Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition Review – PlayStation 5

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is the home conversion of Raw Thrills’ 2017 arcade racer, handled on console by Cradle Games and published by GameMill. 

On PS5, it promises to bring that cabinet experience into your living room: big drifts, huge nitrous blasts and a handful of wild tracks that feel ripped straight from the films. Raw Thrills’ pedigree is obvious, especially if you know their addition to the ‘Cruis’n’ series with Blast on Switch, but this particular port is a more modest proposition. 

What you get is the essence of the arcade game, with very little wrapped around it beyond not spending a pound every two minutes!

 

 

Story

Events are grouped into themed sets with paper-thin narrative labels about undercover missions, high-risk deliveries and rival crews. A short briefing might tell you that the police are closing in, or that a particular gang needs to be taught a lesson, and then you are immediately thrown back onto the track.

Dom and the core cast never take centre stage…and not even a single mention of the value of family, which is a crime in itself. 

There are no cinematic cut-scenes or extended dialogue sequences, but rather the game leans on the tone of the films – over-the-top chases, improbable explosions and family-adjacent banter – without trying to hew too closely to its blockbuster source material.

It admittedly suits the arcade heritage, but anyone expecting a properly scripted Fast & Furious campaign – RIP Crossroads – is going to find this an extremely slight package.

 

 

Gameplay

On the track, Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition is unabashedly old-school arcade racing. You choose from a small roster of eight licensed vehicles, including muscle cars and modern performance icons, then throw them around stunt-filled tracks based on locations like Hong Kong, Yellowstone and Havana. 

The driving model is loose and generous. Cars pivot eagerly into drifts with a light tap of the brake, and you are almost always better served by keeping your foot planted than by driving with any real finesse.

Nitrous sits at the centre of everything. You build a boost meter by driving aggressively and threading through traffic, then cash it in for long bursts of speed that drench the screen in motion blur. 

Events range from point-to-point sprints to lapped races and more objective-driven challenges that ask you to ram marked vehicles or smash environmental targets. Once you have ticked off first place on each track, an “Extreme” mode remixes things, but the underlying content does not change.

The biggest frustration is the rubber-banding – AI rivals refuse to let you break away. You can drive three near-perfect laps, clip one obstacle in the last corner and watch the field magically swarm around you. For casual players and younger drivers, that forced drama keeps races tense, but for anyone with a competitive streak, it quickly feels like the game is more interested in stage-managing photo finishes than rewarding skill. 

Compared with Raw Thrills’ own Cruis’n Blast conversion on Switch, which throws more tracks, more modes,four-player co-op at you and feels – ever so slightly – freer in how races unfold, this comes off as the thinner experience.

Local multiplayer is where the game is most fun. Two-player split-screen lets you recreate that arcade rivalry at home, and the forgiving handling makes it easy for people of different abilities to enjoy the same race. Online options are basic and do not add much long-term pull, so this is very much a sofa racer.

Audio

Audio is a clear carry-over from the arcade cabinet heritage – LOUD. Engines roar aggressively, turbochargers whistle and tyres squeal at the slightest provocation. Nitrous blasts arrive with a satisfying whoosh, and set-piece moments – collapsing bridges, missiles, falling trees – are underlined with big, cinematic sound effects that help sell the chaos even when the visuals are not doing anything especially advanced.

The soundtrack sticks to high-energy tracks that sit somewhere between action-film score and radio-friendly dance. You are unlikely to come away humming anything, but the tempo matches the pace on track. Brief snippets of voiceover comment on big drifts, heavy crashes and close finishes. Lines do repeat over longer sessions, yet in short bursts they add the right level of arcade chatter.

Crucially, the mix does a good job of keeping important cues audible. Approaching traffic, incoming sirens and the crunch of guardrails all cut through the music clearly, which helps with reaction times when the screen is busy.

 

 

Performance

On PS5, Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition looks and feels very much like a straight console port of an older arcade title. The cars are cleanly modelled and clearly licensed – all-American muscle from Ford, Dodge and Shelby but nary a hint of exotic European hypercars or Japanese drift machines – however lacking the fine detail you would expect from a native current-gen showcase whilst hurtling at 180mph. 

Environments are colourful and busy, with lots of moving parts and explosive set-pieces, yet close inspection reveals flat textures and simplistic lighting.

The upside is rock-solid performance – frame rates hold steady during hectic races, even when you are weaving through traffic while rockets explode in the distance. Load times between events are short thanks to the PS5’s storage, which preserves that “insert credit and go” momentum that defined the cabinet. There are no obvious streaming issues or major hitches.

DualSense support is present but understated, with some trigger resistance and rumble variation for different surfaces and collisions, but little that fundamentally improves the feel of driving. 

 

 

Verdict

Fast & Furious: Arcade Edition on PS5 delivers exactly what you would expect from a straight arcade conversion – immediate handling, insane, short tracks and – particularly in local split-screen – there are genuine highs and laughs to be had.

The problems lie in how quickly you can see everything there is to see. Six tracks and eight cars do not stretch very far; the event structure is threadbare, and heavy rubber-banding saps satisfaction from clean wins when going solo. 

When you remember that Raw Thrills’ own Cruis’n Blast on Switch delivers more content and a wilder sense of fun from the same broad template, this does feel like the weaker sibling.

As a budget party racer for Fast & Furious fans, it is serviceable. As a long-term home for arcade racing on PS5, it does run out of road a little too quickly, despite the budget £25 price point.