Street Racing Syndicate
Well, it's another Friday and you know what that means. Time for another "guilty pleasure game" that Nay enjoys but very few in the world actually does. This time, we're talking about Street Racing Syndicate, a game that has only recently returned in the public eye for the past decade due to its listing on Steam. This is the only way to officially support the game as this one will probably never be re-released on any major consoles. Never say never, however, for stranger things have happened.
Street Racing Syndicate was one of the many byproducts of the mid-2000s, thanks to a little Hollywood movie known as The Fast And The Furious. Yesterday I talked about how an unlikely movie in Charlie's Angels pointed out the redundancy of playing a single player RPG with "two players." While this led to the discussion of Ehrgeiz, it's impossible to discuss almost every "car culture"-style video game without referencing Fast.
By no means was The Fast And The Furious the first ever movie centered around illegal street racing, as Jackie Chan's Thunderbolt was funded by his own fighting game, for all the melodrama that movie provided. It was, however, the first to send a ripple effect through all young car enthusiasts like myself. Never before had I saw cars being used as a form of expression in such a way, with the painted neons, vinyl wraps, and aerodynamics that we all thought added at least five "hearse purse" to our car. (Shout outs to James and Donut Media if you know you know).
Electronic Arts was the first to take advantage of the newfound interest left behind with Need For Speed Underground, a game that not only took the series back to its roots as a "pick up and play" racer with a simplistic career mode, but it also allowed players to express themselves much like the cars featured in The Fast And The Furious. It was also one of the first racing games to take everyday commuter vehicles, like the Honda Civic and the Ford Focus, and turn them into racing-bred machines. Players could literally begin the game with a starter car and take it with them all the way to the end although it would be a challenge.
In the Summer of 2004, three months before the release of Need For Speed Underground 2, Eutechnyx would attempt to reinvent the wheel by taking the foundation left by Underground and expanding it into an open-world map. Players could drive along a rather sizable map of Los Angeles, challenging races in the streets, avoiding cop cars, and winning various car meet events until they eventually become the top racer in the United States. Unfortunately, the results were flawed as there wasn't a designated "blueprint" for what the definitive "import tuner" racing game should be. In November that same year, Underground 2 would release and forever set the bar for what future racing games should strive to be.
So why is SRS relevant now? Because it tries its best to be many things at once but remarkably fails at almost all of them. It has a decent number of cars, around fifty licensed cars to be exact. The problem is that two-thirds of the entire car list are all duplicates. In games like Gran Turismo, having ten different versions of the Toyota Celica is a novelty, specifically for the enthusiasts who want to see every minute detail for the various trims available. In a racing game like Street Racing Syndicate, a Mazda RX-7 Spirit R and a Bathurst are the same RX-7, just different badging.
This becomes even more hilarious when the Bathurst in question is locked behind arcade mode content outside of the game's main story mode. By the time the player unlocks the regular Mazda RX-7, this new "Bathurst" variant is useless because each of the parts are the same across all cars. There are upgrades in the Garage that are literally useless and are only there to fill inventory space should the player not know the specific parts to buy in order to upgrade their car. It's frustrating, especially when earning money is such a grind in this game and having it go to waste never feels good.
How does the gameplay fair then? Well, like an old Flash racing game on Newgrounds that someone whipped up in about a week. Each of the cars handle like stiff cardboard, only becoming passably drivable once fully upgraded. Each car feels as if a gust of wind will topple them over, as cornering at the wrong angle had caused my car to tip over more often than not. Certain cars like the RX-7 are suited for drifting and earning Respect points while others, like the Toyota Supra, are meant for circuit racing. All of the courses in the game, with the exception of the Mulholland Road mountains, take place within the city so having a nimble car that can handle the grid system is a must.
In order to progress, the player needs to earn enough Respect points through winning races and performing car stunts. This is similar to the Project Gotham Racing series where earning Kudos unlocked cars, tracks, and overall progressed the game. Driving dangerously and bold rewarded the player accordingly. Unfortunately, if you're not using a car suited for drifting, like the RX-7 or the AE86 (which is only unlockable in Arcade Mode, once again), it's hard to earn enough points to unlock more events. The player will need to earn at least 77k to unlock the final race series and that requires the coveted "250 Respect" points.
The quickest way to earn points is by drifting, taking shortcuts, drafting, and catching air over jumps. There are many different words and terminologies all flying at once, some of which are even the wrong terms, so I'll try my best to define the more peculiar drift names that players will see flash across their screen.
Power Over and Two Wheels are the two drifts that player will see often, which simply means if there are two wheels on the ground while the other two wheels are over a curb and you engage in a drift, it's a "two-wheeled drift." Power Over means you're using your car's torque to glide through a corner with throttle and steering control rather than use the brakes.
Choku-Dori is used in the wrong context as the style Street Racing Syndicate refers to is more of a Manji Drift. In actual drifting terms, "choku-dori" is short for "chokusen dorifuto," which is drifting side by side in a straight line. Players familiar with Mario Kart DS may infamously recall this technique as "snaking," shouts out to all the Dry Bones players. Manji drifting is chaining drifts together in a single sequence, which is what is labeled as "choku" here.
Kansei Drift, not to be confused with Kansai, is an Initial D reference. The scene below explains itself, but it's also known as an Inertia Drift, using the car's g-force to propel itself at an angle by shifting one direction to its intended direction. Feint drifting is similar in this regard, but it requires more control. None of these terminologies really matter as at the end of the day the player is earning points by driving like a madperson, but I figured it was cool to mention these tidbits of trivia.
Unfortunately the main draw of the game is also its weakest. During this time, models and cars went together like fried rice and chicken wings. It was impossible to see one without the other and this game was no different. By completing challenges, the player not only earns Respect points but they also earn "girlfriends." The player can unlock up to eighteen girls, all with three unlockable clips where they dance provocatively with less and less clothing the more the player wins races. Aside from the race intros being different for each girl, giving the player over 18 unique animations, there's no reason to pursue this unless the player really needs "respect" points.
Street Racing Syndicate's soundtrack is repetitive but some of the songs there are pretty good. Not listed anywhere in the soundtrack for whatever reason is Drunken Tiger's "Fist of Fury." Drunken Tiger is a legendary Korean hip-hop group and for years I never pieced the connection that it was them. Being as they are the "who's who" of Korean hip-hop, it was a pleasant surprise to hear them for the first time in a game developed for the western market.
With that said, it was incredibly flawed, the AI cheated as they would literally "instant transmission" to your location regardless how far ahead the player was from the rest of the pack. The last car meet was especially brutal as no other section of the game required the player to go through what is basically "Mount Akagi in Los Angeles" as a gauntlet. Even then, it's over before it really starts to ramp up. Also there are "cop chases" but it offers very little for the player other than an annoyance.
While Street Racing Syndicate was lost in time at worst and a cult classic at best, this wouldn't be the last time that Eutechnyx and Namco would collaborate as they would release the spiritual successor using The Fast And The Furious license itself! Time is a flat circle and in due time I will love to cover what many considers the best Fast And Furious game ever developed. Of course, with that being said, the bar is incredibly low, but that's another topic for another time.
Street Racing Syndicate is available on Steam.