I remember sitting down with my brand new Mega Drive, when I was young enough that English Summers were doused in warmer rain instead of the molten hell they are now. As I slotted in an Altered Beast cartridge, I could feel this nervous excitement. I was no longer in the world of NES where every game was a blocky approximation of what I had seen in smoky bars on stand-up machines. This was a console capable of doing proper ports. I had sweaty palms.
An hour later, I turned off Altered Beast, I didn’t have the words at the time to articulate it, but I was disappointed. It was the first time I realised that some games weren’t supposed to live outside of Arcades. Putting money into a cabinet is part of the excitement and tension of many of these games. As you lose health/lives, that can be plotted to a real financial loss and urge you to play better. That pressure is gone when you can just press START and replenish everything.
It is a tale as old as home consoles, and I am sure lots of other writers have gone into detail about the way that Arcade games frequently need more to be a compelling purchase decision… And yet, we are still getting projects like Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition on consoles.
So, let’s start this review properly – having just written about an arcade-style racer that was like an insight into an over stimulated child’s mind, I am happy to say that Fast & Furious Arcade gives that game a run for its money. It is easy to imagine sitting/standing in a modern arcade, with a beer in hand, and selecting a car to race on one of the loosely F&F themed tracks then being blasted by the sound and the spectacle. This is a game that would successfully fight for a player’s attention in a loud environment. Harking back to Daytona USA there is a rolling start – not even the beginning is slow – and as soon as the car crosses the starting line things start exploding and people are screaming in your ear. This is all about quickly inserting a player into the action.
Within seconds the player is encouraged to drift and boost (with the car lurching up on to two wheels when you do). The logic is that if you aren’t traveling at over 100 km an hour at all times then you are doing it wrong.
All of the cars spin, flip and cartwheel across the courses with corners only slowing them down a fraction, because going fast (and furious) is all that matters.
Nitrous Boosts and electric attacks are littered throughout each of the tracks and picking them up other causes the other racers to get thrown off course, or cause the whole screen to melt as your car hurtles down the course.
The aim of each race is to come first, but finishing in any position will move on to the next track. Finish in first position on all tracks and you will unlock extreme versions of them, and manage to do that in the same car and you will unlock a “Furious” version of it that has even more nitrous in it.
There is a versus mode that you can play against a friend locally, and that is your lot, unless you like looking through the options menu.
The replay value is low. In fact, racing through the levels again exposes some of the artificiality of the game. For example, there are at least 2 loops of a track, with the explosion resulting in things changing on the second time around. On the first loop of every track I found myself always fighting for 5th place and by the final loop, no matter how well I raced, I was always in first or second. As long as I saved some boost, I could always secure pole position.
All of this would work in an Arcade setting, feeling like I was clawing my way to the front even if I was racing poorly would feel rewarding. However, the paucity of content on home consoles and the quickness you will get through it fails to justify the full price.
The Fast & Furious tie-in is also tenuous, there is not much to add to the franchise’s lore, and the only a couple of the vehicles spark any sort of nostalgia. There is no voice acting, none of the soundtrack(not hoping for Kid Rock or Whiz Kalifa, but we could have got The Mad Capsule Markets surely), and nothing that makes it a meaningful to add to the world.
F&F Arcade Edition is a solid couple of hours of entertainment, a bit more if you can find a like-minded friend. Otherwise this is a solid, but unremarkable, port that does nothing to expand past its origin’s roots.
Conclusion
This is an arcade-perfect port that is fast, flashy and furious. Sadly, this also has no extra frills and struggles to justify an afternoon of play.
This game was reviewed based on Xbox S|X review code, using an Xbox S|X console. All of the opinions and insights here are subject to that version. Game provided by publisher.
