Rápido e Furioso 3D Fugitivo (MultiScreen Jogo de Java

You can't beat a decent car chase. Think about the ones in The Matrix Reloaded, or The French Connection. Even slower-paced ones can be gripping. We're talking OJ Simpson pootling along the highway with half the LAPD in pursuit, or the time our local milkman challenged an old lady in her Shopmobility cart to a street duel.

Car chases rule, in short. Especially when they involve cheating by lobbing milk bottles at nice old ladies.

Alas, there's no dairy-related nefariousness in The Fast And The Furious: Fugitive, and thankfully the car chases are conducted at top speed. It's the latest in I-play's multi-million selling racing series, but this time it's not based on a specific movie.

You play Brian O'Conner, a disgruntled cop who's on the run from his former colleagues, dashing across the US from LA to Miami at speeds that'd make OJ feel ashamed of himself.

The game's Story mode is split between four locations on this journey: LA, Santa Fe, Baton Rouge and Miami and sees you taking on street races and missions to earn cash to buy new cars and leave the cops trailing in your wake.

Each location has a mixture of races and missions, with the latter including tasks such as vrooming round the city passing individual checkpoints as quickly as possible, pursuing a baddie and ramming their car as much as possible, or evading pursuit yourself. Meanwhile, the street races involve three cars, with the police pitching in if you get too fast and/or furious, and trying to ram you off the road.

Earn enough cash for your next motor, and you get to 'Leave Town', which is a straight race to the state boundary with the police in hot pursuit. Meanwhile, there's an added nod to the boy-racer community with the game's Body Shop, which weirdly doesn't sell any fairtrade sponges or organic tea-tree shampoo, but instead offers new vinyls, bumpers and spoilers, or a paintjob for your motor.

So how does it play? Marvellously. It's worth stressing that this is a review of the 3D version of The Fast And The Furious: Fugitive, and past games in the series have taught us not to assume that a great 3D version means a similarly-impressive 2D game. But assuming you've got a high-end phone, it's ace.

The visuals are top-notch, not so much because they're gob-smackingly detailed (although they're not bad), but because they shift along at a rapid pace, with minimal pop-up. The distance you can see ahead of your car is impressive, and there's none of the building pop-up seen in the Symbian version of Project Gotham Racing, for example.

The handling is super-smooth too, with none of the sluggishness seen in some 3D mobile racers. In fact, it feels almost a bit too smooth at first, with your car responding strongly to even a quick button-press. It takes a few minutes to get used to this mobile equivalent of power-steering, but once mastered, you can throw yourself round corners without a problem.

And it's not just brainless racing. Each race or mission takes place on a proper city map, with ample opportunity for shortcuts or diversions, depending on whether you're trying to get to a finish line first, or shake off someone on your tail.

Meanwhile, the cars bounce off each other with satisfying thunks, affording plenty of chances to make your task easier by nudging rivals into a wall. Plotting when to use your three nitros per race adds another element of strategy, albeit one seen in many racers.

Criticisms? The Fast And The Furious: Fugitive is tough, which is a double-edged sword. We see it as a strong point, because we really had to work to come out on top in the races, even from the first LA section. Yet we wonder if the casual gamers picking up the game on the strength of its name will struggle a bit.

Meanwhile, the presentation is variable. The game's main menu is rendered in whizzy 3D, and there's a neat Burnout-esque cut-scene when your car flies off a ramp into the air. Yet some of the in-between dialogue screens that develop the story mode look like the developers ran out of memory and had to wheck something cheap and quick together.

They're not huge niggles, though. And the icing on the cake is the various Arcade modes, which include a time trial, a checkpoint race, and two car-chase pursuits one where you flee the cops, and one where you ARE the chasing cop. It adds further depth to what's already one of the best mobile racers you can buy. Recommended.
The Fast & The Furious: Fugitive

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