Just for a brief history lesson, Kanjozoku refers to the street racing culture of Osaka, Japan. Back in the day a big raised highway was built in Osaka and at night rival car clubs would tear around the circuit and race each other. These illegal races eventually drew the ire of the local police and the racing culture has almost died out entirely now, save for a few die-hards keeping it alive today for historical value as much as anything.
This Kanjozoku video game, unfortunately, doesn't tell you any of that. It has absolutely nothing to do with the real car culture. And the big circular highway the game lets you drive on isn't anything like the real route in Osaka. This game is Kanjozoku in name only.
As far as a racing game, well, it isn't much of one. It's one of the most blatant disgusting examples of false advertising I've ever seen, to be honest. See, all of the screenshots and trailers on the Xbox store showing off the game are all bullshit. They're all wrong. They're all fake. The biggest issue is that those screens and trailers show off multiplayer races and other race cars on the track with you - y'know, like a normal racing game - but this game doesn't have any of that. You don't race other cars. Ever. At all. Those screens are all lies. It just plain isn't a racing game. Instead, it's sort of a time trial game where you just drive through traffic cars as fast as possible between checkpoints. That's it. That's the game.
There is a surprising amount of stuff in the game, at least. There are 28 different cars - none of which are officially licensed, of course - ranging from various Honda Civics, which were actually the favored platform for many real Kanjozoku racers, to various Supras, Skylines, and other JDM look alikes. You can upgrade your cars as well, though the upgrade path is pretty simplistic, and you can modify the look of your car as well. Not that it really matters, since there's no one to actually show off your car to since there is no multiplayer or anything. Saving up enough money to actually buy any of the other cars is next to impossible, by the way, so it all feels even more extra pointless.
There are police chases here as well, but man are they boring. The cops don't really do anything special and you can outrun them extremely easily. I never actually liked police chases in racing games that much, though, so whatever.
So let's recap - the game does nothing whatsoever with the Kanjozoku culture, it's a big fat lie of false advertising because it isn't really a racing game despite the screens and videos making it look like one, and there are police chases but they suck. Ok. That doesn't sound very good.
For some reason, though, I'm kinda having fun with it. It's kind of satisfying and fun to just run loop after loop on the big closed highway course the game takes place on. The traffic cars are diabolical in their insistence on always being in the wrong place at the wrong time, but that makes weaving and dodging through them surprisingly addictive. It's not a good driving game at all. At all. But I don't hate it as much as I thought I might. There is some fun to be had here.
Oh, and there are anime waifus. Really ugly awkward looking ones with big blobby boobs that look horrible, but at least that aspect of the screenshots and marketing of the game wasn't a huge lie. They only appear on the menu and serve no purpose other than to just be eye candy, but they're more like candy corn or Good N Plenty instead of candy anyone actually wants to eat or look at.
Ultimately, this Kanjozoku game i pretty darned terrible. It does nothing with the culture it's based on, was marketed based on total lies, and isn't even really a racing game. For the right price though, there is some fun to be here as a cheap time waster if you just want to get some easy achievements and kill some time dodging traffic on an Osaka highway. Normal price is $15, which is too much, but I got it for closer to $8 on Xbox and don't hate myself for paying it. It's cheaper on Switch than other platforms, but it's only playable in handheld mode and can't be played on TV at all, so be warned. Kanjozoku is a putrid stink pile failure of a game without question, but it's also kinda sorta fun maybe if you lower your expectations to basically zero.
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