The first Juiced was a fairly shameless attempt at cashing in on the Fast and the Furious phenomenon, so I really wasn’t expecting much from the sequel. Fortunately, this game definitely takes itself seriously. Several new ideas are introduced in order to keep the racing genre fresh.

The game doesn’t play any differently than you would expect. Arcade fans will love it but simulation fans will be left wanting more. The cars are floaty and don’t feel like there is any weight to them. This leads to some action packed racing, but is not too realistic. I also didn’t particularly like the nitrous system. You begin the race with none and build it up as you power slide around corners. It is a fun idea but becomes unfair if you buy a car that doesn’t power slide well. A 4 wheel drive Evo will barely gain any nitrous because of how well it handles.

Juiced 2 take a new approach to moving through the career mode. The game is separated into several different levels. You start at level 7 and move down. After Level 1 is World Class, so there are actually 8 levels. Instead of requiring you to win every race, you are given goals to accomplished. Anything from placing higher than a particular driver, accumulating a set amount of air time, winning a bet against another racer, or many other requirements. Many of these can be accomplished in a single race and not all are required to move to the next level, in case a particular one is too difficult. To keep things fresh, there are drifting events or races to bet on as a spectator. There are too many other ways to keep yourself entertained in the game to go into here, either in the race or out.

The car upgrades seem a bit dumb to me. There are as many visual mods as you would expect but when it comes to performance mods, you are only allowed to buy parts for your current level and also must complete races in order to unlock the option to buy the parts. What auto parts shop would not accept your money because you haven’t won a particular race?

About halfway through the game, the game goes from a blast to play to unnessacarily frustrating. The rules applied to you fellow racers seem to change. I have seen a car slam a wall only to immediately fly around the other side of me. I have also used an entire tank of nitrous and not gotten any closer to the racer in front of me who wasn’t using any. Nothing is more disappointing in a racing game than the difficulty being ramped up not by skillful drivers, but by the computer cheating. The game is still fun to play, but you will find yourself restarting races because of a driver that simply cannot be beat.

The game looks good. Not great, but not bad. There are slightly more graphical glitches in the menus than I like to see but I didn’t notice any in race. Speaking of glitches, there was one particular racer who, whenever you offer to bet him before a race, he will double the bet and immediately back out, having to pay you a 10% fee. Sure it was free money, but I am always disappointed when things like this make it into the final version of the game.

There are tons of ways to play the game and they are all enjoyably. The game would have been an instant classic had more effort been put into making the computer AI good instead of cheap. Fans of arcade racers or import racing will enjoy the game, even with it’s faults.