Juiced: Eliminator

Of course, you can't win respect if you don't have money. Betting factors heavily into Eliminator; while winning a race usually means a cash reward, you can soften the blow of second place by wagering against a racer you know you can beat. All that money can be spent on buying upgrades, body modifications or new cars, and mod-happy players will even be able to fiddle with the gear ratios and chassis height.

Watch out, though - bashing your car around too much during races actually affects performance, and once your nitrous leaks out and your steering goes wonky, things get a lot harder. Thankfully, though, you won't have to spend money to repair and maintain your cars; that's done automatically after each race.

Gameplay aside, Juiced: Eliminator already sports some impressive-looking graphics ahead of its July release, and the twitchy talking heads from Juiced have been replaced by full-screen, nicely animated sequences of characters talking to you. The ad-hoc Relay and Eliminator modes - unique to the PSP version - are promising as well. If the developer can just do something about the unresponsive steering controls before this hits stores in July, then this is one PSP racer that's almost guaranteed to pull ahead of the pack.