Street Racing Syndicate
Publisher: Namco
Platform: PS2, Xbox, PC
Four arduous months after E3, Street Racing Syndicate is here. I remember seeing it at E3 2003 when Need for Speed: Underground was shown behind the scenes. And it was nothing like the creature it is today. I kept my hopes up, believing the developers would turn 180 degrees and do something good with this title, lest it end up like all of the other attempts at creating a good import racing game.
Now we have what we've all wanted. A game made for import fanatics everywhere. SRS will achieve cult status. Regardless of what anyone else says, SRS is the best street racing game since Tokyo Xtreme Racer. I am sure you all remember TXR and probably still play it in your regular rotation. SRS will be the same for you.
First off, the game is free roaming, much like the Midnight Club series, but it also goes into more depth. It adds girlfriends, a garage, rare JDM vehicles, sanctioned and illegal events, tuning and respect. Oh yeah, did I mention the analog clutch feature? At first glance, it appears SRS is off to a good start.
From the get-go, you are dropped into the scene with a wad of cash after having a taste of balls-to-the-wall Skyline action. One thing you'll notice about each car is its handling characteristics. Each car is modeled after its real life counterpart. If the car is FWD, AWD, or RWD, it handles as such. The weight distribution characteristics even come into play here. You also get a huge selection of licensed parts with which to modify your virtual ride. True-blue 2NR readers will already be itching to find their personal ride and hop it up as far as they can go. Of course, the dream cars are there, too.
Eutechnyx, the developer, knows how important dyno numbers are to us. You can drop your ride on a dyno at any time to see what kind of power your mods are netting you. According to Eutechnyx, the game's dyno graphs are as close to reality as possible. It took all of the game's modeled cars and put them on the dyno. To top it all off, many of these cars were dynoed with the mods on them. So what you end up with is the nearest approximation of reality as you can get. No estimated or factory figures here. An R34 Skyline GT-R cranks out about 330 hp instead of the official 276 hp Nissan voluntarily assigns it.
By the way, as you drop the mods on your ride, you will see the changes reflected not only in your car's performance, but also in the engine bay or wherever you put them. When you change your ride height, it shows the car physically dropping. Kind of gives you the impression the guys at Eutechnyx were pretty-damn serious about making this game for us.
Well, all of these things are impressive. But how does SRS play? Is it even worth getting? I will say it now and I will say it again later: "Don't think. Buy." SRS is pretty much everything you could ever want in a racing game. I mentioned the analog clutch earlier, and there was a reason. This feature alone makes the game very interesting. Not only can you control when you shift, but how much pressure you put on the clutch. You can even pop the clutch, double-clutch, and do just about every clutch you know. Even if you're not using the analog clutch, the game takes it into consideration. Other racing games haven't considered this. Sure, if you rev too much, you'll get wheel spin, but in SRS, the game considers the engagement and disengagement of the clutch in all of its motions.