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Street Racing Syndicate

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Yet another in a long list of racing games, SRS: Street Racing Syndicate is commendable for the things it does right, but it loses points for the simple mechanics it fails. Like its more popular counterpart, Need For Speed Underground, SRS is dedicated to the illegal, and much more fun, street racing. What this amounts to is buying a car you might actually be able to afford in real life, and then turning it into a gaudy, neon festooned speed machine. It's a concept that worked incredibly well for EA, so it goes to figure Namco's attempt would be at least as good as NFSU, right? If that were the case then perhaps more people would remember Killer Instinct, and Mortal Kombat would be but a memory.

If you strip away all the glitz and glamour and the collectable doo-dads, then you are left with the core of the game, which is obviously racing. In order to be successful, a racing game these days should either shoot for realistic (Gran Turismo) or the obscene (Burnout). SRS can't really decide which camp it wants to join, and as such loses much of the actual game play that holds up racing titles. You can have a car travelling 130mph, and still take a sharp curve, with out ever touching the brakes. Then on the very same race, you'll hit the same curve at a slower speed and you'll fishtail out of control. This sort of sloppy control makes the game seem somewhat random, and a little untested.

The way the races are set up garners much respect for forward thinking. Given a car, players are then left in a city, with complete freedom on where to drive. Objectives are marked on the map, and you can complete them at your leisure. For some bizarre reason, Namco decided gamers have a short attention span, and have a huge "reminder" pop up on screen every 2 minutes, telling players to stop screwing around and go to the next story point. Since the objective is clearly marked on the map, I see no reason for such a repeating reminder. Besides that nagging complaint having an entire, albeit slightly small, city to drive around in is very nice. If you decide to ignore the objectives you can search out other racers to challenge, who can be just about anywhere. Some of the challengers can be parked at certain markers, or they can be driving around the city. In order to start a race with one of these, players stop behind them and flash their high beams. A wager is made, and the race begins.

Unlike other games, SRS wants to hammer home that street racing is illegal. To do this they remind you constantly, and even throw in some cops, just for fun. While driving around you might get a warning that cops are around. This is your cue to slow down, or suffer a cop chasing mini-game. At first this sounds fun, until you realize the police A.I. swings from superhuman to Forrest Gump. Sometimes they will even appear out of thin air, which I'm not sure if it's due to the low draw distance, or something else entirely. In any event you are "caught" if you fail to gain enough distance from them, which means that you can still be ahead of them, and you'll still be ticketed. Since money in this game flows like water that means little, but it is annoying.

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