THQ
Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights

Anyone looking for an old driving game with modest hardware requirements might stumble upon Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights. As you can guess, it is the sequel to Juiced, a passable title that turned out to be an alternative to Need for Speed.

Juiced 2 belongs entirely to the trend of illicit racing titles that emerged in the wake of the commercial success of the American Fast and Furious. So, there are flashy cars full of decals, show-offs, pure aesthetics galore, and sleazy women in skimpy outfits who start the race by standing in front of the starting grid just to parade their large breasts. Leaving aside that all this has been out of fashion for a while, Juiced 2's problem is that the aesthetic side outweighs the substance, and the fun is short-lived due to the flat and anonymous style it was created with. From this point of view, it can be considered inferior to its predecessor, which not only offered a better driving simulation but also had more personality.

Throughout the first part of the game, we'll have a lady who is never seen and will guide us to learn the various game modes. You can place bets with other drivers who are pampered daddy's kids and can lose all the money they want since daddy will cover the expenses of this costly underground racing career.

But let's go in order: there's a decent amount of circuits, among which those set in Italy among the Roman antiquities are among the most imaginative (you race through the snow-covered mountains of Germany, the metropolises of San Francisco, Japan, the United Kingdom, and some other places I can't recall right now). However, the problem is that the circuits of the various nationalities, besides being sparse, always recycle the same elements: they're little more than variations on the route of the same track.

To break the monotony, several racing modes have been added, including one that involves drifting the car for as long as possible (there is no tire wear), another that requires winning the race without crashing into anything and preferably causing all other drivers, who go like slugs, to crash. Let's say that the difficulty of the game is not very high but still fluctuating, even though the artificial intelligence is improved compared to the first Juiced where it left much to be desired.

Other modes include Extreme Nos, where, after upgrading your vehicle with a super N2O prototype, you can participate in special races where you have to keep pressing the turbo button.

The best part is the well-assorted car selection: it ranges from the Mini Cooper to the Corvettes, from the most beautiful BMWs to the Dodges including the inevitable Viper. However, there are also flaws regarding the very minimalist enhancement of the cars. You can increase power, road holding, and reduce the car's weight, but it all happens practically automatically; players are allowed to choose between various brands of products, but these choices do not make any difference regarding vehicle performance. If, for example, you mount Bridgestone tires or Yokohama tires, it will be the same thing, and this applies to any other vehicle component, including the turbo. On the plus side, there is a wide range of options for customizing your cars, but it has only aesthetic value, and speaking of aesthetics, there are some graphical bugs.

Another addition in the field of modes is the ability to hire drivers to race alongside you in team races: the best driver should be Driver X who wears a motorcycle helmet to create some mock mysterious aura and to be hired in your team wants a million dollars. Anyway, advancing through the various competition classes money will gradually become less of a problem and in the end, you will have so much that you won't know what to do with it since among the options there is no buying a nice medieval castle. Basically, the game's progression mode works like this: each category, starting from the "worst" cars up to vehicles as powerful as a Formula 1, has a number of objectives to complete to unlock the promotional race. These objectives range from simply winning a race to scaring the pants off of other racers by tailing them closely, to winning bets, etc...

Let's say that at the beginning it might be fun, but then it all starts to feel bland and monotonous. One will hardly want to complete the game 100%, but rather, in the end, you just want to meet the right number of objectives to win the last promotional race and be done with it. The driving simulation is an arcade style that is outdated, to say the least. Something more realistic that at least took into account the physical aspect of what it means to drive a car would have made the experience much more solid. There are multiple flaws, including the technical aspect where the serious mistake was not limiting the framerate, which severely fluctuates between 30 and 60 fps with a terrible effect.

In conclusion, this Hot Import Nights is a superficial product that merely mimics elements of a declining trend without being able to devise anything to give it new life, proving to be a poor imitation lacking in substance. Avoid it.