Fast & Furious: The Game

Fast & Furious: The Game follows the events of the record-setting movie of the same title, your sole objective being to rev engines, burn rubber, and make your competitors eat dust. Just like the film, you best grab the popcorn and check your thinking cap at the door. The story here isn't important – a questionable effort to route out weapons dealers tied to some underground street racing syndicate – it's all about the racing.

Story mode shills scenes from the movie as you tackle a series of objective-based driving stages. Straightforward road races are joined by drag, GPS, pursuit, evade, and drift competitions. You're welcome to tackle any of these events in Quick Play, but only in Story mode are you able to nab new vehicles and open up venues.

In all of the events aside from drag, tilting your handset steers. Acceleration is handled automatically, whereas touching the screen allows you to hit the brakes. It's an intuitive scheme, one perfectly tuned to the device. At all times you feel as though you have complete control over your car thanks to an appropriately sensitive use of the accelerometer. The game omits a manual calibration option, although it automatically calibrate whenever you begin playing.

Road and GPS events focus on competitive racing, the goal being to finish ahead of three computer-controlled drivers. GPS races, which are mapped on-the-fly, are less compelling than traditional road races; quite frankly, they come across as an unnecessary iteration on road races added for the sake of variety.

Drift races add the element of drifting, asking you to earn a set number of drift points in addition to finishing first. Unfortunately, these races are unevenly difficult. Computer-controlled drifters are entirely too agile on the streets, making it extremely difficult to both win the race and acquire the necessary number of points.

Drag races, pursuits, and evasion missions rev up the action side of Fast & Furious, departing from standard racing rules and controls. Pursuit and evade stages have you bashing cars and outrunning enemies, both tied to noted events from the movie. Drag races differ by having you focus on your vehicle's transmission during sprints. Winning these events is a matter of good shifting with taps of your gearbox and smart use of nitrous.

There's ample variety in the venues and events, which is only furthered by local multiplayer and online time challenges. Fast & Furious supports head-to-head races locally, as well as time trial leaderboards online. Races can be uploaded to YouTube, your best times synced with the game's leaderboards for comparison with other players globally.

It adds lasting appeal to an otherwise fleeting film tie-in, albeit one that possesses an uncharacteristic level of polish. Sure, it hardly redefines gaming and the content effectively ticks every box you'd expect a driving title to offer. But despite the annoyingly hard drift races and the lack of control options, you can't escape its appeal – Fast & Furious: The Game revs up an impressive, slick racer that easily powers past other licensed fare.