If there’s an area where SRS must be commended is in its attention to reality. The game is a breeze from start to finish as you’ll blow away opponents with very little effort, fanfare or enjoyment. It seems like the designers knew what they had on their hands so they decided to compensate for it by providing you with brain-dead opponents. That means plenty of unnecessary spinouts and wall scraping that should easily be avoided. When coupled with the poor sense of speed you’ll find yourself having difficulty taking turns because your mind has failed to realize that you’re actually approaching the turn at a high rate of speed. All of the vehicles feel very light and feathery and don’t exhibit any real weight or mass. Objects pass by very slowly and the car always handles superbly. A little meter in the corner might tell you that you’re going 120 but your eyes and brain will tell you that you’re going 40. This is due largely in part to the game’s poor sensation of speed. If you manage to make your way through the poor interface you’ll be greeted by a sub-par racing experience.
To put it short the game’s design is severely flawed and even worse, it carries over to the streets. Upgrading should be simple and fun but instead it turns into a frustratingly hair-pulling experience. There are plenty of real-life parts and components but chances are you’ll get tired of waiting and opt to just rush through it. As you might guess this leads to a pretty agonizing experience.
You get instant feedback on how well each part performs but for some reason, you have to wait for a three to five second load time each time you want results on a part. Most of the fun in these kinds of games is supposed to come from tricking out your vehicle, but SRS somehow makes that facet seem like a chore.
It doesn’t make sense the developers managed to acquire the licensing rights from other Japanese makers like Toyota, Nissan and Mazda, but they missed out on the biggest one of all.Įqually frustrating is the upgrade system which bows to the same flaws. Perhaps most puzzling is the lack of Honda vehicles in the game. Buying cars is frustrating because the game takes some time to load up each car’s stats so that you can compare it to others. Not one portion of the game’s design is streamlined, resulting in long wait times and endless frustration. That’s because the initial load time is just a precursor of all the waiting that you’ll be doing in the game. You’ll run into problems the moment you boot up the game. In all the pacing of the game works really well, although you can get the game’s crown jewel, the Nissan Skyline, in fairly short order.
As you gain more points more cars and races will be made available to you. By winning races and performing tricks (like powerslides or jumps) you’ll earn points. In order to prevent everything in the game from being available to you at the start, the game uses a respect system as its artificial barrier. It breaks the mold from the two aforementioned titles by allowing you to choose your races and explore the town at your own discretion. In the core gameplay mode you will be competing in races in order to win cash that can be used to upgrade your ride. SRS is a racing game well along the lines of Midnight Club II and Need for Speed Underground. Instead, it seems like the developers took a complete 180 in every single fathomable way and created a game that’s so poorly developed that it lacks the staple of the very scene that it looks to depict, the Honda Civic.īut I’m probably getting ahead of myself. When I saw it at E3 2003 it wasn’t exactly amazing but it had some pretty compelling elements that could have added up to an intriguing game. I’ll admit that I was pretty concerned about the fate of the title as well. When 3DO had its fire sale one of its most highly touted properties was Street Racing Syndicate.