by:	October 22, 2004

You’d think that when Need for Speed: Underground was released last year with great success that there would be several clones that would focus on street racing. If you thought that, then you are correct as SRS was among those that joined the crop of street racing video games. It has a lot of competition with other games like Need for Speed Underground 2, Midnight Club 3: Dub Edition, Juiced and Crash ‘n’ Burn but does SRS make any strides to separate itself from the others? Read on to find out as SRS was a racing game that has some potential to become a successful racing franchise.

The main attraction for Street Racing Syndicate is the graphics. They are gorgeous and sports beautiful landscapes to race through. Detail is the main aspect to make these graphics stand out from the other bunch (even though the others aren’t released yet). Billboards light up the streets with their neon colors while reflections from puddles are easy to see as you fly through the streets racing your competitors.

Sure the graphics are amazing but the cut scenes don’t match up at all. The cut scenes are drastically a let down when compared to the actual racing. The girls are advertised right on the front of the SRS case but do they even look that good while in game? Nope, not even a little. The character models for SRS are downright laughable. So while the game has great in graphics, they are visually defunct in the other important areas such as cut scenes, animations and character models.

Okay so we have covered what SRS has to offer in the graphics but does the gameplay deliver satisfaction at all? Features that SRS focuses on include collecting girlfriends and a lot of customization of cars. The girlfriends we can look over as it’s nothing to get hyped up about. The customization is simple and easy to use as you’ll have fun with this segment of the game. Hitting the X button will allow you to see the characteristics of each customization and how it will affect that part of the car. The clean interface will allow for those who really don’t know too much about cars (like myself) to be able to trick out your ride painfully free. Paint jobs and decals are available for those who like your car to look beautiful rather then race amazingly.

Without a doubt though, SRS is marketed towards the more urban crowd. The music reflects that picture easily as the game’s soundtrack is purely hip-hop and rap. If you don’t like this style of the music, the first thing you should do is immediately enter the control panel and turn it off. This will ease your ears the pain from hearing the music. The fact that SRS features music that isn’t apart of the genre you listen to, may quickly turn you off as soon as you start playing this game.