F&F Crossroads: To be delisted

A loss in the family

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.

Fast and Furious: Crossroads

Earn that paycheck, Tyrese.

I have expressed before my general respect for the effort and hard work that goes into developing racing titles. I've always found that their grasp on fidelity and all the little features that elevate this hobby from a pastime to an artform can often put entire other genres to shame. Just look at the amount of talent that went into constructing the recent F1 game; genuine F1 drivers have attested to how accurate that title is, if there's higher praise to be had I don't know it. But if there is one type of racing game that brings down everyone, not just the racing genre but gaming in general, it is a half-assed cash grab product. Just as a brilliant, well-conceived product ups the quality of all those around either out of inspiration or fear of being left behind, a soulless cash grab drags down the quality of all those around it in a depressing fashion. On a related note; Fast and Furious: Crossroads, everybody!

Let me be the first to admit that I am not a fan of the Fast and Furious movies, I've only seen the first two movies and 15 agonizing minutes of 'Tokyo Drift' but I got a decent grasp on what the franchise had to offer and why it didn't appeal to me. It is a franchise built around grand spectacle and impressive (if fake) stunts, with weak attempts at character development shoved in every now and then. Now there is absolutely nothing wrong with that, mindless action films can be a great time for those with the time and tolerance to withstand it, but it tends to birth a franchise with very little space to grow and become transcendent. Fast and Furious has proven to be one of the few lucky ones who have managed to escape that stigma and become important to the global movie conversation, (for better or for worse) allowing the brand to stretch out to multiple sequels, an apparently god-awful spin off, and a real life stunt show that actually exists. But could such a franchise survive the jump to video games?

My initial gut response to that query would be 'of course it could, duh.'. Afterall the franchise is built on giant spectacle and set-pieces lacking any real substance, a great many AAA gaming titles boast that exact same premise, but what if that very merit is harder to translate than we give it credit for? To understand what I mean, take a look at the first F&F video game tie in, (At least that I know of) 'Forza Horizon 2 presents the Fast and Furious'. The basic premise of that title was grabbing the successful framework of the car enthusiast game of that year, Forza Horizon 2, and using it show off digital versions of the flashy cars that identify the F&F franchise. A perfect storm of free marketing for the films and an attractive tie-in for Forza, everybody wins.

However, when you take a look at the actual effort put in by Universal to accommodate this crossover you can see an interesting discrepancy. The car models for this spin-off title look great, obviously as they were all handled in-house by the Forza developers, all the team behind the movies had to do was provide an interesting scenario and the voice talent. The story in-question was incredibly weak and revolved around racing cars (a plotpoint that the movies left behind since 2006's Tokyo Drift) and, despite racing everyone's iconic cars, the only voice talent that the studio were able to provide was Ludachris. (Wow, I'm star struck.) Now, I understand their mentality "Hey, we're providing the bulk of the value by agreeing to this crossover, so why should we have to put in any effort?" But the lack of tangible effort on the studio's part speaks to an inherent lack of caring for the perception of their brand and/or a disdain for the video game market in general.

So now we have the announcement of 'Fast and Furious: Crossroads' which seemed to tick all the right boxes, in theory. They revealed the title at the game awards, using the 'gamer-cred' of Vin Diesel to sell it's legitimacy. (And Michelle Rodriguez, I guess, but she did arguably mispronounce 'Tekken'.) So what went wrong? How about the game itself? From the moment the trailer started it became immediately obvious that something was seriously off about this product. Maybe it was the PS3-era graphics, the seemingly sub-60 fps or maybe the... actually, it was defiantly the face models. Dear god: the face models! This time around Universal went out of their way to bring their A-talent to this title (likely because they had to) but the end-result ended up looking like uncooked pudding more than an accurate digital depiction of Vin Diesel's mug. I mean, how could they get it this wrong? Vin has been bought to life in video games before, from Riddick to Wheelman. (Although those titles were admittedly rather visually stylized.) This just screamed 'half assed' from the moment go.

Developed by 'Slightly Mad Studios' (The guys behind 2015's project Cars), Crossroads seems set to deliver a more faithful F&F experience than the Forza outing. That is to say, when looking at the trailer one can see all the hallmark indicators that you could expect from a Fast and Furious movie. The game's narrative will follow espionage, explosions, giant guns attached to sports cars, and all manner of set-piece moments that look like they come straight out of a bad Bond movie. They even managed to rope in the talented Sonequa Martin-Green to lend her voice and a rough approximation of her facial features to the project. Throw in some vague talk about 'vengence', an unfunny back and forth between Vin and Tyrese Gibson, and you've got yourself a F&F trailer.

And yet it all of it feels very weak-sauce compared to many of the things we see out of  the F&F movies of today. (Or at least, the trailers that I watch.) Where's the big eye-rolling stunt to close out the trailer, where's the customary message about 'family' for the umpteenth time, where's the braggadocios celebrity villain? This trailer failed to capture any of the stupid charm of the movies and I feel that may be a real problem going forward. 'Slightly Mad' have a game that looks dated and a trailer that doesn't feel like the source material, at this point all this game really has going for it is a release date that hits the same week as the movie, and I'm not entirely sold on if that will be enough.

Just like most everyone else who watched the game awards, I found this title to be an embarrassingly weak title to end the show on and that may have peppered my reception towards it. After watching the trailer through again a few times, I will admit that it does look like a title that might some vague potential. Afterall, it's been a while since we've been graced with a racing game that is married to a narrative, so the end result might not be completely terrible. I just hope the team has the time to do something about those character models in the next 6 months. (Yikes.)