Juiced 2, if we were to use lazy critical comparative shorthand, is best described as the Fast and Furious of console racing games. With short-skirted beauties watching gleaming bonnets as they tear through streets overshadowed by neon skyscrapers, the game shares more than a passing resemblance to the boy racer styled flicks.

As a game the focus is on arcade style street racing, a vastly overpopulated crowd that the game barely manages to stand out from. Players hoping for some of the realism seen in Forza 2 or Gran Turismo are in for a rude boy awakening: the handling models in Juiced 2 glory in their ludicrous exuberance. You’ll be able to fling your modded machines into corners at breakneck speeds before pulling away without so much as scratching your paint. However, while the cars are certainly fun to control the handling is just too imprecise to make it really enjoyable.

Cars are set-up in one of two ways: standard and drift. Drift races see cars performing that sideways-on round corners handling so popular in Japanese street-racing videos. With only the slightest provocation from your thumb the car will launch itself into a 90° turn while you wrestle to bring the car under some kind of control and avoid curb. It looks good in replays but to play with, the imprecise handling on the already imprecise handling makes for some pretty unsatisfying gaming.

The meat of the game is to be found in the career mode that provides players with the chance to compete in standard, eliminator, team, wheel-to-wheel and drift events. Despite being based on illegal street racing there’s no traffic to avoid in the game’s various courses. Tracks are closed off so there’s no roaming off into the distance or furrowing your own path across the city but even so there’s a good amount and variety of different courses on offer.

Before races you can optionally bet money against competitors and all races are free to enter – a wise tweak to the original game’s clunky template. The game gets very difficult in the later levels but as the missions are based on a non-linear structure even less talented players should be able to make it through most of the game. Cash earned in races can be spent on a seemingly limitless amount of different car parts to trick out your vehicles with and you can even add in your own decals with a rudimentary editor.

While Juiced 2 is never going to be able to compete with the higher-profile, more fully-rounded experiences of Forza 2 and Project Gotham Racing 4 it still delivers a robust package, one especially helped by the competent online modes (including a whole online career mode as well as the usual head-to-head ranked races). For street-racing enthusiasts there is fun to be had here but for most fans of this genre, Juiced 2 should remain further down the list of must-have games.

3 out of 5