Street Sumpremacy Playstation Portable Video Game Review

Street Supremacy, also known as Shutokou Battle in Japan, is Genki’s latest foray into the Tokyo street racing genre. Back when the series was at the height of its popularity back on the Dreamcast, Tokyo Xtreme Racer grabbed big scores from every publication around. Sadly this time around a lot of the racing has been stripped and replaced with short races and long load times.In the main story mode of Street Supremacy called Team Rumble Mode you’ll have the chance to lead a team of racers, which fight for control of certain areas of the Tokyo highways. In practice it all plays out by selecting an area from a grid map and then selecting one of two routes to race on within that area. You then wait as long as 30 seconds for the track to load after which you select from a variety of racers, all with different skills, to race against.Once you’ve chosen an opponent you’re sent in to actually race. Races are decided by whoever crosses the finish line first or by whoever forces their opponents SP meter to run out first. Your SP meter deteriorates gradually if you’re far behind your racing enemy and it drops in chunks when you run into a wall or another car. Most races will end well before the finish line due to the fact that the SP meter runs out so darn fast. So that 30-second wait time amounts to a minute at most racing.Once a race is over you gain money and skill points, that is if you won the race or the race was close. The skill points level you up RPG style and unlock upgrades to the many customizable car parts available within your garage. So in essence once you level up you usually head over to the garage and upgrade everything you can and then head back out for another day on the highways so that racers of the same level won’t school you.When you do exit out of the Tokyo grid map you’ll end a virtual day of racing. Scores will be tallied and your results for the day will be shown over a few screens. One of the best parts of Street Supremacy is that each NPC racer has a loyalty rating, so if you beat them or other members of their team in races they have a chance to defect and join your team if you win. The more members you have, the better chance you have to pick a selection of 5 elite members to race in an all out battle for an area on the map.If you weaken a team enough you can engage in these battles of 5 on 5 where the winner either gains control of the opposing team’s area if they started the battle or keeps the area if they are defending an attack. Your team leader will randomly engage battles but if you want to start them yourself you have to move up the ranks internally within your squad. To do this you can sometimes select an option to engage in a team battle where you race whoever is one place better than you on the team roster. If you win you move up a spot. Once you beat the team leader you become the team leader and have all the power to take out the rest of the rival teams.This RPG element to the game is by far the most fun and the only reason I kept playing as long as I did. The real problem with Street Supremacy is the core racing model. Every single race is a one on one match and like I said earlier it can be over really quick. Then to enter another race it takes many menus and lots of loading time to get back to the action. Even the smaller internal menus have ridiculously bad loading times that last anywhere from 5 to 15 seconds. But even though the racing model is a bit dull and the loading times did take forever and a day I still had a lot of fun upgrading my car and participating in the whole RPG aspect of the game.Beyond the main story mode there is an extremely broken multiplayer ad-hoc mode, which you should never touch if you know what’s best for you. There’s also a worthless time trial mode and probably a couple other boring unnecessary modes to boot. Bottom line is that past the story mode the rest is not worth a penny.The sound in Street Supremacy is actually very fitting. The background music is really good and really puts you in the street racing mood. The sounds effects are nothing special but they don’t detract at all from the overall experience.Thankfully the same can be said for the graphics, which are excellent aside from the PSP’s horrible rendering abilities that drop polygons all over the place. All the licensed cars look great and even have reflection models on them. The menu art, once you get to it after that annoying loading circle, is also top quality and should be commended.It’s a shame that such a well thought out RPG story mode got destroyed by long loading times and lack luster driving mechanics. Although if you don’t mind loading times and short races you might actually enjoy it like I did for the most part. Here’s hoping Genki makes a sequel that cures these problems as the premise is great.

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