Fast & Furious: Showdown (FFS) review

 

Fast & Furious: Showdown is the name of the game to tie-in with the recent cinema blockbuster – we’ll just refer to it as FFS for shortened sake, and because, well, it’s a rather fitting moniker to boot. If there’s anything we’ve come to expect from games, it’s to have very low expectations of a film to game adaptation, and although there are very few exceptions to this rule, FFS is certainly no exception, in fact it could quite possibly be the epitome of the rule.

The game acts as a prequel as Detectives try to piece together a case against the iconic crew, and as they go through their files these set up as flashback-esque missions for you play through – many of which have you acting out memorable scenes from the old Fast films. The concept itself sounds promising enough, but in practice, it’s uninspiring play and easily the worst game I have played in recent years – and I’ve played Aliens: Colonial Marines.

The story offers up thirty missions, some of which are recognizable from the films. FFS is clearly not your typical racing game and is due some credit for trying something a bit different, as sub-par and unresponsive as the core gameplay mechanics are.

There’s also over twenty bonus challenges to complete, and whether story or challenge they all follow the same principles, and on a slightly more positive note – 2-player co-op features throughout, although there are no options to experience it online.

The bulk of the missions consists of hijacking, speeding away from armed vehicles, and more memorable scenes from films to act out. 2-player co-op spices this up somewhat, though it’s not forced and can be played solo with the player free to switch between two active crew members, so this typically has you at the wheel or shooting at enemy vehicles, to lining up for a vehicular hijack and exiting the car and leaping onto a tanker to hijack in typical QTE fashion.

The bad news is that driving is by no means an enjoyable experience, with corners often being a nightmare to take properly, to the point where it’s just easier to switch to the gunner/hijacker seat at corners for the A.I. to take the corner perfectly instead. That’s sadly about as reliable as your A.I. partner gets, if you opt. to be the gunner and leave the driving to the A.I. then it won’t be long before he gets confused, and screeches to a halt, randomly driving in the wrong direction and back again.

It’s frustrating that the most important part of the game – the driving itself, is so miserable and can often leave you with failed missions that require retrying. Missions typically have brief intro cinematics to setup the scenario, and there’s no skipping of these which is made all the more unbearable as you’re forced to hear it all over again each time a retry is necessary.

Fast and furious 6 showdown

The game’s visuals aren’t particularly inspiring either with low-resolution textures throughout; it’s harder to contemplate that FFS is a disc-based full price retail game, at first glance many could mistake it as a budget XBLA game. Although the fact FFS was given the green-light to be released at all is perhaps the most shocking of all, especially considering in this day and age where online features are the norm, and it’s sheer lack of quality and refinement is borderline insulting.

The movie to game tie-in formula holds true. If you play FFS for any length of time you too will likely fast and furiously remove it from your console in severe anguish and despair.

Score 1/10 – Review by Wayne Julian.

Written by: Rob Cram

Rob Cram has hundreds of video game reviews, thousands of articles under his belt with years of experience in gaming and tech. He aims to remain fair and free from publisher/developer influence. With his extensive knowledge, feels his gaming opinions are valid and worth sharing. Agreement with his views are entirely optional. He might have a bias towards cyberpunk.