Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition Review

Fast and Furious: arcade edition review

Arcade games are such a frantic and intense experience that rarely translates correctly to home consoles. Fast and Furious: Arcade Edition is a prime example of this problem. In slot machines, it's an incredible ride full of flipping cars, colorful explosions and amazing tracks. At home, you come to the ominous realization that you may have an hour of content to go through. More if you unlock supercharged versions of each car. But at the same time, you will carefully remember the six available courses.

On the other hand, this handful of races are simply amazing. You ride in the back seat, overcome obstacles, accelerate through every turn and soar through the sky. Every track is strewn with flowers, the cars are amazing, and there is a fierce battle for first place. You're either a winner (1st place) or a loser (any place), so the tension is real. I lost the first few races before I realized how critical it was to constantly drift. After this epiphany, the rest of the game began to make more sense.

If you win all six races, you will be able to try extreme versions of the same tracks. You will also unlock an upgraded version of the car you were using. It has much more nitro boosts and better characteristics. Different cars have unique handling and characteristics, so it makes sense to try cars until you find the one that's right for you. Can you also change the color of the car before the race? In case it wasn't obvious, I'm completely out of things to talk about Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition. I can't overstate how brief this whole experience is.

Is it already over?

That's the problem with bringing an arcade game to a home console. These games are designed to be played in short bursts using special controls in a noisy environment exploding with color. You should be sitting in a huge plastic chair with a seat belt and a steering wheel, not plopping down on a sofa in relative silence. Plus, without constantly having to pump more tokens into the machine, there's a certain amount of tension missing.

In fact, if you pay the equivalent cost in tokens at a slot machine, you will see everything this game has to offer. And you'll have more fun! Even if you win all six races in a particular car, you will have to repeat the tracks until you get first place. Some tracks may get boring before you even change vehicles.

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is a lot of fun for about an hour. After that, you go through the same six tracks in different vehicles until you memorize them. Along the way, you will almost certainly get tired of seeing these races repeated over and over again. While the core arcade experience has been successfully ported over to consoles, you still lose something important in the process. If you can find this game at your local arcade, you're better off playing it there. These races are made even more interesting thanks to noise, lights and special controls.

***PS5 code provided by publisher***