I hope that was painful (if not funny) to read. Thanks to Gizoogle for providing the translation of my original work. If you give 187 Ride or Die a chance, and I hope you don't, then you'll be treated to much more of this type of witty banter. The writers for this project must be big fans of Gizoogle, because they had to have run their whole script through it.

What we have here is yet another attempt to cash in on the success of Grand Theft Auto 3 and its sequels. There's a sea of them coming out this fall, and I have little to no hope for any of them. It's probably not the best place to rant about mature themed games with crappy gameplay, so I'll just concentrate on this mature themed game with crappy gameplay.

When I first heard what 187 was going to play like, I thought it might work. It sounded like an urban take on Twisted Metal. Well, it's far from any decent car combat game I've played, and it's not much of a racing game either. Wading through all the izzle dialog gets you into the story of the game where you start racing and killing for credibility. The stages progress in linear fashion, just one race after another with the occasional free roaming "kill all enemies" stages thrown in for good measure.

There's a bit of effort that went into making the races feel different from one another, but they are trivial distinctions. Some races you can only lay bombs, others blow up the player in last place at the end of each lap. So, instead of it being like an urban Twisted Metal, it ends up playing more like Wipeout with Escalades.

The point to point road races don't take much in the way of driving skill, so racing fans will be unhappy. The combat is dull, so carnage fans will be disappointed. The weapons are comprised mainly of handguns and machine guns, which is like playing Twisted Metal without any power ups. The open area races are even worse. The areas are small, like parking garages or just a couple of blocks of the city. The enemies in some of the areas sport a machine gunner in the back of the vehicle, and the game suggested that you take the gunner out first. It doesn't matter either way. Just keep firing and moving your car around, and you'll end up progressing through the game.

The graphcis and sounds are just insignificant at this point. There's not a whole lot to look at. I don't even want to talk about the cutscenes again. Just re-read the first paragraph to this article and you get the idea.

This whole game just offends me. Offends me more as a gamer than anything else. Ubi Soft has really been on top of the publishing world this generation, and it pains me to see dretch like this seep through the cracks. Well, I guess you put up the money, you have got to at least see if you can make some of it back. Do them a favor and never spend money on this game to send a message that we can't be won over on quick cash-ins of overrated, morally destitute genres.