Movie tie in games are a rare breed, and until a while ago I'd have straight-up called them extinct. And there's a damn good reason for that; making a movie doesn't take nearly as long as making a video game, and trying to synch up those two processes in order to capitalise on marketing is damn near asinine. You could take the finest, most accomplished development studio in the world to task and they would struggle to put out a decent game by the time the movie comes in that tiny development window. The only developer who could put something together is maybe Obsidian, if they had prep time. But for the most part this practice was a disaster generator, spitting out low effort travesty after low effort travesty. (For some reason I always think back to those early Marvel movie games most; god those make my spine shrivel in anguish.)
As such, it's with the utmost dread that I saw the announcement of 'Fast and Furious: Crossroads', the video game tie-in giddily promoted by Michelle Rodriguez and Vin Diesel at a lowly E3 conference an age ago. And only half of that disgust spawned from the expectation of what movie tie in games are, the other came from the fidelity of the trailer we saw which, to be frank; was somewhat insulting. For BANDI NAMCO to greenlight something which look like it melted inside of a PS3 before it hit our screens is just a damning indictment for how little they think of their customers. If the developer couldn't match the basic visual fidelity of the console generation they were making for, at the tail end of that generation, no less; then maybe they shouldn't have tried to go for a realism art direction. Heck, they could have made this game in a Fortnite cartoon style and people would have respected it more. I ain't a graphics hound, but everyone's gotta have standards.
But so what; the game looked bad. So does Kenshi, but I still love that tough-as-nails little bugger more than most modern day AAAs. What about Crossroa- oh I can't even pretend, the gameplay was even worse than the visuals. Hands down. A car game based on a franchise that had long since forsaken it's racing routes, Crossroads tried to marry godawful car physics, bad driving controls, and linear narrative action. Yes, you're essentially driving your way through a linear action title; which is a concept I'd never even thought possible before just now, and it frankly horrifies me to even consider. This game is made up of short missions wherein you stick to narrow single-file roads and ever-forward objectives, whilst the facsimile of a broad desert or large town is broadcasted five feet from you, protected by an invisible war. It's wild. As though two very different games collided in the planning room between what the developers wanted and what the studio demanded in order to conceive something horrid, and accidentally antiquated.
It's hard to convey the feeling of playing a driving game where you follow a single objective for risk of mission failing. I know I'm hampering on about this, but you need to understand how even at a fundamentally base level; this game is flawed. Even if the cars didn't handle as though their gears were made of silly putty, why would you want to play through what is essentially an on-the-rails driver? I can't think of another driving focused game that would even dare put out something like this and call it a full price worthy game! I'm not even just talking about the Forza games which put this to shocking shame either; I'm talking games like The Getaway, heck the Driver games. This is 'Ride to Hell' levels of railroading. But at least I can say this game looks and plays better than that one did. Whatever miniscule praise that constitutes as.
The game looked bad, it played bad, it also sounded bad. The actors, lots of whom were either actors from the movies or other high profile actors from across the industry, sound like they couldn't be bothered with the material either. Which I can only attribute to the wild phenomena where a ramshackle operation has the ability to inexplicably infect the talents of the people even passingly involved. It was also written poorly. With the narrative being nigh-on nonsensical even for a Fast and Furious plot. I wish I could break it all down for you, but to be honest I've forgotten literally every character's name, let alone their motivations, so you're going to have to either take my word on that or take the plunge and play the thing for yourself. Of course, if you choose the latter; you better hurry that up.
I say that because as of this week it has become clear that Crossroads is on the offramp, as the publishers are looking to pull the thing from sale entirely! (Did you like that basic car pun? I'm proud of it.) In a shocking move, it has recently been announced that the PlayStation store will be delisting Crossroads next month on April 29th, as reported by several publications who are crazy enough to have eyes on the official studio page. (Seriously, who's actively keeping up with what these guys are doing?) Now we've all seen bad games before, even pitiful ones; but how often do we have a game so bad that the developers have decided it's more sensible to remove it from publication than to just let it sit around in hopes it snares in the odd mistaken purchase every blue moon or so. This says one thing very clearly to me; this tells me that the studio are embarrassed by this game. As so they should be.
Having this sitting on storefronts is like a ready-made advertisement why your studio shouldn't be hired for anymore jobs, so I can absolute understand, and even sympathise, with the play at revisionism. Bury the past. Kill it, if you have to. Still, that game preservationist within me does wince whenever something like this goes down. Same as it does for the Top Gear game once released by Amazon Game Studios which may have been trash, but existed as the only game ever made in which you could play as two Jeremy Clarkson's in the same race. ("Now with double producer punching action!") Maybe they just didn't want to have server upkeep fees wasted on a game that actually no one in their right mind would ever want to buy. Yeah, let's say this was for the good of the people. Spin this into a positive; that's the way it's done!
But whatever misgivings we have about a game being killed, what has been decided has been decided, and I can't really imagine anyone mounting some sort of impassioned plea to save this game from the chopping block. Even for the meme potential; it's just not worth it. Fast and Furious lived a quarter mile at a time, and now that gas prices are up it can't afford to truck along any longer, and behind it leaves a legacy where it's okay to completely clean up after you've taken a dump on the gaming world to pretend that it was never there to begin with. My thoughts go out to Vin Diesel, who seemed to really believe in this game for whatever twisted reason (Even if he couldn't be bothered to bring that excitement to the voice recording booth) and my eye turns to all the shovelware crap on Steam, wondering when they'll grow the humility to remove themselves from the world's presence.
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