Fast & Furious Crossroads

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Fast & Furious Crossroads

"I don’t have the graphics, A.I., and physics, I have family." - Dominic Toretto (probably)

Protagonist:	Vienna Cole Cam Stone
Genre:	Racing Action Role-Playing
Platforms:	Microsoft Windows PlayStation 4 Xbox One
Release Date:	August 7, 2020
Game Engine:	Madness Engine
Developer:	Slightly Mad Studios
Publisher:	Bandai Namco Entertainment
Made in:	United Kingdom
Franchise:	Fast & Furious
Previous Game:	Fast & Furious Takedown (mobile game; by release date) Fast & Furious: Showdown (console game)

Fast & Furious Crossroads is a 2020 video game based on the Fast & Furious action film franchise. It was developed by Slightly Mad Studios (the same developers behind Need for Speed: Shift with its sequel, and the Project CARS series) and published by Bandai Namco Entertainment for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One. The game was delayed from May 2020 to August 7, 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic following the postponement of F9.^[1]

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 Sucks

General

Terrible graphics for a full-priced game. It's comparable to games released on early PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, modern mobile games, and at worst look like late-era PlayStation 2 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 a fire, look like sprites from Half-Life, a 1998 video game, the character models look like peeled potatoes that were boiled, and weather elements and natural objects look as if they were made of a plywood curve.
- On top of that, there's only a few graphic settings in the game, which is unacceptable for a game released at the end of the eighth generation consoles. The only options are v-sync, borderless, brightness, and overall graphics quality.
The cutscenes are absolutely horrible when it comes to the level of workmanship, combining with junk 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.
The voice acting is cringe-worthy and the actors from the movies put very little effort in voicing their characters. It feels like that they didn't want to do it at all.
Poorly-placed camera. The car in front of you is too close, which makes it difficult to notice the vehicle driving past yours.
- In addition, you cannot change the camera in the game, which befits a car game and an abashment for this genre.
Poor lip-syncing. The characters express bland emotions and their lips move as if they are not speaking the developers' native language.
Despite the game looking like an open-world game, it doesn't play as one, only linear levels. The game is riddled with invisible walls, which is unacceptable by today's standards.
- The world in the game is also poorly-done. You rarely see a variety of buildings, and you hardly ever meet ordinary citizens.
- When you do meet generic citizens, they do not move at all and stand like a tree.
The story, although authentic and completely new, not inspired by the movies, is still primitive, but also absurdly stupid.
Despite the game being an action racing game, there's nearly non-existent collision damage in the game. Car crashing had very little impact like it was made out of rubber, and various "destroyed" vehicle will not explode but simply stopped.
- 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).
There is no option to modify a car. In the previous console game, there was such an option, although it was limited mostly to cosmetic elements.
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.
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.
Instead of manually control your guns, you had to do a quick time events, which essentially dumbed down the "action" aspect of the game.
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.
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.
There's no speedometer and mini-map at all, which is really unacceptable for a driving game.
The characters from the series are mostly sidelined in favor of two very poorly-written female original characters. This just comes across as SJW pandering, 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.
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 cause the truck to suddenly fly.
The final mission is incredibly stupid and nonsensical; after travelling to Spain, you have to stop the antagonist from launching a space shuttle into the space, the game does not give any explaination why it should've been stopped. After Dom managed to crash the rocket into the ground, the player and Dom had 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.
Due to 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 lack of cross-platform capacabilities, the multiplayer mode is dead on arrival in only a few days after the game's release.
This game was extremely overpriced at launch. It costed $60/£50 and the Deluxe Edition $90/£75.
- 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 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

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.
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.
On Steam, the hardware requirements say that you need an NVidia GeForce GTX 2080 graphics card, where such a graphics card does not exist.^[2]
This version suffers from poor optimization.
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

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

Redeeming Qualities

The box art looks cool. 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.
The game soundtrack is good, some tracks make you want to dance.
The main menu looks great for an eighth generation console game, despite having poor number of options.
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 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.

Reception

On OpenCritic, the game received a rating of "Weak", an average score of 38/100 and a 4% critics recommend, based on 24 reviews.^[3]

On Metacritic, the PlayStation 4 version received a 35/100, the PC version received a 34/100, and the Xbox One version a 49/100. In the case of average user ratings on Metacritic, the game received an 1.8/10 for the PlayStation 4 version, a 3.5/10 for the Xbox One version and a 2.0/10 for the PC version.^[4]^[5]^[6]

Crossroads 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.^[7]

GameSpew was the first website to submit their game review, giving 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 humour 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."^[8]

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."^[9]

Giving Fast & Furious Crossroads a 2/10, Metro GameCentral stated that the game is "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".^[10]

GameReactor gave a 3/10, saying that Fast & Furious Crossroads is the worst major release of the year so far (at least on the day of publishing the review, which is August 10, 2020).^[11]

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.^[12]^[13]

British YouTuber Worth A Buy gave the game the lowest possible score on his rating system, a 0.1/10. He even considered that it is the worst AAA game, additionally calling the game worse than Ride to Hell: Retribution.^[14]

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.^[15]

Angry Joe gave the game a 2/10, saying: "This 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, it's boring, it's fucking repetitive." In the review, he only praised the music that you can dance to.^[16] He later ranked the game at number 1 in his Top 10 WORST Games of 2020! video.^[17]

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.^[18]