The first thing that catches the eye is that this game isn't only about cars but also the babe culture that comes with the street racing culture. Although worked out pretty nicely, this does tend to become boring after a while. But first some more on the racing, which should be the main goal in this game, right?

In the main menu you can choose between Street-mode, Multiplayer and the ever-present Arcade-mode. Whatever you choose, you won't notice any difference in the way your car behaves. It's always a lot more simulation-like than in other titles of this type but luckily still arcade enough so you can do spectacular and unbelieveable moves with it. The Arcade mode consists out of quick-race, checkpoint-race, speed trial and an iron man-option where the damage to your car doesn't get repaired between races and you still have to manage to finish first each time. You can choose between courses in Miami, Philadelphia and Los Angeles. By successfully finishing different arcade modes you can unlock new cars in the street-mode.

However, while playing this arcade mode you'll quickly be confronted with some of the downpoints, which will bother you even harder in street mode. The loading times are irritatingly long, there are slow-downs and even the framerate tends to drop from time to time. Next to that the feeling of speed is a bit lacking and one does have to say that's an essential part of a racing game...

The AI of the cpu players is pretty decent. They don't just do their laps but react to what you do. One minor negative thing (or positive depending on how you look at it) is that when a car runs off the course, and gets in a sidelane, that car tends to remain there for the rest of the round. It makes winning a race somewhat easier but it's still a beauty error that could have been avoided.

You'll be spending most of your time in Street-mode. The story itself is crap; you need to replace a street racer that got caught and if you win that race you get some money to buy your own car and start a career for yourself.
The game is built around the free roaming principle which we already know from NFSU2. This means you can cruise freely through a city, in this case LA, and can accept challenges from other racers or participate in crew meetings or respect challenges. Here, everything turns around money and respect which you can earn by winning races.

To accept the bet from street racers or participate in crew meetings you need to have enough money. If you're short on cash, you can participate in sanctioned events; here you don't need any starting cash and the money to be earned is quite high. Next to that you'll need enough respect to be able to take part of a crew meeting and you can earn that by doing special moves with your car like drifting, riding on 2 wheels, jumping and overtaking your opponents. You can also loose respect by crashing into other cars or being taken over yourself, so careful driving is encouraged.

With the respect challenges, Namco introduces the babes in the game. In total there are 18 that you can "earn" and each has 3 videos, each with less clothing on. To make a babe yours you need to impress her by successfully ending the assignment she gave you. This can vary from getting to checkpoints in a certain time to getting a set amount of respect points by doing stunts. Videos of your girlfriends can be unlocked by taking them with you in your car and then win crew meetings. With the babe-aspect in the street-mode, Namco aims on the puberal gamer but as said before: it doesn't give any additional value to the game and is more a gimmick.

Next to babes, Namco also introduces cops in the game. This new feature can be called very good but the sad thing is that they're only present during the free roaming. Once you start a race, they're nowhere to be found and the fun of being chased can be compared best with that of the old PSOne title "Driver". If you get arrested, you'll have to pay a fine.

The cars can be looked at and bought in the showroom. There's models from Toyota, Nissan, Mazda, Volkswagen and Subaru. To start, the Subaru is the best choice, it has good grip on the road, almost never gets in a spin and you can upgrade it in the garage to just over 400 horsepower. I clearly say upgrade and not tune. The tuning aspect is limited to buying better parts and nitroboosters as well as stickers, spoilers and neon lights. Don't expect things like in Gran Turismo. Still, there's enough liberty of choice and you can more or less adjust your car to your likings.

Also a handy option is the map that shows you where all the different locations of the game are. You can choose to drive there yourself or just jump straight to it. Seeing the loading times this doesn't differ too much though but you can limit the damage to your car. And that damage has an influence on your driving.

The graphics are reasonable good but they do resemble an awful lot those of the original NFSU, which can be bought by now as a platinum title on discount, and there is some clipping. The reflecting soil is well-done and some of the races are during daylight, something we don't get to see too often in this type of games.

The sound is ok, the cars and all other sounds are rather realistic but the soundtrack could have used more variation. If you like rap a lot though, you won't find this such a big problem.

The controls are quite intuitive and the cars react pretty well to your commands.

The multiplayer option offers splitscreen and online over LAN or internet. Sadly there are a lot of cheaters present and the fact that you have to give your car when loosing a race has disappointed a lot of honest gamers.

Street Racing Syndicate is a véry mediocre game that does introduce some new concepts. Still, you'll have a huge "been there, done that" feeling because the new features don't add anything essential to the gameplay.

On top of that, the loading times will quickly irritate you and the game is somewhat buggy. You'll get to see a black screen from time to time after loading...
The babes concept may sound cool for some, but it's clearly an attempt from Namco to get money from younger male gamers.