cars seemed surprisingly well done to me and they don't just all follow each other around the perfect racing line like the computer controlled opposition in some racing games, they each have their own way of doing things some with more success than others, it is possible for the A.I. Participating in the races are you and three A.I. Once you have found an event you may enter, you can really begin to get a feel for the meat and potatoes of SRS, the races. You can also run into the police on your meanderings around who will give chase on you if they deem necessary, should they choose to pursue you its up to you to lose them - the progress of this mini Cops 'n' Robbers on wheels affair is displayed in the form of a meter at the top of the players screen indicating whether they are doing a slick job of giving the boys in blue the slip or are headed for the slammer, this police chase action all becomes irrelevant when you remember you can press select at any time and teleport across town via the menu mentioned earlier, out of reach of the arm of the law.Īfter jumping or driving to an event you must be able to meet the entry requirements to participate, these requirements usually involve the brake horse power of your engine, level of respect earned and of course the amount of cold hard cash you have about you although some races do not carry a monetary entry fee in the event that you have gone completely broke and cannot afford to do anything else. So now you have your ride all pumped up and painted up you are going to want to enter some more races, you can access these races by driving through Street Modes cities to the various marked out locations on the map a la GTA or Need for Speed Underground 2, unfortunately the whole 'driving-between-races' thing starts off being tedious and spirals rapidly downwards into repetitive boredom from there, fortunately you can jump to any of the major races and events via a menu accessed by the Select button which eliminates the need to traverse the cities between races, if you do decide to persevere with the city cruising you can find similar nitro-for-blood racers as you willing to take you on in point to point races around town. You can also get your rides a new lick of paint and some graphics at the garage as well as performance upgrades, you can get whole body vinyl kits giving you cars artwork all over, neon lights to sit under the car providing an eerie light coming out from under your bumpers, stickers to plaster the car with on all sides and more. There is a problem with the upgrade purchasing system that struck me as just stupid though, it is never made clear exactly what each upgrade is going to do for you and the performance of your car as you browse through them and I found myself just giving up trying to find out in the end and just started buying the most expensive bits I could afford at the time. Once you have chosen a car that you like and can afford from the assortment of real-life car dealers and their machines provided in game you may begin to spend money at the garage on an assortment of performance enhancing upgrades from new engine parts to weight reduction and some interesting things inbetween such as nitro canisters for that short lived but incredible burst of speed that only nitro seems to be able to provide. In SRS the main 'story' mode is the Street Mode, in Street Mode you begin by tearing around in a nice car on behalf of a driver who is unable to make it to the race which then gets taken off you after you win with it leaving you with the prize money to sort yourself a new ride, and here begins your journey into the world of car engine fiddling. Well in a nutshell you buy a car, win some money with it by racing in it, spend the money on some upgrades, win more money etc but lets see how this is all presented to the player. I could be describing any one of about ten different games with that sentence and it is indeed true that the custom car street racing genre has spawned a whole heap of games in recent years with the popular Need for Speed and Gran Turismo franchises generally accepted to reside near the top of the pile.Īn interesting contender for the street racer throne is Street Racing Syndicate from developer Eutechnyx, published by Namco who themselves are not new to the idea of sending shiny cars screaming around city streets as their infamous Ridge Racer series attests. You must be familiar with the concept by now, buy an ordinary street car and use it to win races for money, then spend said money back on said car in order to boost the cars performance and win more challenging races for more money.
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