July 2004

Wednesday, July 7, 2004

Acclaim Reveals Juiced "Show Off" Mode + Screens
Steve @ 10:54 PM EDT
You’ve just blown $50,000 upgrading every nut, bolt and panel of a Nissan 300 ZX, transforming a moderately hot production sports coupe into the automobile equivalent of a fighter jet. Why? Simply because it will blow away anything that dares to race you? Not quite! It’s because it makes you look good, especially when you start pulling crazy maneuvers on the street, getting the crowd going wild as you donut and J-turn your way across town. It’s good to ‘Show-off’ and it’s only available in Juiced.

What every modder craves is attention and respect in equal measure, and the ‘Show-off’ event is exactly where to get both… or lose both! In Juiced, ‘Show-off’ is a totally unique mode providing a freestyle event against the clock. It’s not racing, but you have a set amount of time to pull classy maneuvers and impress the crowd. What’s more, ‘Show- Off’ mode is not only available in the single player game. It’s available online too!

In Online Career mode, you get the chance to go head to head with up to six other petrol heads simultaneously, battling it out for the maximum points. You take online any of the cars you have bought and modded in your Career Collection, complete with personalized paint job. Best of all, it’s possible to compete in a ‘Show-off’ for Pink Slips – winner not only takes the glory, but the opponent’s car too!

Sophisticated physics are what make the ‘Show-off’ mode possible and so much fun. In the movies, we’ve all seen Bootleg turns (U-turns), J turns, donuts and other motorized madness. In Juiced you get to try them all, in over 45 different types of car. It takes real skill to master all the moves in every model… on the way you’ll find that some cars are better than others for certain moves, and that’s all part of the game.

How well you perform also depends very much on the way you have modified your car. For example, a four wheel drive Skyline kitted out with rock-solid suspension, full spoilers and the most expensive tires is probably not your best choice for drifting or pulling donuts. On the other hand, an old Nissan 300 ZX with rear wheel drive, up-rated power and a short ratio gear-box is just right. Take a look at the real-life example. Front wheel drives can be fun too, but you’ll need to learn completely different ways of executing the same maneuvers.

In all there are nine distinct maneuvers to master in ‘Show-off’ mode, from donuts to high speed 360-degree turns, but that’s just the start. By linking moves together successfully, you’ll boost your score considerable. Make a mistake and you’ll wipe out your hard earned points.

Once you have mastered each maneuver, your mission is to string them together to create high-speed ballet in cars. So start with a half dozen, smoking donuts, nitro your way to a maximum speed run, bleed off energy in a sweeping drift around a curve and get ready for the grand finale… a 180 degree turn that has you traveling backwards at high speed, ready to execute a classic J-Turn. And to put a cherry on top, another round of donuts followed by a handbrake turn as you dash to cross the line. Executed perfectly, this sequence will have the crowd screaming for more, and see your score multipliers go through the roof.

Because it takes skill to master the moves, it’s quite easy to damage your vehicle getting it right, so it’s best to start off in something that’s not too expensive to repair. Once you feel confident, it’s time to start taking your better cars out on the streets. The more ‘Juiced’ your ride, the more respect you’ll earn in certain parts of town. Where you perform is key too. Some areas of the City are better suited to show-offs than others and only by gaining enough respect to enter any neighborhood will you get to see all the streets. And if you get it wrong, the crowd lets you know, heckling you and taunting you on poor performance.

The fine control of the maneuvers requires very careful balancing between throttle and brakes. Drifting is a good example, where you approach the bend and decelerate, then flip the steering wheel to get the back end out while accelerating to get the drift going. In the case of a 360 degree turn it’s all about getting the timing right for braking and accelerating. If you don’t get the braking right, you won’t have enough momentum to approach 180 degrees, and if you don’t accelerate at the right spot you won’t pull the nose around to face the same direction as the one you started with. Getting it wrong in both cases will probably lead to damage because you need relatively high speed to execute a 360.

In the Career mode of Juiced, you’ll need to compete in ‘Show-offs’ to gain enough respect to complete the game. And while it’s not racing, it will teach you dozens of useful tricks for getting out of trouble when you lose it on the track. Of course, hi-scores in the ‘Show-off’ events’ are recorded and stored on-line if you have the right broadband connections. On Xbox, you don’t even have to be playing someone else to get your good results up on the global rankings. As long as you have an active Xbox Live link, your scores are posted automatically.

Juiced Show-off Mode Screens