Fast & Furious Crossroads

Fast & Furious Crossroads
"I don't have the graphics, A.I., and physics, I have family." — Dominic Toretto (probably)
Protagonist(s): Vienna Cole Cam Stone Genre(s): Action role-playing Racing Rating(s): ESRB: T PEGI: 16 ACB: M Platform(s): Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One Release: August 7, 2020 Engine: Madness Engine Developer(s): Slightly Mad Studios Publisher(s): Bandai Namco Entertainment Country: United Kingdom Series: Fast & Furious Predecessor: Fast & Furious Takedown (by release date; mobile game) Fast & Furious: Showdown (by release date; console game) Successor: Fast & Furious: Spy Racers Rise of SH1FT3R (by release date; console game)

"Fuck this game! The Fast & Furious Crossroads SUCKS! It is easily one of the worst games of the year, and straight criminal to charge $60 or the UNFORGIVEABLE $90 THAT IS A CORPORATE CASH-IN, where the stars are embarrassingly participating in an incompetently programmed game that looks like shit, plays like shit, is boring, is fucking repetitive, and ends with one cool mission only because it was so fucking stupid!"

— Angry Joe

Fast & Furious Crossroads is a racing and action role-playing video game based on the Fast & Furious action movie franchise. It was developed by Slightly Mad Studios and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, and Xbox One. Originally scheduled to release in May 2020, the game was delayed to August 7 due to the COVID-19 pandemic following the postponement of F9.

Due to the game's commercial failure, Bandai Namco announced the delisting of Fast & Furious Crossroads from digital storefronts on March 28, 2022. The game got delisted for good on April 29, 2022.

Gameplay

Fast & Furious Crossroads is set across global locations and features main characters from the Fast & Furious movie series. The majority is focused on racing, the characters must also defeat enemies and avoid traps by using equipped weapons on their cars.

Why It's Neither Fast nor Furious

General

1. Terrible and outdated graphics for a full-priced game released in 2020, which is literally a generation behind. It's comparable to games released during the era of the PlayStation 3 and Xbox 360, and games released on modern mobile phones (especially those by Gameloft), and at worst they look like late era PlayStation 2 games or even potential indie games. The cars look like they came from EA Black Box-developed Need for Speed games or Rockstar San Diego's Midnight Club 3: DUB Edition, the special effects, especially fire, look like flat sprites from Half-Life, a 1998 game, or downloaded GIFs from a green screen, the character models look like plastic action figures, and weather elements and natural objects look as if they were made out of a plywood curve.
   • On that topic, there are only a few graphics settings in the game, which is unacceptable for a game released near the beginning of the ninth generation and also on modern PC gaming. The only options are V-sync, borderless full-screen, brightness, and overall graphics quality.
   • Speaking of car modeling, the Ford F-150. It is just basically a Raptor-ified base model XL trim level in a SuperCrew configuration, instead of the iconic, and usual 2017 SuperCab identical to this one as commonly seen in other games. For example, Forza, Need for Speed, etc.)[1].
     • In addition, it doesn't even come in stock variants, only Police and Tow Truck.
     • Also, the Tow Truck variant has the same exact identical roof lights from the 2017 to present Ford Super Duty, despite that truck not appearing in-game.
2. The cutscenes are absolutely awful when it comes to the level of workmanship, combined with bad graphic artistry. For example, in the first scene where Dom is holding Emil who was hit by a car some time ago, he looks like he's holding something invisible that lifts that guy. Another example is shooting with rifles.
   • Even cutscene transitions are abrupt and random, as the screen will go black for a second before it begins.
3. The voice acting is cringe-worthy and the actors from the movies put very little effort in voicing their characters (especially Vin Diesel). It feels like that they didn't want to do it at all.
   • Fortunately, the original actors from the films made their debut in the game.
4. False advertising: The box art and screenshots would fool some viewers into thinking that the game has amazing graphics, but in the game, the graphics are just terrible and outdated. This makes it look far better than it actually is, though this has been a standard of the game industry.
5. The title makes no sense without a colon (:) symbol. Calling it Fast & Furious: Crossroads would've been more appropriate.
   • However, in fact, this isn't really always a bad thing, as it is not always required. Just take a look at Cars Race-O-Rama or Need For Speed Payback.
6. Poorly placed camera. The car in front of you is too close, which makes it difficult to notice the vehicle driving past yours. Also the FOV (field of view) is way too high.
7. Poor lip-syncing. The characters express bland emotions, and their lips move as if they are not speaking the developers' native language.
8. No free roam mode, just like in the previous Fast & Furious console game. Despite the game looking like an open-world game, it doesn't even play as one, only linear levels. The game is also riddled with invisible walls, which is common in mobile racing games (now to a lesser extent) and even unacceptable by today's console standards.
   • The world in the game is also poorly done. You rarely see a variety of buildings, and you hardly ever meet ordinary citizens.
     • Even when you do meet citizens, they do not move at all and stand lifelessly still like trees.
9. The story, although authentic and completely new, not inspired by the movies, is still primitive and also absurdly stupid.
10. Despite the game being an action racing game, there's nearly non-existent collision damage in the game. Collisions have very little impact, like the cars are made out of rubber, and various "destroyed" vehicles will not explode but simply stop.
    • For some reason, however, when you collide with the car in front of you, the windshield suddenly shatters without any glass effects. This is best seen on the bus.
    • This is also the reason why the "mission failed" screen is very bland and lazily made. As it instantly pops out whenever your car gets "destroyed" by any means (such as crashed into the wall).
11. There is no option to modify the car. In the previous console game as mentioned earlier, there was such an option, although it was lackluster and mostly limited to cosmetic elements.
12. The in-game physics is the biggest flub, worthy of the level of Team6's games. When you collide with any vehicle, it bounces and flies high up. When you do stunts, the vehicle turns like a drunk driver is controlling it. Sometimes happens that the car starts to fly through the air, when you will often bounce off the ground or hit the hill, this is the most common in the desert.
13. The engine sounds, while good, are somewhat stolen from the 2017 Disney/Pixar film Cars 3. Even the tire sound effects were reused from that movie.
14. Due to bad in-game physics mentioned above, the car handling is horrendous. If you dare turn a corner for as much as a second at high speed, you’ll enter into an uncontrollable drift that usually sends you into a wall or barrier. In the event of braking, the car will also drift, and the vehicle feels difficult to turn.
15. Instead of manually controlling your guns, you had to do a quick time event, which essentially dumbed down the "action" aspect of the game.
16. Frustrating and repetitive missions. Most of them come down to "driving from point A to point B" to triggering another cutscene. They usually take place in environments that seem open but are actually quite linear and somehow still get confusing thanks to poor clues as to where to go. The most enjoyable missions are where you have to fight against various enemies or car chase missions, which is still mediocre.
17. Bad artificial intelligence. Instead of actual intelligence, it seems they have added scripts. In addition, opponents sometimes collide with a wall. Other times, the opponent does not react that there is a second car in front of him, causing a collision between them.
18. There's no speedometer and mini map at all, which is really unacceptable for a driving game.
    • However, this may be intentional that it may be focusing more on action rather than just racing, much like from the GTA series, although this does not excuse the minimap's absence due to it being present on GTA.
19. Hitbox anomaly: It is quite easy to get hit by a missile and fail the mission in the desert portion of the game even within very few inches of it.
20. The characters from the series are mostly sidelined in favor of two very poorly written female original characters. This makes them extremely forgettable, especially considering that the entire reason the Fast and the Furious franchise is so popular is because its appeal to fans of traditional action movies with their well written and memorable protagonists.
21. The game is infested with tons of bugs and glitches.
    • When the mission starts, at some point the textures won't read for the first seconds.
    • At some point, the animation freezes, and the game eventually crashes.
    • Trucks behave quite strangely when they collide with a car and are suddenly turned 90 degrees.
    • There are also moments when the protagonist stands in the car and he's shaking around for no reason.
    • In a situation where a car tries to fly out of a vehicle that carries the car, it suddenly bounces like a rubber ball, or flies out like a spaceship to the moon.
    • When you collide with a tree, you fly high and you're stuck in the air forever, until you respawn.
    • While the protagonist enters the roof of the car, trying to get in the opposite vehicle (in this case the truck), he stands frozen in the place (where the car is already passing this guy), this causes the truck to suddenly fly.
22. The final mission is incredibly stupid and nonsensical; after travelling to Spain, you have to stop the antagonist from launching a space shuttle into space, and the game does not give any explanation why it should've been stopped. After Dom manages to crash the rocket into the ground, the player and Dom have to chase the rocket with their own cars. For some reason, you are able to chase the rocket with the speed of 20,000 km/h with a car.
23. Due to the very low player count (the highest concurrent player count for the Steam version of the game was only 21, 12 times lower than The Culling 2's highest peak during its disastrous launch) and the lack of cross-platform capabilities, the multiplayer mode is dead on arrival in only a few days after the game's release.
24. As hinted in WINFNF#1, the game sold for full price at launch, which was $60/£50 for the base game, and $90/£75 for the Deluxe Edition.
    • To add the insult of the injury, the game can be completed in three-four hours, which for a game costing $60 at launch is a smack in the teeth. The cutscenes last two and a half hours, but the game itself only lasts one and a half hours.
    • In addition, the game also offers a Season Pass and few DLCs, which basically the content are mainly new cars with their cosmetic elements. Worst of all, the Season Pass costs $30 (which is also added in the Deluxe Edition).
    • The prices were later reduced to $40 for the base game, and $70 for the Deluxe Edition. But even then, they're still too high for the quality of the game.
25. The game was rushed to August, due to Slightly Mad Studios also working on Project CARS 3.
    • Some evidence of rushed developments including grammar errors in the case of the Arabic language. More details are provided in the comment below YongYea's video.

Microsoft Windows version

1. You can’t remap the keyboard controls. Meaning you cannot change the control scheme that makes you feel comfortable. Also, like Sonic Generations, the default options and buttons are only set for the console controller.
2. The HUD is hard to understand, especially when it comes to pressing a button to perform an action, since it displays Xbox controller buttons instead of PC keyboard even if you didn't use one.
3. On Steam, the hardware requirements say that you need a NVidia GeForce GTX 2080 graphics card, where such a graphics card does not exist.
4. This version suffers from poor optimization.
5. The game takes over 80 GB (including the patch which takes about 20 GB). DOOM Eternal, which is better and more polished in every way, only takes about 30 GB (and both games came out in 2020).
   • The 20 GB patch didn't manage to do anything except a slight graphical improvement, which is still outdated.

PlayStation 4 and Xbox One versions

1. The game is locked at 30 FPS, even though the game is mechanically, technically, and visually outdated.

Redeeming Qualities

1. The box art, while false advertising, still looks cool and incredible. The main role is played by Dom Toretto, the protagonist played by the famous American actor Vin Diesel, there are also two main female protagonists who made their debut in this game, and a vehicle chasing three of them, accompanying at the end of the game. It's so cool that it will make you want to buy a poster.
2. The soundtracks are good.
3. The story is so awful, that its unintentionally hilarious and ludicrous for some players, especially if you want a good time to laugh.
4. The main menu looks great for an eighth-generation console game, despite having a poor number of options.
5. Unlike Fast & Furious: Showdown, despite the poorly done voice acting, the original Fast & Furious voice actors were involved in this. Which is a good indication that Bandai Namco only cared a bit for the production process, unlike Activision, which only expected quick cash. Additionally, Vin Diesel performed well with his distinctive voice as usual, and Christian Lanz, who played the role of Sebastian Miro, who also made his debut in the game, is worth praising.
6. This game could've had potential to be good, but if it was delayed to 2021 or 2022, it could've been a lot better and less rushed.

Reception

Ratings

Aggregate score	Score
Metacritic	34/100 (PC) 35/100 (PS4) 49/100 (XONE)
OpenCritic	38/100
Publication	Score
4Players.de	42/100
Atomix	45/100
CD-Action	2.5/10
DualShockers	3/10
Easy Allies	4/10
GameGrin	4/10
GameSpew	3/10
Gamereactor	3/10
Games.cz	3/10
GameStar	10/100
GamingBolt	3/10
INDIANTVCZ	2/10
Metro	2/10
New Game Network	35/100
PlayStation LifeStyle	4/10
Push Square	3/10
TheSixthAxis	2/10
WayTooManyGames	3.5/10
Jeuxvideo.com	3.5/20 (PC) 4.8/20 (PS4) 12/20 (Xbox ONE)
Senscritique	4.1/10

"You fucked it up!" This game was given a 2/10 by AngryJoe.

Critical reception

Fast & Furious Crossroads was met with very negative reception by critics and players alike. On Metacritic, the PC version received 34/100 based on ten reviews, the PlayStation 4 version received 35/100 based on thirteen reviews, and the Xbox One version received 49/100 based on five reviews, which means that all versions received "generally unfavorable reviews".

On OpenCritic, the game received a rating of "Weak", an average score of 38/100 and 4% critics recommend, based on 24 reviews.

The game is the fourth lowest-rated game on Metacritic in 2020 (in a ranking with at least seven reviews), after Dawn of Fear, XIII remake, and Tiny Racer.

GameSpew was the first website to submit their review for the game, giving it a 3/10, criticizing the graphics, controls, camera, mission design, but praising the voice acting from Vin Diesel, Michelle Rodriguez for them, however, they found that not everyone did well in this aspect, saying that "some of the new characters drag it down with terrible performances". Their last sentences in the review sound something like this: "Overall then, Fast & Furious Crossroads is a serious disappointment. There’s a gleam of the franchise’s over-the-top action now and again, and some of the cutscenes hint at the cheesy humor the movies are known for. But those moments are few and far between. Underwhelming visuals and uninspiring mission design stop Fast & Furious Crossroads from being a good game – but it's the terrible, terrible handling that relegates it into 'bad' territory."

Push Square gave the game a 3/10, criticizing multiplayer, camera angle, mechanics, visuals, missions and gameplay, but praising set-piece sequences and Vin Diesel's performance. The summary sounds like this: "How Fast & Furious Crossroads wound up as a full-price release will forever remain a mystery. It is lacking in every department possible, from shallow and repetitive gameplay through to abysmal visuals that belong on the previous generation of consoles. Not even the most committed Fast & Furious fans should subject themselves to this monstrosity. That is unless you want to have a good laugh alongside Vin Diesel."

Giving the game a 2/10, Metro GameCentral stated it to be "the worst thing to happen Fast & Furious since the death of Paul Walker" and "another deeply disappointing Fast & Furious game that's all the more upsetting because of the obvious talent it wastes in terms of both developer and cast".

Gamereactor gave a 3/10, saying that Fast & Furious Crossroads is the worst major release of the year so far.

German website GameStar gave a 10/100, asking rhetorically that "What happens when you invest the entire budget for a game in top-class actors and then have nothing left for the rest?" Review author, Sascha Penzhorn, says he must have suffered a lot from this hitting arguably the worst game of 2020.

It received one of the lowest ratings from Cr1tikal, a 10% on the Moist Meter. He stated the only reason he didn't give it a zero is because it has an essence of it's so bad, it's good.

Angry Joe gave the game a 2/10, saying: "It is easily one of the worst games of the year, and straight criminal to charge $60 or the unforgivable $90 that is a corporate cash-in, where the stars are embarrassingly participating in an incompetently programmed game that looks like shit, plays like shit, is boring, is fucking repetitive, and ends with one cool mission only because it was so fucking stupid." In the review, he only praised the music that you can dance to. He later ranked the game at number 1 in his Top 10 WORST Games of 2020! video.

On WatchMojo's Top 10 Worst Video Games of 2020 video, the game takes fourth place, after Dawn of Fear, Warcraft III: Reforged, and Crucible.

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