Street Supremacy Review

Konami has many great franchises from Winning Eleven and Metal Gear Solid to Castlevania. Street Supremacy is one of those unfortunate titles that come around that just does not meet the expectations that people have from a publisher as prestigious as Konami. With competition like Ridge Racer, Need for Speed and Burnout Legends, what the heck was Konami thinking when they released Street Supremacy? Yeah, for every fault this game has (and there are major faults), it does have a few unique ideas to bring to the table. There is nothing new with the cars or with upgrading your car parts, we have seen that in countless racing games, but there is at least a ranking system as well as a goal of dominating the streets. How this is done is what makes Street Supremacy worth playing, at least for a little while.

Basically you start out as a newcomer to the team and you will need to work your way up the ladder. Kind of like Need for Speed Most Wanted’s Black List, but they are actually your teammates. Your overall goal in the team is to become team leader. While you are doing this, you will be competing against other teams in races. This is where you earn or lose territory, depending on the outcome of a Team Battle. Team Battles take place when your team attacks a rival area or when a rival team attacks your team’s areas. A team can only attack once per day. If attacked, losing means loss of an area. If you lose all of your areas, the team is disbanded. Team Battles are played in single elimination form with five racers until no racers remain on one of the teams. Each rival you defeat will earn you bonus points to spend on upgrading your vehicle.

Now for the downsides; this is one of the slowest racing games that you’ll ever encounter. Think of Street Supremacy as being opposite Burnout Legends on the spectrum of the speedometer. It might say you are going 150, but it feels more like 50. Even slower are the load times. You are going to have a lot of these during the Team Battles when your computer allies face off against their rival opponents. This is a drawn out process that can’t be skipped. Prepare some sandwiches or play a game of Need for Speed Most Wanted on the PS2 while matches the computers are playing are loading.

Furthermore, there is no story or anything to drive your interest in the game. Not many racing games succeed at doing this. Really, none do, but if they are going to throw a text-based storyline in, at least use proper syntax. “You’re can’t strut your stuff until you’ve beaten me, as well” is a poor excuse of Japanese to English translation. We’ve seen this before, but come on, just don’t include it if you are not going to try.

To the game’s credit, I did find myself somewhat hooked to ranking up in my team and upgrading to the hottest car. It could have kept my interest longer if I was not racing on the same boring tracks all the time. I swear all you see is the highway, a car or two, the wall and a building here or there. Its pitch black and there is no atmosphere to the game at all. Street Supremacy is not the worst game that I’ve played on the PSP, but it is not even close to the likes of Burnout Legends or Ridge Racer. Diehard racing fans might find the turf domination interesting, but other than that, everything else is subpar.