"Woow, how are you playing this game!" my father said while watching me play Fast & Furious Showdown
Thisis total rubbish. Everything in it is as bad as it can humanly be possible. I mean who signed the paper to approve the release of this abomination? How can someone look at it, play it and say "Sure let's publish it and sell it for 60$"? Who did the playtesting of this game and said "It's fine how it is, go with it"? These people are the ones who ruin the gaming industry and are the ones that deliver cr*ppy licensed games... yes I am looking at you Sega and Activision! It's all about the money I guess, easy cash-ins, even if the games are total cr*p.
I recently saw Furious 6 and I really liked it. Sure it was "Fu*k Physics" throughout the entire movie, but who cares, the action scenes were spectacular and the story was very interesting too. And I really think that if given to the proper team with proper resources to back them and with enough time at their disposal, there could be an amazing racing action game based on the Fast & Furious universe. But we are still far off that and frankly far of good licensed games overall. Fast & Furious Showdown is an example of how utterly bad licensed games are nowadays.
I played through it's entirety and by the end of it I was very glad that it was all over. IT WAS VERY VERY VERY BAD! Noticed the three "very", that's how bad it was. The story didn't make any sense. You start playing as the bad guy, Shaw, from the sixth movie driving that really cool car-flipping car from the movie then jump (back in time I guess) to playing as Brian and Tej who are trying to steal a truck ( I guess before the events of Fast 4) and then shifting (ahead?) to Han and Tego in Mexico (during Fast 4, maybe?) shooting high caliber weapons kiling and destroying countless vehicles and shooting harpoons to bring down cell towers while during cut-scenes you see agent Riley and Monica Fuentes chat about Shaw's "criminal activity" in the present ... YEAH it's all fu*ked up and it is really really bad! It didn't made any sense to me and I have seen every Fast movie. What is this, Flashback-ception?
Gameplay wise, it sucks. The car physics are to make fun of, the handling is probably one of the worst ever in racing games history. And when I say bad, it is really really bad. There is nothing satisfying about it. The Hot Wheels games that come inside cereal boxes had better driving mechanics that this game. Apart from the awful driving sequences there are also some sequences that are as bad and maybe even more than the driving sequences. So there is a "jump out of a speeding car onto a truck, shimmy over it's side to hijack it" sequence ,which btw is really bad, and also there are some "shooting sequences" where you are shooting a UZI or a 50-cal and destroying waves of "brainless" enemy cars. There is also a broken sequence where you have to shoot a harpoon into some towers to tear them down, but it is so bad that it is a pain to play through. Also there are some other bullsh*t sequences that are equally as bad and maybe even more as the previous ones.
In most of the races you will not be alone, you will have another character from the movies with you. For example in one race there was Brian and Tej and you can play as either of them and you can switch between them in-game by clicking the triangle button. The switch is instantaneous and that is cool, but it kinda breaks the game. How? Well, this race was called "Elimination" and every minute the last car is disqualified. Now picture this, Brian drives a fast sports car and Tej drives a 4x4 that is slower than the other cars and you have to switch between them in order to be in first and second place to win the race and continue through the story. Here we come to the two other bad things of this game. First, you car has a health bar and once depleted, that's it, you'll need to restart. And second, the difficulty is crazy. The other cars are ruthless and will surpass you with no effort whatsoever even when you are at your top speed and then there is the traffic. OMG the traffic spawns in front of you and you can see them spawning, but when you are doing 270km/h you will definitely crash into them. Now remember the health bar? Crashing depletes it quickly, but the worst thing is that your companion is bad and many many times he will crash and total his car, resulting in a failed mission. All of these things combined make this one of the most difficult, annoying and nerve racking racing game I have ever played.
The presentation is extremely bad too. From the menu which has bold text (that style belongs in a f*cking museum), the uninspired car models that look extremely extremely bad, the lighting and shadows effects are terrible, the environments are super dull and ugly looking. I remember playing in a level set in a highway where I couldn't literally see where I was going. The background was very disorienting and the bad lighting just messed up even more my sense of orientation. The whole sense of movement and speed feels really bad. Voice acting is terrible, don't expect the real actors here. The only thing that I can say it was even a little good was the soundtrack. It was what you can expect from a Fast and Furious game.
Bottom Line: This is one of the worst games I have ever played in my life. The story doesn't exist, gameplay is BAD, visually it looks TERRIBLE. PS2 hell, PS1 games looked better than this. It looks so bad that a friend on Twitter tweeted me that "Snake on Nokia 3310 had better graphics than this". No multiplayer, a sh*tty co-op mode "thing" and just a boring, annoyingly crazy difficult singleplayer. The hours I spent playing this are never coming back and now I wish that instead of playing it, my time would have been better spent watching the ceiling or counting the number of stitches on a cushion. DO NOT BUY IT! And if someone is gifting it to you, tell them to shove it you know where.
Fast & Furious Showdown was reviewed on a PS3 using a promo copy provided by Activision. Fast & Furious Showdown is now available for PS3, Xbox 360, Wii U and 3DS.
