Official U.S. PlayStation Magazine: Juiced

Juiced is a feature-packed racer with gorgeous graphics, lots of tuner-culture goodies, a great soundtrack, and a suitably stoic and serious sensibility, but what does it offer that we’ve not seen before? The answer, of course, is nothing, except perhaps the fact that it bizarrely lets you choose from one of six cell-phone types. It has all of the requisite and necessary events, online play, gambling, online gambling, teams, and a choice of cars that would fill up a good-sized lot, but we’ve seen all of this before. Maybe not all in the same place, but what Underground didn’t do, SRS did, or Midnight Club 3 just did rather nicely.

Like its contemporaries, Juiced has a gameplay style that falls quite heavily on the arcade end of the spectrum. It’s not quite Burnout crazy, but it has an extremely forgiving handling model that means you can point a 200-hp front-wheel-drive car into a corner at 80 mph and actually make it around without a boatload of understeer. The cars feel suitably speedy, and while Juiced won’t leave you dizzy like some recent racers do, the blurred textures make it look fast even when you’re not moving.

Juiced’s biggest problem, and this isn’t really Juice Games’ fault, is that it’s a little late to this particular party. If it had been out a year or so ago, it would have rocked our worlds much harder. Alternatively, if it were priced $20 cheaper, it probably would have scored a full point higher. Try it for a weekend—it’s a kick-ass rental game.

Juice: Tons of features, gorgeous graphics

Pulp:You’ve seen it all before

Pub. THQ

Dev. Juice Games

ESRB T

MSRP $49.99