Vin Diesel would take one look at this and go, "Nahhhhh..."
The production is quite shoddy. The graphics fail to do anything to bring the essence of the films to life; they're loaded with bugs and lacking any sort of personality. Worse yet, you barely see any recognizable characters from the film, since Vin and Paul probably didn't feel like taking part (wise move). And as cool as Ludacris is, he can't carry the vault sequence. Especially since he wasn't behind the wheel in the films. It just makes no sense.
Worse yet, the fill-in voice actors are horrible. It's almost like a TV version of a Fast & Furious film put together by the producers at Lifetime. And then ripped apart by Michael Bay in the process. The car engine noises are okay, but repetitive. And the music? Um, yeah right.
Like I said, Fast & Furious does support co-op, and that might encourage fans of the film to get together and have a few laughs. Only they never come with this game – well, not the intentional ones, anyway. You might have a ball laughing at some of the horrible glitches, or the fact that the gameplay can't even match up to the old-school Cruis'n games (yeah, that bad), but the last laugh's on you when you realize $40 went down the drain – unless you were wise enough to hit a Redbox, like this guy. Still, that's $2 gone. Damn.
Activision needs to shake free of this lame license tie-in run of games while it can, and stick to the quality fare that it does best. Fast & Furious: Showdown is its second big misfire of the year, and it's even worse than Survival Instink (barely), mainly because that game, at the very least, had Michael Rooker to lean on. This racer has no redeeming value; no memorable gameplay or presentation to speak of, and it's also lacking anything resembling fun. Just go see Fast & Furious 6 instead – and take a game controller with you.
Score: 1.5 / 10
