Written by: Rik
Date posted: October 28, 2022
Street Racing Syndicate isn’t a particularly hard game, but it is one that lets you think you’re getting very close to the end when in fact much of the hard work is yet to begin.
You shouldn’t struggle early on, and despite the anti-quit incentives and auto saves, very few mistakes are fatal. If you get short on cash, just go back to some races you won before and bet big on yourself.
Here are a few hints and tips on getting to the very end:
1: To cut to the chase: you’ll need 77000 respect points to unlock the final Street Crew event, and there are a maximum of 78000 available in the game up to that point. So there’s a margin of error of 1000 across all events. It’s a tough ask.
2: Circuit races with multiple laps should be easy enough to max out on. In point-to-point sprints, it’s more likely you’ll run out of time, or take too many risks and crash. Tougher still are short drag races against a single opponent. You can try drafting behind them for points, but don’t forget to overtake and actually win the race. Points for near misses with civilian traffic are also your friend here.
3: If, like me, you bought a Skyline at the earliest opportunity, you may find yourself wondering why it’s so easy to win but so hard to earn maximum points. The Skyline is fast but it holds the road almost too well, meaning you’re not going to be able to get the bonuses you need from drifting and sliding etc. Go get an RX7 to really slide around on the easier races, although be warned: it’s a motherfucker to handle. The Mitsubishi Lancer and Subaru Impreza are more balanced but still have a bit more ‘give’ than the Skyline.
4: Respect Challenges, logically enough, do earn you respect points. Which basically means you do have to do the girlfriend bits. You get 500 points for impressing each girl.
5: A small mercy to be grateful for is the fact that the game operates a ‘best of’ system and will tally up your best historical scores from each Crew Meet. In other words, if you mess up a race that you’ve already maxed out in the past, don’t worry. And if there’s just one out of three that keeps eluding you, that’s the only one you need to focus on.
6: One completely unscientific and paranoia-fuelled theory I developed was that wagers act as extra motivation for that one particular opponent and unless you’re desperate for money on the trickiest races it might be worth opting out. It would make sense for the cash bets to have some impact on AI performance, but I’m willing to accept that I could be imagining things here.
7: The first two Nitro Xtreme series can seem impossible at first. But they are beatable with something close to 3000 points each. And once you’ve done enough to master them, the final one, once unlocked, will be a cakewalk.
8: Your prize is… another Skyline, from this rarely-seen CG man.
9: If you want to ‘100%’ the game, there’s more to do, but you’ll need to earn a lot of money to buy a lot of cars, as well as tackle the Arcade Mode’s Iron Man challenges, which require you to finish first in a long series of races that increase in difficulty, and will really test your patience (if it hasn’t been exhausted already).
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