Street Racing Syndicate (GameCube) Review

There are a number of game modes to get into. Street Mode is the main one, from here you buy your own car, customise it, take part in races and challenges, meet woman and do various other 'hip' things. Then there is Arcade Mode and Multiplayer mode; which are self-explanatory really. When you enter Street Mode you are a total rookie. You 'hook up' with some uber-experienced shaven headed character who stupidly gives you the keys to his super-pimped 'ride' and asks you to win a race for him. You obviously oblige and so long as you hold forwards enough and steer around the corners you should get through that one no problem.

Baldy then gives you a massive amount of money to go and buy and pimp up your own ride, then you're on your own in the big city. After picking one of a number of available (crap and good) cars like the Mitsubishi Evolution VIII, Subaru Impreza S202 and Volkswagen Golf VR6 you get to do some serious pimping. We chose the Subaru as nobody in his or her right mind would want to drive a Golf or a Mitibushi. So, we take our very bog-standard Imperza and try to drive it, hit a corner at over 40mph and you will go skidding all over the place, try to go over 70mph on a long straight and you might be in quite a bit of trouble. We would just be embarrassed to put this into a hard-core street race, so some severe pimping was in order. Off to the garage we went to put on some banging trims and the like.

This has to be one of the best bits of the game. Being able to take your out-the-box auto and REALLY beef it up is very rewarding. You can take an average 'family car' and pump it full of speed, neon lighting and flame stickers, paint it fluorescent pink and go and tear up the streets. You're dunked out on the streets with your car and a whole lot of exploring to do. If you're the sort of person that likes to drive about, being leisurely and finding things then simply hold down the R trigger and steer your way to challenges various, if like us, you're lazy, simply press Z to open up a city map. From here you can 'warp' to various different areas.

Garage, Warehouse and Showroom are the default ones, so you can repair and add parts to your ride, check back at your HQ or buy a new automobile for grand driving pleasures. The main meet of the game is in the Crew Meets. Here you race in various different locales from the streets of Philadelphia, Miami and Los Angeles. Unlike most games of this ilk, there is such a thing as daytime, and every so often you will actually see the sun, so be warned. However, the vast majority of it does take place at night and thus once again we have the problem of neon lighting...

It is a bit of a pet peeve of ours. There is something uncommonly distracting about a gaming world in which everything (and we mean everything) reflects everything else, and every other thing lights up and reflects off the next thing onto the next thing. It makes concentrating on a race at high speed quite confusing at time and could probably give one or two people quite nasty headaches. Rant over. Thankfully, the game looks really quite lovely, the car models all damage fairly nicely, but not so badly as to make them look like crap-sacks. The city location is all very nice and detailed...and shiny, but there can certainly be no complaints here. The game spanks along at a quite awesome speed and with no noticeable slowdown, it is all very impressive.

The races then. As well as the Crew Meets there are Street Races, where you simply drive up and challenge an individual for a cash wager prize, then you have the Roll Up Races, whereby a car drives past you with 'Race Me' floating above it, you turn around and race after it, flash your headlights and race them. Then you have Respect Challenges, and it is here that you will meet the women of SRS. Once you get a little way into the game you will be able to hook-up with a woman, and all you have to do is earn her respect. In order to do this, you drive up to a plastically enhanced wonder-pixel, rev your engine up, flash your exhaust pipe and do something vaguely impressive at her request. There is a vast menagerie of sluts women available in the game, simply go to your Warehouse to select one, view her 'stats', enjoy some strip-tease footage and generally worry about the morality of this game.

Indeed, one of the rewards for winning games is the 'enjoyment' of watching some disproportioned piece of totty wiggle on your screen excitably. We're not slightly cynical about this; we are VERY cynical about it. Aside from cash and respect, this game rewards you with women. You select the girl you want to 'roll with' from the Warehouse, and every Crew Meet or other challenge you then complete is accompanied by her, should you do well she will 'reward' you with some FHM style excitement.

Races comprise of a number of different set-ups. Some take place in sewers, some on the streets at night, some during the day; some are about pure speed around a lap of a track, whilst others involve skilled steering and manoeuvring of your car. And in general, the controls and realism of the car movement is great. We made the massive mistake of entering and un-pimped new car into a Crew Meet, needless to say we got totally trashed. Indeed, if you don't tune up your car at all the second you hit a corner at speed you will lose all control, so it is best to go with cheaper rides and them pimp them up to the nines, tens and elevens.

What else do you need to know about SRS? Well, aside from the excellent controls, lovely graphics and vaguely inoffensive sound there is a lot of game to be enjoyed. With loads of Crew Meets to get through, tonnes of woman to 'discover' in the shiny night, a gay abandon of street challenges and enough cars to keep even the most Auto Trader obsessed nut happy, this game is choc-a-block full of exciting and fun things to do.

Unlike so many other racing games of late, SRS has that ever so hard to come by asset of speed. Racing along at 150mph actually feels like it, you can feel the car losing control under you, slightly taking off and when you hit a corner just right the feeling that rips through you is genuinely quite exhilarating; and at the end of the day, isn't this what racing games are all about? We can't drive like this on real roads (some American's may beg to differ, but legally you can't), so in videogames we get the chance to fly about in a car as if it is a giant bouncy ball of speed and adrenaline.

The multiplayer is a little dry, but fun nonetheless. With only 2 players being allowed to compete it is a little lonely, but the sheer fun and speed of the game makes up for that. The tracks and courses available are excellent, and if you are both of a similar ability you will literally be racing right down to the line, shaking your controllers and screaming in a pointless attempt to make your VW Golf go that tiny bit faster. You can also take part in Iron Man, a series of progressively harder races. Nicely, any damage you get in the first race will remain in the second, which will remain in the third, all the way through to the last. And as the races get harder along the way, the damage gets worse and worse, until by the end of it you are driving a battered, smouldering box. Also on the disk you will find Quick Race, Speed Trails and Checkpoint Challenges.

All these are well and good, but none beat life in Street Mode. The environment is surprisingly large, and during the times that you can actually be bothered to drive to a race rather than warping you will find a whole playground of stupid motorists...and POLICE! Yes, the Old Bill have made it into this one too, thankfully. Life in the city would be a little dull was it not for the fun of being able to gently shun a police car and then proceed to try and run away! Be careful though, if you do break the law and the police catch up with you (and they're VERY good at it) you could end up with a hefty fine. If you're particularly poor at the time (we had $1 at one point) they might just let you off with a warning...ingenious!