Fast & Furious Crossroads released only days ago and is already being dubbed as the "worst game of the year" by some critics.
The Fast & Furious movie series either spawned or inspired many other racing games like Need For Speed and Midnight Club. The games have released across various platforms, even for mobile devices and of course arcade games. When The Fast and the Furious released for PS2 in 2006, drawing heavy inspiration from some of fans' favorite film installment Tokyo Drift, it was met with very mixed reception, averaging out to about 6/10 on popular review sites. This average score would serve as a precursor to many of the Fast & Furious games to come, including Crossroads.
Fast & Furious: Crossroads is another reimagining of the film franchise. It was originally geared to release May of this year but was ultimately delayed along with Fast & Furious 9 due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Crossroads features many of the same main characters and locations while combining racing with a version of enemies. But the films, while sometimes lacking in the story development department, offer adrenaline-filled scenes and jaw-clenching drama for its audience that it cultivated over nearly two decades. Crossroads, unfortunately, does not seem to deliver the same action-packed quality.
Push Square (Liam Croft)
"The game is tedious and basic enough to send even the most caffeine-obsessed drivers to sleep. Races are all too easy and the trips from point to point are dull as dishwater -- there is quite literally nothing to them. Not even a couple of classic tailing missions can save it."
Score: 3/10
Gamereactor UK (Peter Hegevall)
"The cars, in particular, feel like big, heavy unresponsive bricks. On top of hat, the missions are ridiculously stupid and it's all about jamming the trottle, driving straight ahead as fast as you can, and witnessing cars explode in front of you as soon as they are touched. . . Visually, it's also the ugliest big-bidget game of the year so far, and by a fairly wide margin. In fact, Fast & Furious Crossroads looks like a four-year-old mobile game."
Score: 3/10
Eurogamer (Martin Robinson)
"The execution here is simply atrocious - the camera pounces around wildly and beyond your control, the one angle you're afforded bizarrely unable to even adequately frame the car you're driving. The cars themselves bound around as if they're not quite sure what kind of game they're supposed to be in - you can activate easy drifts and sharp e-brake turns, but most of the time you'll be bouncing between scenery and absent-minded AI traffic."
Score: No Score
GameSpew (Richard Seagrave)
"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 cutsenes 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."
Score: 3/10
It looks like Fast & Furious Crossroads has completely missed its mark as a gaming successor to Universal Studio Hollywood's biggest franchise. Though Slightly Mad Studios is known solely for racing games and most notably for the Project CARS series, the developer was unable to deliver the same quality from its past racing titles, so fans may want to pick up one of August's other games instead.
Fast and Furious Crossroads is available now for PC, PS4, and Xbox One.