A painful trajectory of play

Movie-based video games have developed quite a negative reputation for themselves in recent decades. It's certainly not from a lack of trying, we've had games based on everything from seemingly easy-to-adapt franchises to the most challenging endeavors. Unfortunately, most end up being quick payouts for studios that focus more on promoting a franchise than creating a good video game.

There are exceptions, of course, but they are rare. Although the Need for Speed ​​franchise offers a lot of inspiration and resources, we have not yet had a correct title for The Fast and the Furious franchise. Even when the films in this series hit box office records, the games have been rather lackluster: The Fast and the Furious 2006 and Fast & Furious: Showdown in 2013 were both very poorly received. Sadly, the newly released Fast & Furious Crossroads continues on the same painful trajectory.

Even though it was supposed to coincide with the release of the new movie, Crossroads opts to have its own story. The events take place after the Fate of the Furious movie, as Letty and Dom are on the hunt for some terrorists who are planning to attack the United States in the near future. The clues will take them to Madrid, where Letty travels alone while Dom strangely decides to return and visit her young son. In Madrid, the story introduces new characters, Vienna Cole (Sonequa Martin-Green) and Cam Stone (Asia Kate Dillon), who work in the crane business after fleeing a tragic event in Miami. Vienna's boyfriend, Sebastian, finds himself in debt to the mafia organization known as Tadakhul, and drags the two women into trouble. Vienna enlists Letty for help, thus making the two narratives interconnect and eventually team up on a new local team, with Dom and Roman Pearce also eventually joining the action.

When it comes to racing game narratives, Crossroads is pretty typical. You're not going to find any brilliant writing or engaging dialogue here, though it's not something to be expected from this genre and this franchise. The only positive is that the actors at least repeat their roles, giving the project some authenticity. Another point to detail is that performance is often quite flat. Their character models are also a bit off, I mean they look close enough to the actors, but obviously without any important details. I feel like at that graphic level we would have fallen between a point that goes from the PS2 to the PS3. That's right, it was ugly for these modern times.

Although the story is passable, unfortunately things go downhill from here. The single player campaign mode is divided into a series of linear levels, in which you drive to a destination through a couple of different urban and rural environments. The levels are completely linear, as all the side streets and turns are arbitrarily blocked, so you don't even get a map (well, you don't need one either). This kind of limited design is a challenging (not to say ‘gruesome’) proposition in a racing game, because unless you're on a track within an official circuit, it feels unnatural and claustrophobic.

After creating such a limited game world, the title has the audacity to reuse the same sections a few times. On top of that, the campaign can be finished in less than 4 hours, and almost half of that entire experience is filled with cutscenes. And yet things get even more limited: at one point, the team agrees that they need new cars, and in the next scene you already have the aforementioned cars. That's as if the transition in how we got to that point was lost. I have no doubt that the value for money is very bad, even with multiplayer.

Driving is often just frustrating. So even if you crash a lot, there isn't much punishment since your car has only one basic health bar. However, to provide some variety, the campaign divides its missions. In non-combat chapters, you will drive somewhere, often with an arbitrary reason that adds a timer or damage cap. When the action begins, you'll have access to your NOS boost ability, a side strike, and a special. The Specials range from a rocket cannon, a grapple system and an EMP, it all depends on the mission, plus these resources are easy to use. There will also be some other moments when other crew members will join you, and when the game allows it, you can switch between members to access their car and skill.

There are no difficulty options, so the game goes easy. The enemies you will encounter, be it the mafia or the police, are easy to leave behind. The artificial intelligence of friendly and enemy cars is sterile, and really nothing worth mentioning here. The most prominent part of the combat focuses on the annoying driving mechanics and the hilariously sensitive physics. In that sense, you will see your car, and other cars flying, through the sky, perhaps inspired by the F&F franchise, but the sad reality is that they have only been released from the dream because of a bad collision.

At this point, you might be thinking, maybe the presentation is at least decent? Well, at least the actors showed up. And some of the animations during the custcenes are good. The soundtrack features the typical mix of rap and Latin rhythms. But sadly, the rest of the game's visuals leave a lot to be desired. Running in top-quality settings, the game seems dated, and low-budget. The quality of the textures varies from medium to poor, the detail in the game world is very poor, and no effort is made to make the game at least cinematic. For example, during non-combat missions, the game doesn't even bother to remove the UI and just leaves empty slots where your abilities usually appear, as well as an empty character select wheel.

I close with the idea that it is sadly disappointing to see Fast & Furious Crossroads fail so miserably in such a simple adaptation. On paper, this project had legitimate hopes: Vin Diesel did a great job with The Chronicles of Riddick, and Slightly Mad Studios has a lot of experience creating decent racing games. But either due to time or budget constraints, the end product turned out to be very poor.