Juiced looks good. Juiced sounds good. Don't let this deceive you.

The graphics in Juiced look really slick, with realistic looking licensed cars, a wide variety of realistic looking mods that you can add to your car and nice visual effects (such as nitrous visual effects and a good simulation of the 'speed-blur' effect you experience when your vision tries to adjust to a rapid change in speed). The tracks are varied and are nicely detailed and offer several varied layouts, with different tracks available in different sections of town - unlockable as you progress through the game. In addition to mods that you can add to your car, you can paint it with base colors, pearlescents and metallics and tweak your car to your heart's content (if you have enough money, that is). Juiced is not visually stunning, but it looks reallly good.

The sounds in Juiced are top-notch, as well. The engines sound different for the various cars, you can hear the gears as the car shifts and the nitrous sounds like it should (well, based on what I've seen in the movies). There are some issues with the voices, however. When you're letting your crew drive for you, the things they say seem to be several seconds past what would have prompted them. This leads to some confusion when your crew member says something about taking damage several seconds after glancing off the wall. This is more of an aggravation than anything else, since if you want to win, you'll need to pay close attention to the race and instruct your crew member to be more or less aggressive based on visual response of what you're seeing, not the late vocal report.

The music is not bad - a lot of it is not my style, but there's a good mix in there and you can select whether or not to play the songs on an individual song basis in the options, so if you really hate a song, you can toss it out.

The visual and audio presentation of Juiced is not bad at all - its downfall is its gameplay...

In my observation, Juiced is a game for wannabe car modders; if you had the money to trick out your ride and the skills to put that money to use, you'd probably be too busy to play Juiced. No offense, I find myself in this category. I haven't bought and installed a 'modification' to any car I've ever owned, despite the fact that I could probably buy a set of rims for the amount I've spent on import car magazines in the past several years.

I say all that to say this, "This is my genre. This is my favorite type of game. You have to understand just how much I wanted to like this game." Unfortunately, as much as this game had going for it (loads of product licenses, customization, real car models, realistic damage, etc.), it still manages to be un-fun. Sadly, I think I can see what went wrong in Juiced; there were several things in Juiced that seemed like the balance was off a little bit and that, rather than adjusting the things that were causing the problems, other factors were modified to make up for it. That's kind of like "fixing" a large dent in the side of your car by making a similar dent in the other side to "even it out".

One example that rushes to mind is the fact that the A.I. seems to drive almost flawlessly. These guys are tough. This is amplified if you happen to be in a car that handles like poo. (There are several to choose from.) So, instead of finding a way to throttle back the efficiency of the A.I., Juiced has a feature whereby opponents will get frazzled if you manage to drive close behind them. The first indication of this is that, they "notice" you, a la Metal Gear Solid, indicated by an exclamation point over there heads. Then, generally in a turn, they mess up - BAD - and typically end up driving the opposite direction for a bit. Not really all that believable, but it does tone down the A.I.'s superiority.

I can almost hear another issue that must have been brought up at some point, "What if you're down on your luck and can't afford to fix your car?" No fear, Juiced comes complete with Aliens, gangsters, benefactors and push-over relatives that all are either mechanics themselves or decide for some unknown reason to pay for your repairs. And only your repairs. That way, you can prolong your agony a bit more. You see, there are several races that require entry fees to compete in them. As you play, you'll see more and more of these races with increasing entry fees and fewer and fewer opportunities to enter races with the car you have (although there will be races that are out of your class) and the money you have (although there will be races that are out of your monetary reach).

If things really go sour, you could just sell your car and then buy a new one at the dealership. Spoiler alert - for some reason, if you end up at a point where you have no car, you will be visited by the money fairy or one of its close friends as mentioned above. This always brings your cash up to an even $30,000. This might sound cool now, but in practice, it's more than a little aggravating - probably only second to having less than $30,000 and trying to progress in the game.

So, if you don't want to simply sell off your car and start over, what other option is available? Well, you can participate in Showoffs. These are events in which you have to work very hard to pull off cool vehicular stunts and maneuvers. Interesting note: while it is possible to damage your car during these, you're playing for points, so you'll find out that you won't be raising any funds that way.

Hey, don't give up hope yet! You can host your own races by choosing an empty spot on the calendar. Choose your settings carefully, however, as the menu for setting up a race defaults to the last setting that was used - and Juiced doesn't offer any warning that the race you're about to use your last $1000 to host in hopes of making some money is not in the same class as any of your current cars. Granted, it was my mistake to set it up that way, but what would be the point of hosting a race that I can't even enter?!

Which leads me to the only thing I could do with that race - you can bet on races. Bet shrewdly and you might win some green. More likely, you'll lose money. So is the nature of gambling. Let this be a lesson to you. Also, you'll be able to bet with each racer only once per race - you can't go back and adjust your bet once it's made, so figure out your game plan before making your bets. I figured what the heck - I'd bet all of my money, that would take me down to nothing and perhaps I would receive another visit from the money fairy. Evidently that was another "issue" brought up during balancing - you can't do it. The most you can bet is all but ONE DOLLAR of your money. This allows you to get down to a single dollar, but you can't bet that dollar away. So, just race in any race and take on some damage, right? Wrong. The repair fairies come and just cover your repairs. Juiced is an exercise in frustration. I would have been happy if the game had basically said, "Game Over - you don't have enough money to continue" and left it at that. But it doesn't; it keeps letting you limp along with no real point in playing, showing you more and more new cars that are for sale, but not obtainable.

I figured, okay, so the gameplay suffers from a host of balancing issues. Perhaps the gameplay is better when you're playing online. WRONG! The first time you take your New Beetle and race against a Viper (I swear it was right there when the race started...), you'll find that multiclass races aren't fun. If you join a game that's already started, you'll join as a spectator. If you happen to look at a player's info page after saying you're ready and the game starts, you'll find that by looking at that page, you've said you're no longer ready - aka, you're not part of the race and you're a spectator again. I can only assume that the makers of Juiced realized that the game is not fun to play; they have several ways that you can avoid playing it, from spectating during online games (even if it's against your will) to betting on drivers to the interesting, though truly aggravating Crew feature.

Yes, you can build up your very own crew of loser drivers that evidently were waaaay too stupid to make the cut for your opponents' crews. So, they come knocking on your door. I accepted the first two to apply and after trying them out, I assume you're supposed to have stricter entry requirements. Letting your crew race for you will increase their ability with every race. I can't begin to imagine how many races you'd have to lose to actually get them to the point of being able to win a race. Even this would be a reasonable task of starting the race and then coming back to see if they won, if only it were that simple. In addition to not being able to win a race, they require as much attention (in the form of coaching them to be more aggressive or to ease off) as characters in The Sims - you know, at that really fun stage where your characters can't even go to the bathroom without guidance.

The hardest part of playing Juiced is making yourself play the game. The controls aren't bad, although the utter lack of control on some of the cars seems to be a bit too unrealistically lax for me to believe. (I find it hard to believe that these cars can be this hard to handle without any modifications to them - or if they aren't, that the car companies aren't having a fit over the way that their vehicles are being portrayed.)

Even if you look around on the internet for codes (yes, I did this after hours and hours of play and trying the online play feature - to see if maybe cheat codes could make it fun), you'll find that most of the tips, tricks and cheats out there have to do with disabling the auto-save feature (which does its best to ruin the game) and ways of making money that don't involve actually racing. Sad thing is, some of the most interesting parts of this game are not racing. The betting can get you some money if you figure out how to increase your odds, and having your crew race for you reduces your interaction to indicating how aggressive they should be. These provide some nearly interesting aspects to the game, but can't begin to save a racing game.

Can I say anything good about Juiced? Hmmm... The graphics and sound aren't bad. The "Crew Members" element is an interesting concept. Having licensed cars that can take realistic looking damage - unbelievable. (Well, this is more from the legal side of things, but the damage system is very nice - even to the point that the damage effects the handling of the car.)

That being said, some negative technical notes would include the fact that the physics has to be a bit off based on how difficult some of the cars were to handle (unmodified, mind you). The relative difficulty of building money in Juiced also contributed to its less-than-fun gameplay. Some of the technical issues seemed to stem from Juiced trying to be more "real" than other games. Instead, it ended up being less forgiving than other games (and even less forgiving in some cases than real life) and as a result, less fun.

As I said in the beginning, the target market for this game has to be the "wannabes" of the import modding world (such as myself). That having been said, I found it really sad that the game is as unforgiving as it is. As far as implemented features, it has almost everything it would need to allow you to see what your vehicle would look like with a variety of different modifications. I say your car because with any luck, if you're interested in modding, you probably own (or plan to get) one of the vehicles that are available in Juiced. Furthermore, since the parts available are actual products from real aftermarket parts companies, you could realistically try out different ideas and see what they look like as a plan for modifications to a real car. That would be cool. And, it is possible - but they really make you work for it. If they had added a "shopping cart" system to the customization shop, you could have added, replaced and removed parts until you got the look you wanted and then paid for the upgrades. Unfortunately, in Juiced, the only way to see how different front bumpers will look with different spoilers or rear bumpers is to actually purchase the parts one at a time and then see how they look with the other parts. Not only that, but if you buy a front bumper for your car and then replace it with a different one, you pay full price for both, but you simply lose the old bumper when you upgrade. You can't switch back to the old one and you don't get a discount on the new one. That's worse than real life.

Juiced suffers not only from balancing issues, but from poorly thought-out "quick-fix" solutions to balancing issues that merely introduce other balancing and playability issues. The feature that Juiced simply doesn't deliver on is the most important one - fun.