Yo yo yo! It’s MC Joe-dizzle in da hizzle wit’ a review of 187 Ride or Die, biatch!

Sorry, I’ll stop now.

Yeah, that big “4” at the top of this review should pretty much tell you that this game isn’t worth a second look, but for some reason, despite both that score and the first line of this review, you’re continuing to read. Perhaps a generic car combat game with street cred is your dream game. From what I could gather out of all the over-the-top thuggish lingo (does anyone, anywhere in the world, actually talk like this?), the paper-thin plot pretty much just involves a regular gangsta recruited by the local boss to take out his rivals. This is done, primarily, through racing around the same few inner-city tracks.

The actual racing isn’t horrible; most of the cars move pretty quickly and power sliding is kind of fun. The tracks are generally small, with lots of tight turns and some civilian traffic to get in the way. Powerups litter the whole course, so ammo is pretty much never an issue. The steering is a little wonky, though; it’s just not as tight as it should be. There’s an extremely simple boost system in place. As you power slide around corners, your boost meter builds. It can be used at any time for a quick little burst, or it can be saved until full for a lengthy speed boost. It’s simple, generic racing, right down to the weapon selections.

There seem to be a lot of different firearms, but many feel very similar. The uzi and the assault rifle and even the automatic pistol all do about the same thing, just with varying rates of fire. However, since there is pretty much always a new weapon to be picked up, the rate of fire hardly matters. There are a few special weapons, like mines and rocket launchers, but most of the others feel the same. Aiming couldn’t be simpler; there’s a button for shooting forward and a button for shooting backward. It does a pretty good job of locking on for you, so forget about precision aiming.

Throughout the story mode, there’s a lot of standard racing, but sometimes it mixes things up a bit. Sometimes you’ll do things like escort another vehicle around the track or play an elimination match where the last car around each lap explodes. These spice up the action a little bit, but the overall gameplay is still too dull to provide any thrills. Multiplayer modes, both online and offline, help a little bit, but the gameplay isn’t deep enough to be very compelling even when competing against your friends.

Graphically, the game looks acceptable. Everything has a shiny kind of glow to it, but it looks good on the cars and such. The developers have borrowed the slow-mo crash from another, much better, racing game, but it still looks pretty cool to see your opponent’s ride light up after being hit with a rocket. The audio, on the other hand, is absolutely dreadful. Filled with generic rap and repetitive phrases from the player character, it’s really pretty awful.



Article By: MC Joe-dizzle