From the very first time you boot up the menu you realize that whilst there are a few modes, there aren’t very many gameplay options in comparison to other racing titles. The obligatory quick race option has made it into the game and the option is there to play team racing or solo racing. Team racing is a new addition to the game and instead of taking care of the one vehicle you actually take control of two or three vehicles. This means during a race you can instruct a vehicle to block another vehicle and when you’re finished you take control of the other car and finish the race with this other car. In team racing it’s possible to play through 32 challenges to win cash, which can be used to buy new cars.
There are a total of eighteen licensed cars in the game including the recently announced 2007 Shelby GT500. Aside from playing in the challenge mode you can also play in team championships. If you’d rather play on your lonesome then there are solo racing championships or solo single racing options. The game includes a two player split screen mode but there are probably other racing games you’d rather play against a friend. There is no Xbox Live support at all which is a severe disappointment. In total the game also includes 24 tacks that are all based around the streets of Los Angeles.
Welcome to Los Angeles.
Gameplay wise the game plays out very similarly to the rest of the Ford Racing series. Even when your vehicle is accelerating at 110 miles an hour it feels like you’re at a crawling pace and I seriously expected a pedestrian to walk up beside my vehicle and say hello at one point. The lack of a sense of speed is a major issue with the game and it takes a little while before you actually have enough cash to purchase a vehicle that feels remotely fast. The game includes a damage system that is mostly cosmetic. It’s not possible to cause a lot of damage to your vehicle but you can bust up lights and damage your car body, the damage is similar to that of Project Gotham Racing. The damage is supposed to affect your vehicle performance (and thus make the vehicles even slower) but we never experienced great slowdown from damaging our vehicle. At one stage we slammed into a wall at full speed and our vehicle stopped for about ten seconds, after this everything was okay and we could keep racing as if nothing had happened.
A ten second penalty would be much more of a concern if the AI wasn’t so easy to defeat. The game features rubber band AI so this ten second penalty was easily caught up. This also means that you’re never likely to win a race by a huge margin because the AI still manages to catch up. Overall the AI is just very dull, the AI isn’t particularly intelligence or aggressive and it really feels as if the AI is just sticking to a set race line. The track design is good overall but some of the obstacles set around the track are annoying as they can slow down your vehicle a lot if you clip one.
Visually the graphics of the game are of a higher standard than the graphics in Ford Racing. Los Angeles looks good and whilst there isn’t that much detail in the environments the tracks still look pretty good. The vehicles have a decent amount of detail as well. The damage looks good as well and your car does look like it has been in the wars at the end of a race. The sound however is a completely different story. There is no music soundtrack at all during the race so when you’re racing you’re just left to listen to the engine noises which are very average. The engine noises all sound very similar to each other as well. There is music during the menus but it is repetitive. There is also no support for custom soundtracks which is a sore omission, especially considering races are so quiet.
This is about as exciting as it gets.
Completing all that Ford Street Racing has to offer won’t take long. There just aren’t enough challenges and the championships are over quite quickly. After you’ve finished the game and unlocked all the vehicles there isn’t much of a reason to return to the game unless you’re a serious Ford fan and even then there are better titles out there with licensed Ford vehicles.
Ford Street Racing is a below average racing game. There are so many racing titles released that a game really needs to do something different to be able to distinguish itself from the pack. The team based challenges are a good idea but you generally only need to worry about yourself to win the championship. It just feels like Ford Street Racing is an unfinished game, there aren’t enough modes, there is no music in game and there is no custom soundtrack support or Xbox live compatibility. Even for a budget title this is a disappointing title because for the same price you can get many other racing games on the Xbox that have already finished the race when this game is just approaching the first corner.
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