Maroc - 3RD-STRIKE.COM - A La Une - 25/Oct 00:01

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition – Review

Whenever we see games that are based on movie franchises or cartoons, we already wonder if they will turn out to be anything interesting. In the past, a lot of movies would get their own dedicated game, and these were often so underwhelming that they either ended up in the budget bin at game stores or ended up in the hands of an unsuspecting child who would get immensely disappointed. We had our doubts when we saw the announcement trailer for Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition, which seemingly had high-octane racing action but lacked polish and substance. We were correct for the most part, but in reality, it was even worse. Story There is absolutely no narrative content present in Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition, which is a bit of a shame, considering how many movies the franchise currently has. Instead, you’ll simply pick a car and start racing in a nonsensical format, without any structure whatsoever. We feel it’s a missed opportunity here to have no story content or to have none of the actual characters from the franchise being included here. Then again, that’s not really the biggest issue Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is suffering from. Graphics Graphically, Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition looks as if it were developed for the PlayStation 2 or early PlayStation 3, with a few updated textures slapped on for good measure. The game looks dated, unfinished, and more like a bad mobile game port. There is hardly any detail to be seen, and even the damage animations look extremely cheap. We’re going to give credit where it’s due, though; the stages themselves did have fairly interesting designs. Sadly, they were hidden under a massive layer of rough animations and a severe lack of polish. Sound Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition’s sound design is underwhelming to say the least, as the music seems to be lifted right out of a license-free library, and it sounds extremely generic as a result. The tunes loop after a matter of seconds, and there’s only a handful of them. The SFX sound just as generic, and all cars actually sound exactly the same. There are also weird audio cutouts, where your car doesn’t make any noise when you’re in tunnels, for example. It’s clear that this game had to be developed as cheaply as possible. Gameplay After playing Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition for a while, we were under the assumption that this title would be better classified as a rubberbanding simulator instead of an arcade racing game. Sadly, it’s supposed to be the latter, albeit with only six tracks to choose from, and vehicles that have very little to offer in terms of different racing ‘feel’ on the tracks. You’ll simply pick a car and ‘race’ to complete the tracks’ missions. This always boils down to reaching something or destroying something at the end of the track, but you’ll always fail if you’re in second place, even when you reach the objective before the timer reaches zero. You can also play the game with a friend, but the so-called versus mode will pretty much offer more of the same. There is zero polish here, and we could argue the same for the actual entertainment value. Honestly, there isn’t that much more to tell. There’s a handful of cars you can choose to race with, and then there’s the aforementioned six tracks. The game will keep going on for some reason, where you’ll go from normal mode to extreme mode, to extreme x2 mode, and so on. Extreme mode is literally only giving you extra nitro to use, and this is something extremely pointless anyway. Due to the extreme rubberbanding, cars match your speed 90% of the time anyway, whether you use a nitro or not. The game also shows a speed on the speedometer, but even if you crash into something and the speed there goes visibly down, you’ll still drive just as fast in-game, and the other cars once again match this speed. It’s absolutely rubbish, and there are literally no actual redeeming qualities here. The only thing we might say that the game does well is nail that ‘need for speed’ feeling, as it does feel like you’re actually putting the pedal to the metal. Conclusion Truth be told, Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is pretty much hot garbage, and that’s even being fairly generous. The game fails to impress on any front and lacks polish, content, and overall replayability. There is no real progress curve, and the game doesn’t even have any properly designed race mechanics, as everything simply relies on rubberbanding. For roughly 30 bucks, you’ll be able to find so many better racing games out there that actually provide you with a finished and entertaining product. This is one of those titles that would even disappoint us as a freemium mobile game. The only thing this game will make you do is delete it fast after making you furious.