The Fast and The Furious (2004)

The Fast and The Furious is an arcade racing game developed and published by Raw Thrills. The game was later released for the mh:awesomegames:Wii as Cruis'n, which was developed by Just Games Interactive and published by Midway Games. It is the fifth installment in the Cruis'n series.

The Fast and The Furious

 * 1) Outdated and repetitive gameplay. Plays way too similar to the Cruis'n series (and you wonder why the Wii port got the Cruis'n name...).
 * 2) Very short and boring Point-2-Point tracks that last for only two minutes.
 * 3) The visuals look horrendous, looking like a late Nintendo 64 game (but that is understandable because this is one of Raw Thrills' first games (alongside Target: Terror)).
 * 4) Complete lack of depth. Not much new to the Cruis'n series other than the new upgrade system.
 * 5) Little to no content. There is only 16 cars and 12 tracks compared to Exotica N64 version's 28 cars and 12 tracks (over 60 different track variations).
 * 6) Rubber-band and unfair AI. When you hit a wall or a car, the AI cars will overtake you without a chance.
 * 7) No replay value.
 * 8) Despite it being named "The Fast and The Furious", it feels like it's a loose adaptation of the series. Sometimes, it doesn't even feel like it's part of the series at all.
 * 9) Repetitive sound design and soundtrack. The soundtrack is not as memorable as the movies or even the earlier Cruis'n games. This is also the first and only arcade Cruis'n game to not have a vocal theme.
 * 10) The traffic's AI in the game is unrealistic, they can be seen anywhere in the track (e.g the park and railway part in the Central Park, L.A River in L.A getto, etc), this is completely unrealistic as no car can go there, as in Drift's traffic is different as they don't appear in the said places.
 * 11) Most if not all of the tracks’ settings are not accurate to their real life counterparts, for example, the Golden Gate track lacks Fort Point under the archway on the southern side of the Golden Gate Bridge, and in the Chinatown X track (San Francisco’s Chinatown), Lombard Street (the street that is known for its 8 turns) is significantly longer than its real-life counterpart and leads straight to a jump towards the Coit Tower which are nowhere near each other in real life.

Cruis'n

 * 1) As stated before, it's just a port of The Fast and The Furious arcade game with the Cruis'n name slapped onto it, the reason being that Midway lost the Fast & Furious license mid-way (no pun intended) through development. It's even worse than the original...
 * 2) Long loading times, sometimes taking up to a minute just to load the race.
 * 3) Bad car handling. There is 2 control choices, Motion steering or D-pad. Motion steering has the better handling than the D-pad.
 * 4) Poor optimization, with constant frame dropping.
 * 5) The sound quality is terrible. Game audio only plays through one speaker, while the music plays from both.
 * 6) The audio can glitch, sometimes during gameplay, one of the guide voices will randomly repeat during a race.
 * 7) The multiplayer option doesn't support more than two players. Similar to M&M's Kart Racing.
 * 8) The visuals looks worse than the arcade original, many signs and textures are heavily pixelated and other objects look like they were painted in chrome-like colors.
 * 9) In the Hollywood track, the Hollywood Sign was changed to say “Los Angeles”.

Overall

 * 1) The game has cool customization options, like Nitrous, Decals, Tires, Ground FX, Engine, and Bodykit, allowing for some variety.
 * 2) Despite having only 12 tracks, at least there’s variety between them and contain many fun shortcuts.

The Fast & The Furious

 * 1) The game has the use of 12-digit phone-like keypad, just like in Cruis'n Exotica and mh:awesomegames:San Francisco Rush 2049.
 * 2) Up to eight cabinets can be linked together.

Reception
Cruis'n fared poorly in reception; GameRankings gave it a score of 22.50%, while Metacritic gave it 25 out of 100. Many critics thought it was another version of The Fast and the Furious arcade game with few new features. The main areas of criticism were its outdated gameplay, poor sound, lack of extra features, and lack of depth; the game can be beaten in less than an hour. Its loading times were considered problematic as it takes up to a minute to load a race. The game's graphics were also heavily criticized for resembling a game from the Nintendo 64 era. Though the game was often praised for its responsive controls, the overall experience of the game was negative. Some reviews expressed the belief that Cruis'n was a quick cash-out for Midway.

Cruis'n sold 14,260 copies during its first week of release in North America. Sales dropped in the following weeks, in part due to manufacturing difficulties.

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