Slightly unsettling news: the apparently awful Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights only supports Xbox 360 controllers (as confirmed by angry Amazon user reviews). That’s the PC version of a racing game, and thus something that really needs a gamepad (or a wheel, if you don’t mind your PC desk looking like a nursery), not the clunky, binary inappropriateness of a keyboard.

So, anyone who buys the game pretty much has to also drop around £30 on a 360 controller. Which is about as obscene as the topless picture of himself Gillen inexplicably sent to his friends to demonstrate his new beard a while back. The horror, the horror. Read the rest of this entry »

The PC demo for popular racing sequel Juiced 2: Hot Import Nights is now available. It’s funny that there’s been so much noise about this, because I seem to recall the original Juiced being, well, a bit rubbish. Most people were pleased that it survived the desctruction of Acclaim, but no one would have stood up and said “Juiced really is one of my favourite racing games, yes sir. Let’s have another.”

Half Max Power-car showdown, half RPG-racer career thing, it was all… uninspired. The handling of the racing wasn’t too hot either. That hasn’t stopped Juiced 2 from selling mysteriously large numbers over in the land of console gaming. It’s shinier, to be sure, but this is a very similar calibre of game the second time around. I imagine it has either sold more because everyone really did like that refreshed powerslide handling, or we Britons are simply obsessed with racing unrealistically shiny hatchbacks around contrived urban environments. Sorry, I came over all cynical there. It’s just been a while since a racing game really gripped me, I suppose.