Yet another in a long list of racing games, SRS: Street Racing Syndicate is commendable for the things it does right, but it loses points for the simple mechanics it fails. Like it’s more popular counterpart, Need For Speed Underground, SRS is dedicated to the illegal, and much more fun, street racing. What this amounts to is buying a car you might actually be able to afford in real life, and then turning it into a gaudy, neon festooned speed machine. It’s a concept that worked incredibly well for EA, so it goes to figure Namco’s attempt would be at least as good as NFSU….right? If that were the case then perhaps more people would remember Killer Instinct, and Mortal Kombat would be but a memory.
If you strip away all the glitz and glamour and the collectable doo-dads, then you are left with the core of the game, which is obviously racing. In order to be successful, a racing game these days should either shoot for realistic (Gran Turismo) or the obscene (Burnout). SRS can’t really decide which camp it wants to join, and as such loses much of the actual gameplay that holds up racing titles. You can have a car traveling 130mph, and still take a sharp curve, with out ever touching the brakes. Then on the very same race, you’ll hit the same curve at a slower speed and you’ll fishtail out of control. This sort of sloppy control makes the game seem somewhat random, and a little untested.
The way the races are set up garners much respect for forward thinking. Given a car, players are then left in a city, with complete freedom on where to drive. Objectives are marked on the map, and you can complete them at your leisure. For some bizarre reason, Namco decided gamers have a short attention span, and have a huge “reminder” pop up on screen every 2 minutes, telling players to stop screwing around and go to the next story point. Since the objective is clearly marked on the map, I see no reason for such a repeating reminder. Besides that nagging complaint having an entire, albeit slightly small, city to drive around in is very nice. If you decide to ignore the objectives you can search out other racers to challenge, who can be just about anywhere. Some of the challengers can be parked at certain markers, or they can be driving around the city. In order to start a race with one of these, players stop behind them and flash their high beams. A wager is made, and the race begins.
Unlike other games, SRS wants to hammer home that street racing is illegal. To do this they remind you constantly, and even throw in some cops, just for fun. While driving around you might get a warning that cops are around. This is your cue to slow down, or suffer a cop chasing mini-game. At first this sounds fun, until you realize the police A.I. swings from superhuman, to Forrest Gump. Sometimes they will even appear out of thin air, which I’m not sure if it’s due to the low draw distance, or something else entirely. On any event you are “caught” if you fail to gain enough distance from them, which means that you can still be ahead of them, and you’ll still be ticketed. Since money in this game flows like water, that means little, but it is annoying.
Another aspect of this game is the respect points that you garner for winning races, completing objectives, and pulling off stunts. As you gain more respect more races open up and people begin to pay attention. By “people” I mean models, who open up another part of SRS. When you gain a certain amount of respect, women show up on your map as events. When you stop to chat with the blonde standing on the street corner in a thong, you receive a challenge. Personally, I’d only stop for such a woman if I had $300 to waste, but hey. If you complete the presented challenge, then you gain a girlfriend. That’s right, take notes boys, if you have a car women will like you. This part of the game is embarrassing, and severely degrading to women everywhere. Once you complete the challenges, the women become your property, in the way that they are just another betting chip. You can offer the women up for collateral in races, or if you’re not that kind of scum, you can just ogle videos of them dancing. Maybe I’m not “street” enough, but the women I know would be pissed if somebody tried to trade them. Any self-respecting guy over the age of 13 should feel ashamed that this aspect has been aimed right at their demographic.
One thing that bothers me about the racing is the fact that I never lost a race, not even in the beginning races, where I forgot to complete upgrade my ride. While I don’t like losing every other race, there just isn’t any incentive to upgrade past a further point, since you can win by a mile every time. What SRS does have for customizable options however, does eclipse what NFSU has to offer, in terms of amount of swag offered. From the start you are given multiple changes to the look of your car, and can even upgrade the individual parts separately. I’m sure true car fans will appreciate the differences in each part, though I wish there was a chart comparing performance, before and after the upgrade. People like me, we’ll call them nerds, who can tell you the best upgrades for a computer, rarely know the best muffler to put under their car. I am generalizing here, and I really don’t care. The sheer amount of options in which to make your car your own, are commendable but ultimately useless. I never felt I needed a new piece to edge out a better racer. I just held down the gas button and never looked back.
The visual options run into a problem, which takes us to the technical side of SRS. While the decals and vinyls seem like a good idea, the graphics are so muddled that you really can’t tell what is on your car. I stuck, what I thought was a naked woman on the rear of my car, only to have somebody ask why I had smiley faces on my trunk. Everything in this game, from the cars, to the city and especially the models all looked somewhat hazy and not at all attractive. It is hard to reconcile this fact with the fact that this game came a year after NFSU. The joy of customising your ride is completely lost in SRS, which for me is the major draw of this genre. Other small technical issues include lengthy loading times, no adjustable camera and no way to adjust the soundtrack.
With so many racing games on the market, SRS certainly has an edge of some competitors, but still has a lot of catching up to do. NFSU beats this game in just about every category, though people need to realize that NFS wasn’t such a hot game until its third installment. The potential for greatness is here though, buried beneath some nagging technical issues, and embarrassing attempts at a street attitude. For fans of racing games, who’ve not had anything good in about a year, SRS might be for you. Casual racing fans might want to wait for the inevitable sequel, to see if Namco can fix some of these errors. MD
