more torque, bigger, louder and more complicated… stuff. To conform, EA have thrown in the real concept that cars are different not just in their power figures, but also in their driving characteristics and manoeuvring abilities. You can buy vehicles that are: front wheeled front engined, rear wheeled front engined, front wheeled mid engined, rear wheel mid engined or all wheel drive vehicles. Obviously each vehicle handles differently and as an example for the less “learned” passer by, a rear wheeled vehicle wheel tends to oversteer – whereby the rear of the vehicle tries to catch up with the front of the car in a corner and consequently spins. Spinning is prevented by steering in the opposite direction to the corner thus causing your car to slide sideways through it. The act of preventing the car from spinning while maintaining an almost sideways slide is what is referred to as drifting. It appears to be what’s fashionable these days and is the secret to scoring points and winning Drift Battles.

My gripe with Drift Battles is that the cars just don’t behave realistically. It doesn’t seem to matter how fast you are going, or what type of corner you are going around so long as you have the correct type of car, and you press the right buttons at the right time, the drift just kind of happens… I found it hard to accept that I had any real control over it.

Turn it down Timmy!

Big exhausts, semi-naked loose women and loud thumping music. This is the DNA of any car modding fanatic. First of all, if you’re hoping for any sort of toned hip wiggling lovelies, then stop buggering about and reach for the top shelf as you’ll find absolutely nothing like that in this game. Secondly, the music is unimpressive. It’s not bad, nor detrimental to the game, but it’s just not quite fitting with the image. The cars sound not bad and the voice-overs are kept to a minimum which really does suit me and my breakable furniture just fine. (I do tend to throw things)…

Give me substance!

After your first easy race, you are unleashed onto the Tokyo Streets. You have two options: You can drive around on the roads until you find your destination (be it a race, garage or car dealer) or you can just warp there via the map. The first choice is novel when testing out a newly suped up car, but the roads are very long, and tiresome. To delay boredom you can challenge other (deserving) drivers to a short and relatively easy race. Win and you’ll acquire a little extra dosh to spend on whatever power modification or big stupid wing that takes your fancy.

You will be able to visit “hot spots” where you can challenge other drivers, modification garages where you’ll be able to purchase, fit and view new goodies for your once clapped out motor, a storage garage where you can put any vehicles (for you can have more than one) to bed and finally any number of Japanese car dealers. The list available is; Nissan, Mitsubishi, Honda, Mazda and Subaru. Also for the yankee doodles there is a US dealer which sells various muscle cars plus some of Henry Ford’s great grandchildren. At hotspots you will have to beat a number of opponents before being allowed to pit your might against a boss. Win, and you will relieve him of his car. Very satisfying!

Smoke and mirrors?

So far then, this game is not too shabby, especially for those inclined on dismantling their parents’ car and fitting it with anything remotely loud, offensive or race-bred. The music is a bit limp, but the visuals are pretty good and the concept of being able to purchase modifications to alter (and hopefully) improve a cars performance is quite addictive.Don’t think for one minute though that the more you spend on modifications to your granny car, the faster and more agile it will be. Oh no. Within the game’s manual and while playing, it is stressed that you must read about your proposed modifications before fitting them, as although some parts may cost 3 livers worth, their design may not be suited for the type of vehicle fitted to, or the type of race to be competed in. For example, if you buy a great big heavy exhaust, power may be increased but if you are going to use the car for Drift Battles, the weight and balance of the car may be upset thus degrading your performance. Again this makes the game even more tempting doesn’t it? I have to agree that I would be checking the cash in my pocket about now. The thing is that I couldn’t help but get frustrated at the slow and arduous process of being able to do anything in F&F. For example, when you beat a boss you will acquire his car which will automatically be stored in your underground garage. You can then visit the garage and swap cars. Sounds simple, but in between this is a considerable amount of loading and (if autosave is turned on) lots of saving. Any car you win from a boss cannot be modified. What pants! Obviously to beat the boss you’ve had to have a better car to beat the boss so it’s already apparent that the car you’ve won is obsolete. AND, to pour salt, vinegar and tar into the gaping wound, you CAN’T sell the newly acquired car. So about as much use as tits on a radio aerial then… As you earn more money, you may decide that you want to get a new car – one that may be more suited to up and coming challenges. Just visit a car dealer and away you go! However, what if you want to fund your purchase by selling a car you no longer need? Well for starters the game will not let you sell a car that you are currently driving. So you have to visit the storage garage, swap cars with another that you don’t want to sell, then go back to the desired car dealer, sell your unwanted ride and then make your purchase. Let me tell you that this is bloody awkward and takes a good while. This aggravates the p*ss out of me. Also, in places it looks as if features have been forgotten. If you beat a boss, as well as winning their car you will have access to discounts for certain modifications. To be eligible for these discounts you must apply the defeated teams sticker to your car. Could I find where the hell this is done? No.

What’s the chuffing point?

“Hark! Too late!” I hear you cry… EA have tried to use their heads with F&F, and in places created some pretty cool features and impressive visuals. However like so many games of recent days a looming deadline has left a stain on the final product. There are lots of different things to do and it’s not by any measure a small game (however it’s not always a huge challenge to progress) but the frustrating structure of this game and the tiresome process to navigate around the different elements of the game always makes me shake with frustration and more importantly reconsider releasing the CD from its box. So in shorter short; a visually pretty game with in parts, impressive game-play detail and lifespan. But if you’re prone to hissy fits, either reconsider F&F or purchase plastic windows and hide the Lillyput Lane ornaments somewhere out of throwing range.Graphics 9 / 10 – Impressive for this now dated of consoles. Would have been 10 If the viewing distance was better.Lifespan 5/ 10 - If you like this sort of thing maybe you’ll disagree; but the structure is very frustrating Gameplay 7 / 10 - Lots of things to collect and a reasonable variation of game types albeit with only 1 on 1 battles. Lack of multiplayer isn’t a great move though.Sound 6/ 10 - For a game of this genre, the sounds were a bit of a let down. They weren’t bad, but they weren’t great either. Controls 8 / 10 - Can’t really pick fault although EA were in danger of trying to be a little too clever.

Reviewed by: BenCubed