Jacked Review

By Matt Martin Published 12 March, 2006

Jacked off.

Version tested: PlayStation 2

Let's not fanny around with a smart-arse introduction to Jacked; let's just deal with the pain like grown-ups. From the makers of Moorhuhn Invasion, Schnappi and Catch the Sperm 2, Jacked would like to be a cross between Burnout and crusty old Megadrive favourite Road Rash. Players scream around tracks on nitro-guzzling motorbikes swinging a collection of bludgeoning instruments at rival racers. It's a simple enough concept but it's rendered pointless by awful design decisions, ropey controls, mediocre presentation and a complete lack of... well, just a complete lack, if you get our meaning.

When a game relies on quick-witted reactions, the controls need to be tightly implemented. Jacked fudges it instantly by using every button on the pad and both analogue sticks, so that riding up on a foe, cracking him over the head with a spanner and jumping on his bike becomes a finger-crippling accident with luck playing a bigger role than skill. Shoulder buttons are used to accelerate and brake, the right stick is for swinging bats at enemies, another button lets the player jump onto a rival's bike mid-race, circle kicks off a nitro boost, square is for throwing grenades (grenades!) and triangle gives orders to the rest of your biking crew. All this while you're trying to pick up icons, steer a course, avoid traffic and come first in a race.

Jack squat

'Jacked' Screenshot 1

To recover from a beating, you have to... accelerate?

Racing up on an opponent happens very quickly so there's only a very short window of opportunity to smash him in the face and nick his ride. Overshoot your target, by doing something as impractical as accelerating, and you'll have to brake and blindly guess where he's gone to try and boof him in the jaw. There's a rear-view camera but the controls don't work when you're facing the right way, so who would want to control the game backwards?

And the awful design decisions continue. Gang Battle races are a warped take on Capture the Flag, as you fight it out with rival bikers to keep control of a marker. Enemies hurl grenades which you have to avoid by braking. Jacked must be the first racing game where you actually gain a nitro boost by stopping. You can't catch the marker because you're too busy braking and when you do get hold of it, it gets stolen the instant you brake. I'm screaming inside just thinking about it.

Jacking it in

Courses have been designed with all the inspiration of a trip around Nuneaton. 'New York' actually looks like Bolton. 'Virginia' looks like 'New York', which is to say it looks like Bolton as well. Oregon looks like Bolton with sand. All tracks are short, looped courses, peppered with jumps and shuffling traffic. Ramps aren't built into the environment; they're just whopping great triangular objects plonked in the middle of the road flashing an obnoxious colour. There are no shortcuts and no on-screen map to warn of impending chicanes, there aren't enough straight sections to aid speed boosting or vehicle jacking, and if you hit a brick wall and explode the game restarts you facing the wall you just exploded into. Pulling wheelies gives a speed boost too, but courses are so snakey that racing fast just results in bouncing off various walls.

'Jacked' Screenshot 2

Ramps are conveniently placed so you jump into a corner.

Graphically the game looks like I made it. What little traffic there is resembles Lego models trundling around a drainage gutter. You'll be able to recognise the road, but what I assume to be buildings are actually just chunky blocks. At one point you race under what looks like a big garden shed. A helicopter cruising above the city looks like a shoe. And then there's the aural experience, which you can probably guess by now, is no better. The guitar soundtrack either chugs along like an old bronchitis sufferer or squeals like a trapped pig. Engine noises are akin to someone blowing raspberries down a crackly phone line and when your racer speaks it's with the immortal line, "Snuurrrff glurrn nuurrn!"

Jacked is one of those terrible mid-price games where every half-baked idea is hampered by shoddy execution, and one that would have only been average at best even if all the elements worked properly. After playing it you'll be faintly depressed that precious hours of your life were wasted on it, so do yourself a favour and avoid it at all costs.

Sure, thirty pence from every sale of every copy goes to The Everyman Campaign, but if you're feeling charitable you'd get more entertainment from donating the money you'd have spent on this poor attempt at a knockabout racer. Seriously, even Acclaim's dreadful Speed Kings is better, but that's like saying a headache is better than a migraine. Next!

2 / 10

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Comments (20) Latest comment 5 years ago

Comments threads automatically close after 30 days, but please feel free to continue chatting on the forum!

  • firm3d #1 6 years ago

    I love reviews for bad games.

  • asphaltcowboy #2 6 years ago

    w00t! Sounds amazing! Jacked FTW!

  • firm3d #3 6 years ago

    moore25 - Not so much:) Nice to read reviews for games so bad that the reviews are just really good rants.

  • gre_soul #4 6 years ago

    and here was I expecting greatness from a developer that brought us... catch the sperm 2
    Edited by 1 at 12/03/06 @ 18:50

  • ekko #5 6 years ago

    It begs the question why hasn't there been a Burnout / Road Rash cross over? EA even publish (own?) Criterion games now.

  • stoopidgreg #6 6 years ago

    jack bauer?

  • BBIAJ #7 6 years ago

    "moore25

    What about bad reviews for good games?"

    What, you mean like the Lemmings review Tom did? ;o)

  • ecureuil #8 6 years ago

    Courses have been designed with all the inspiration of a trip around Nuneaton.

    Wow, this line took me by surprise. Matt, do you live in, or near Nuneaton, then? I live there, and it's such a small place, it's not likely people would have heard of it. Unless the Boroughs recent cup run against Middlesboro got more coverage than I realised..

  • tengu #9 6 years ago

    "What about bad reviews for good games?"

    Well, they can't be that good if they get bad reviews.

  • Talha #10 6 years ago

    @firm3d etc: True, but this review was NOT FUNNY ENOUGH. For something with a 2/10 you'd expect a whopper, something that keeps you quietly chuckling to yourself for the weekend. This one was just so-so. Seems EG staff are a little weary spitting out all these reviews in succession.

    The review gets 2/10 as well!! ;-)

  • Xerx3s #11 6 years ago

    0_o a 2.0?!

    So they actually managed to get on the same lvl as some other publishers...

  • MrGrumpy.au #12 6 years ago

    Acclaim's dreadful Speed Kings

    Hey, hey, hey Speed Kings is not dreadful (espicially when it only cost you $4.99 for the cube version), it always reminded me of the bike version of the original Burnout.

    No Jacked off jokes yet? What's going on here!

    Edit: Sorry I missed gre_soul's post.
    Edited by 1 at 13/03/06 @ 08:42

  • Spud_leg_wizz #13 6 years ago

    Nuneaton is the wife-swap capital of the UK.

  • smelly #14 6 years ago

    Nuneaton is the wife-swap capital of the UK.

    Really? (looks up nuneaton on the map)

  • Merefield #15 6 years ago

    Well the future didn't bode well for 'Jacked' when its original owner, 3DO went bust. Clearly it wasn't finished and probably finished off on the cheap by, it looks like, probably another team since i believe most of the 3DO guys ran off asap to get another job once they smelt the administrators' perfume.

    Shame, this WAS supposed to be a worthy update to the sumblime Road Rash which I adored, even in the pixelated 3D PS version.

    Lets hope the Burnout devs do a version with motorbikes and motorbike gangs.

    Its something about squeezing a bike between two cars at ridiculous speeds the wrong way down a one way street, flashing through a forest road at 200mph , nudging an opponent who's just wacked you with a length of pipe into the path of an oncoming juggernaut and jumping off the brow of a hill which attracts....

    Pretty Please!
    Edited by 4 at 13/03/06 @ 13:51

  • ecureuil #16 6 years ago

    Nuneaton is the wife-swap capital of the UK.

    I'm out in Nuneaton most weekends, and going for a quick pint in Chicago Rock pretty much supports this. :|

  • Triggerhappytel #17 6 years ago

    Shame. I'm still waiting for a good Burnout-on-bikes. The ingredients are all there; it just needs good execution.

  • jellyhead #18 6 years ago

    Mario Kart with Bikes instead of karts is all that is needed really, punching and bike-chains instead of shells etc.

  • badoli #19 6 years ago

    "After playing it you'll be faintly depressed that precious hours of your life were wasted on it"

    Ha, try to imagine u wasted precious months on developing it ;)

  • Atriel #20 5 years ago

    Cmon. If someone want to review a game, be sure to at least have some knowledge and SKILL in the game you just reviewed, and knowledge that most of the times gameplay surpasses graphics. I felt slighty offended by this review because Jacked IMHO is a pearl and best game in the style since RR:TourDuForce.

    "When a game relies on quick-witted reactions, the controls need to be tightly implemented. Jacked fudges it instantly by using every button on the pad and both analogue sticks, so that riding up on a foe, cracking him over the head with a spanner and jumping on his bike becomes a finger-crippling accident with luck playing a bigger role than skill. Shoulder buttons are used to accelerate and brake, the right stick is for swinging bats at enemies, another button lets the player jump onto a rival's bike mid-race, circle kicks off a nitro boost, square is for throwing grenades (grenades!) and triangle gives orders to the rest of your biking crew. All this while you're trying to pick up icons, steer a course, avoid traffic and come first in a race."
    The reviewer has very good skill with words, but we can see here the proof that his skills with fingers are misleading... As an old MOTOGP player, I had no trouble with Jacked controls, and won gold in the first 4 missions. Of course, you must do things a little BEFOREHAND, like most not-completely-arcadey bike game.

    "To recover from a beating, you have to... accelerate?"
    No. You must stop HOLDING the accelerator and start HITTING it to recover. its a way to make your reaction counts. I bet the reviewer must have hold the button until he saw that wall 2 inches from his nose.

    "Racing up on an opponent happens very quickly so there's only a very short window of opportunity to smash him in the face and nick his ride."
    Bad skill. You should start slowing down BEFORE the bike is by your side. If you brake when he´s by your side, too late.

    "And the awful design decisions continue. Gang Battle races are a warped take on Capture the Flag, as you fight it out with rival bikers to keep control of a marker. Enemies hurl grenades which you have to avoid by braking. Jacked must be the first racing game where you actually gain a nitro boost by stopping. You can't catch the marker because you're too busy braking and when you do get hold of it, it gets stolen the instant you brake. I'm screaming inside just thinking about it."
    LOL THATS RIDICULOUS!!!!! Stopping to nitro up in the ramp during the race... DUMB

    "Pulling wheelies gives a speed boost too, but courses are so snakey that racing fast just results in bouncing off various walls."
    "Ramps are conveniently placed so you jump into a corner."
    Normal complains of a player with no skill.

    This game is simplistic, but it certainly doesnt deseve a 2, nor all this bash. By the review, i can see that the reviewer was mad after having exploded the 94th time in that corner... probably doesn´t know what is SLIDING (just tap brake before the corners). Its laughable that he said that one should STOP to nitro up LOL.... you get more nitro if you go FAST in the ramp and jump longer (jump distance adds nitro too), and by the complains about nitro, i bet he doesn´t know when to use nitro too (to accelerate off corners after sliding, or from low speeds, nitro is useless when near full speed).

    So we can AFFIRM that this review was wrote by someone very skilled... in WORDS. But in videogames, has less skill than my grandma´s trained monkey, and doesn´t have a clue about he´s talking about.