2 Fast 2 Furious

You've got to admire the commitment of boy racers. They buy a clapped out, ten-year old Vauxhall Corsa for, say, £500, and then lavish all their hard-earned / borrowed / stolen (delete as applicable) money on doing it up.

They purchase new alloys and rubber band tyres, add an outrageous body kit and an expensive re-spray in two-tone paint, tune the engine and install some handy new upgrades, not to mention an almighty sound system. An overall outlay of some £5,000, so that their little multi-coloured Corsa looks like it's been on an aggressive steroid enhancement course and sounds like there's a lion growling under the bonnet.

The sell-on value of the car is still only a few hundred more than they actually paid for it in the first place. Still, they're then all ready to hit the car parks of the local Tesco and Asda to do some wicked burnouts and handbrake skids to impress Tracey and Donna.

At Pocket Gamer, we very much wish we could be that cool. But alas, you don't get everything you want in life, particularly if what you actually want is a merely half-decent 2D racer based on the fun, yet ultimately silly, 2 Fast 2 Furious road race movie.

In the mobile version of 2 Fast 2 Furious, the idea is simple: win 12 races and finish the game with as much money as you can. Of course, as you progress and your prize money mounts up you can spend some of it on slowly speccing-up your ride, either by tuning the engine, adding nitro boost, upgrading the steering (not that it will make a fat – sorry – 'phat' lot of difference) and acceleration, or strengthening the bodywork.

All this without a hint of a McDonald's car park anywhere. But that's where the good news ends.

2 Fast 2 Furious takes on the guise of the traditional behind-the-car view, the track laid out before you. The obligatory pit babe puts you and three other racers under starter's orders and then you're off!

Unfortunately, that initial adrenaline high as you wheel-spin off the start line really is about as good as it gets. From then on you accelerate along the first straight and, as the first bend comes into view, battle it out with the rest of the pack. Braking lightly, you turn into the corner, hold it for a mere second… and before you know it your car is sent into a spin.

Your opponents, meanwhile, speed into the distance and you set off again to try and catch them – only to spin again at the next corner. Or on a frustratingly placed oil slick.

By now you'll be getting the picture. 2 Fast 2 Furious is, in the vernacular, 2 frustrating.

Things pick up a bit once you realise that you have to turn into bends with quick press-and-release combinations (which only work if you've got the game set-up to self-centre the car's steering) until you're safely on a straight bit of road. Even then, though, care must be taken – if you're going flat out on a straight you can spin just by trying to correct your car's trajectory and being too heavy on the controls.

This is such a monumental problem and makes things so unplayable that it shatters any chance of wanting to stick with 2 Fast 2 Furious for anything more than five minutes (and that's being optimistic).

To add insult to injury, the graphics are jerky and sparse, while the menus are poorly conceived. And the sound is no better, with a rubbish R'n'B-style tune and just one type of effect – aptly enough, a skidding sound.

It all leaves 2 Fast 2 Furious very much mixed up in the pack when it comes to mobile racers. The significant control problems mean your shiny new ride is more likely to end up wrapped around a street light than safe at home in the garage after a night's action. Which, unfortunately, is something it does have in common with those boy racers.