[Faze]

I haven’t made an installment to my rant-series in a few months, which to the internet is about 5 years, so here we go. There are many things that I’ve done and regret. Playing this game is one of those things.

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Pimp My Ride is based off the hit MTV show of the same name. The basic premise of Pimp My Ride is to take a piece of shit car and give it a total makeover. It stars rapper Xzibit and features the talents of the mechanics who work at West Coast Customs, who provide all the modifications.

Since Pimp My Ride is one of the few MTV shows that dont suck, naturally some greedy executive would try to make a cheap cash in and sell it to the public, hence the game was born.

For the longest time since the game first game out, this game cost $50. Hell, Pimp My Ride was $50 while at the same time games like Forza 2 and PGR4 were selling for less then $20. It only was until about a week ago that the game actually went down in price to something that doesn’t have such a profound price tag on it. Now there’s a reason why it was at a retardly high price for so long… and I think that reason is to deter angry white guys like Faze of 1337planet from playing this game and then expressing his disdain of said game by writing about it on an internet forum shortly after.

The game is developed by Eutechnyx, who are known for making discount-bin caliber racing games like Ford Vs Chevy that look and play really cheap and plasticy, have low production values, and usually sell for the initial price of $20. How can the price of THIS game be so stupidly high for the same amount of half-assed effort put into it as Ford Vs Chevy?!?

After playing the game and reading the reviews… this game doesn’t deserve the $50 price tag… hell, it isnt even worth the $15 I paid for it used at EB Games.

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I’m so not putting off playing this game as much as possible. For the sake of this review, I'll be doing the Xbox 360 version of the game, since it has achievements and is the exact same thing as the Wii and PS2 ports.

How does Pimp My Ride make me want to rage? Let’s find out.

*opens disk tray* Get on with it… START

First thing you’ll notice when the game starts up is that unlike most 360 games, Pimp My Ride doesn’t prompt you with a “you have to update to continue blah blah blah” screen. This is likely a sign that the game remains unchanged from 2006 meaning there hasn’t been any patches developed for the game that makes it not suck.



Also of note are the disturbing staticy bits at the top left part of the screen during the first few screens. Maybe it’s just the disk, or maybe I’m just paranoid that the game is going to blow up my 360. I’d prefer to get the RRoD on GOOD games such as Oblivion thank you very much.

Ah, classic INVESTIGATES, complete with pictures taken from a cellphone camera. Kind of reminds me of my once promising Let’s Play career.

Now, before you all ask, there’s a reason why I’m using a cellphone to take screenshots of an Xbox 360 game instead of being all fancy and high-production values and shit. First, I’m an archaic barbarian who’s too fucking lazy to get a decent PC that can properly run Snagit without the damn thing crashing every 15 seconds. Also I don’t want to give the impression that I’m using other people’s screenshots taken from IGN or something. Nah… that'd be too easy.

Next up we have the intro, which has framerate issues up the ass and is laughably bad. Apparently, this game takes place in a fictional place called “Pimp City”…. That name is so unoriginal it’s not even… PIMP CITY!!! I guess the developers of the game couldn’t properly base the game’s locale from Los Angeles… either that or the State of California wanted nothing to do with this game…. Seriously, Pimp City? I hope I don’t end up running into 50 Cent’s candy shop. That lowrider's hydraulics look like fun, shame I dont get to see any of that in the game.

Graphic-wise, it’s ok, as in 'at least you can see what the hell is on screen'. However, when you compare Pimp My Ride to better looking racing games like Forza 2 or Midnight Club LA, the vehicle graphics in Pimp My Ride will be outclassed like the shiny pile of plastic that it is. Why are the flags perfectly flat and have no frames of animation whatsoever? Why are there just as many Chinese flags as there are American flags? Why cant I drive through certain gaps in the Industrial area, let alone drive over a 3 inch tall median that looks like you can drive over it?



Those flags must be made of flat cardboard...



If this were a normal game, I would drive over this ledge.

Also, the voices and the character mouth animations don’t match up and are out of sync.

Xzibit’s voice acting is decent, well at least compared to the screaming Sarcan workers who voice all the other characters in the game. Sorry X-to-the-Z, your clever and witty banter alone cannot salvage this pile of garbage. Thankfully, there’s an option to turn off the music. Hey I’ve suffered enough playing through this crap, why the hell should I play through a shitty game with RAP MUSIC playing in the background?

These loading screens take too long, just like most shitty games. However, since this is pretty much Ford Racing with an MTV liscence, this is unacceptable. At least with Sonic ’06 the graphics looked decent.



Your basic loading screens in the game. I used the one with Fat Joe here for comedic effect. Note the useless ‘Pimp Hint’, which don’t give much useful information whatsoever. Some examples of the ‘Pimp Hint’ include “Grab all collectables to get a bonus”, or “Pressing the right button combinations can easily impress a group of idiots”. These arent hints, this what you put into the instruction manual. How is “Ghost Ride event selected with the GPS” considered a hint?



All Pimpin? Pimp Hint? Pimp my ride? This game tries too hard.

Now that I’ve thrown in my two cents on the graphics, sound, and retarded-sounded concept out of the way, let’s get to the actual gameplay. The game plays as your standard sandbox-style driving game, like Midnight Club, except Midnight Club was awesome and Pimp my Ride cannot hold a candle to Midnight Club if it tried.

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So it’s time to get into the core gameplay of this game. There are two stages for every customer you have to “pimp”. There’s the “Cash Roam” stage, where you have to raise enough cash to afford all the crap needed to modify the vehicle, and there’s the “Pimpin” stage, where you drive to various checkpoints that are specific to one part of the vehicle.

First off is the repetitive retardfest known as the “Cash Roam” stage. I’m really looking forward to this, he lied.

Now the first thing you’ll notice when playing the game is that your vehicle is the most durable thing on the planet. Seriously, you can crash into just about everything and somehow not get a scratch on your vehicle, like the vehicle has a permanent Carmageddon “Solid Granite Car” powerup or something. Hell, you don’t even slow down or change direction when you run into a vehicle head-on at top speed. Hey, as long as the bugs work in your favour, there’s not much need to bitch about them. God these physics are retarded. Do these people know of the simple concept of “Two things running into each other”? Normally when I run into a tree at more then 100 mph, I’d at least expect my vehicle to do something other then stop in it’s tracks, like bounce back and show some cosmetic damage.

According to this game, ramming into traffic gets you gold. Why? How? What? Lemons!

Of course, if you get tired of endangering the lives of fellow motorists, you can partake in some of the other collectible huntings and activities, like….

Cash Tokens – These are like the “hidden packages” in GTA… except they appear as white dots on the GPS hence making them not hidden. The tokens spell out “Pimp!” and as you collect tokens, the game has the gall to spell out the letter as if you are retarded or something. “PAEH” “AIH” “AEMMM” “PAEH” Next up: counting to 13.

Billboards – You can also run into billboards and collect golds, but you can only run into the ones that have the burgers on them, not the ones that are out of reach and have actual advertising on them. Why cant you be specific, game? Also of note that whenever you run into a burger board, after a few seconds it then gives off a blinding white light before somehow magically shaping itself into another billboard that appears behind the indestructible fence and has “Pimp City Customs” written on it.



Pimp City Customs? Let me get this straight, game developers. You have somehow managed to nab the rights to a hit TV show, let alone have a well-known rapper make a cameo in the game AND supply his own voice acting, yet you couldn’t get the rights to the vehicle remodeling company responsible for doing all the outlandish modifying on the peoples vehicles?!? What, did West Coast Customs also not want to have anything to do with this pile of crap?

Also how the fuck do those billboards just magically rebuild themselves, let alone radiate that blinding white glow in the first place? Forget it… I shouldn’t even bother to force logic onto a half-assed shovelware game.

Meters – For whatever reason, all the parking meters in Pimp City are scarce and only appear in groups of 5. These are a tad harder to find on a map then the billboards because they are hard to see at high speeds. The basic strategy to finding a group of meters is to just hug one side of the road and hope that you would accidently run into one of them.

But hey, at least you don’t have to worry about parking fines.

Don’t worry about the billboards and meters changing locations at every level, unlike the cash tokens, they are basically in the same spot. Sure in the first 2 areas of the game (New Wave Beach, Industrial Island… such original names) they are easy to find with time (and luck)… but for the other areas of the game, it gets a little bit tricky… just… just make a map. I did, unfortunately… but I wanted to get all the collectables so I don’t end up running out of money during the “pimping” stage and having to play through the stupid ‘cash roam’ mode a second time.

Blue tokens – I have no idea what the fuck these do, but I run into them anyways. Are they important? Who knows, who cares? It's never explained.

Hidden Supplier – Somewhere on the level there is a “hidden supplier” which is required to “perfect” a ride during the “pimpin” stage. More to that later. It’s not really so hidden when the target radiates a reddish glow around him and has a GPS marker show up when you get within 50 meters of the target. Hey idiots, it’s not called “Hidden” if you can spot the man with a distinctive red glow from a block away.



Activities – If somehow you get tired of smashing into traffic, causing property damage, and endangering peoples lives, you can partake in several stupid activities, like:

Cruising – Probably the most ridiculous. By approaching a red marker on the GPS, you have to “holla” to a group of 2 dozen people who have nothing better to do then stand in one specific spot all day. Why is there a group of people hanging around that one specific spot? It’s never explained. All you got to do is approach them and hit a certain button sequence (the number of buttons depends varies depending on which level you are on) while holding LB. If done correctly the group of fucking retards starts applauding and cheering loudly as if their team won the Super Bowl. I somehow got $2000 from doing this once. TWO FUCKING GRAND, just for driving by and impressing a group of these idiots. How the fuck does this work? Have I finally gone insane?!? What are the idiots so fucking impressed by my 133t button pressing skills that they literally THROW their money at me?

By the time you’ve reached the 3rd stage, you’d be approaching these idiots and going “Really, do I have to?!? Alright, alright… ‘A’’X’’Y’’A’’Y’’X’… FUCK! Why did I press ‘X”?! SHIT I have to do that AGAIN?!? This is so degrading!!!!”

Also, keep track of how many of these activities you do, because the game doesn’t tell you exactly how many of these activities/collectables you have achieved and which ones you have missed.

Ghost Ride the Whip – “Ghost Ridin’ the Whip”, according to Wikipedia, involves a person putting the transmission of a vehicle in gear, then getting out of the vehicle while it’s still rolling and dances right beside it while the vehicle then veers onto the sidewalk and runs into a light pole or something.

It is during these “green dot” activities that you notice the sad looking black person who you apparently play as. You have to love that expression on his face. It is as if he’s ashamed to be in this videogame. Maybe it’s because he realizes he has to humiliate himself by flailing his body around to impress a bunch of easily-impressible morons… or maybe it’s because he has to wear a shirt that has the word ‘PIMP’ written on the back in big, black, letters.

The player’s character is easily forgettable because his in-game sprite is only shown during the Ghost ridin’ activities. He doesn’t speak, there’s no character development on this character throughout the game and we know absolutely nothing about the guy outside of “Loves humiliating himself in public and has the word ‘PIMP’ written on his shirt.” No personality traits, no recognizable features, not even a name… nothing. NOTHING!!! He’s bland, he’s forgettable, and he probably just appeared in this game because he needed the money to pay the mortgate on his house.

This is in contrast to all the other people of pimp city, who are all a bunch of easily excitable, obnoxious retards and sound like screeching monkeys. But even the ‘pimpees’ are shallow and one sided. Sure they have hobbies like ‘Boxing’ or ‘gardening’ or ‘screaming obnoxiously when Xzibit comes to the door’, but outside of those traits, the ‘Pimpees’ are just as one-dimensional and forgettable at the protagonist.

Anyways, there are two “ghost ridin’” activities, represented by a green GPS marker.

Ghost ride the whip – Here we get to see the aforementioned nameless black guy flail about while you have to press a certain button combination in a short amount of time. Depending on how well you time your combinations correctly, you will get either “pimpin”, “dope” or “Busted”…. TU PARLAIS ANGLAIS MOTHERFUCKER?!?

You get a better bonus if you play through without triggering a “Dope” or “Busted”. The trick to perfecting these games is to focus on correctly timing the button combinations while at the same time keeping your eyes off the black man humiliating himself in public.

This is a lot more difficult then it looks…

…and to add insult to injury, later levels involve using the fucking analog stick and moving it in a certain direction. Worst off, if you somehow screw up during one of the sequences, you cannot just pause the game and restart… no that would actually make sense. This game punishes your ignorance by forcing you to play through all the stages BEFORE you get the option to restart. It is as if the game is taunting you for getting a DOPE. What the hell is ‘Dope’ supposed to mean anyway? Street culture is an odd race of people.

“Yo dawg I herd u like games so I put a game so u can lose while u lose”

Thankfully, you can ignore these activities and just ram into traffic until you get the set amount of money needed to move on.

Hot Steppin – This is the same concept as “Ghost ride the Whip”, except it involves correctly pressing A at the correct time. Unlike ‘GHOST RIDE DA WHIP’, which uses every button and analog stick moves possible, “HOT STEPPIN” only has one button to press, ‘A’. How the hell do you make that much money by simply pressing ‘A’ at the right moment?!? I got a fucking achievement for doing nothing but press ‘A’ a bunch of times!!!

After you get a set amount of cash, a pink star would appear on your GPS. You have to get to that certain checkpoint in a set amount of time. I’ve never ran out of time on these parts, largely because of the hunch that I might have to play this crap again if I fail to get there in time.

Now it's time for the 'PIMPIN' section of the level.

Now, the first part is over with… onto the second phase of the level, you know, the part that actually relates to the TV show. What the fuck was all that cash roam shit about? I don’t recall seeing people play a bunch of stupid minigames in the actual TV show. I bet the developers just put in the ‘cash roam’ stage to pad out the game for longer then it should be.

In the second phase of the level, you have to take the ‘customer’s’ piece of shit and turn it into a better-looking piece of shit. First, another loading screen. Then a cutscene that bears the same formula for every single person, that goes something like this:

- Xzibit goes to a person’s car and tells us it’s a piece of shit
- Xzibit then knocks on the door of said person’s house
- The person sees the menacing black man, gets overexcited and proceeds to scream like a fucking idiot instead of questioning how Xzibit managed to track down their home address and find out what kind of vehicle they drive.
- Xzibit and the screeching lab monkey tell us that the car is a piece of shit
- The victim then gives Xzibit the keys to the car, because idiots who wear a fucking basketball on their head or dress like Fat Joe don’t deserve to drive vehicles in the first place.

Then another loading screen.

Then the stage begins… The premise of this phase is that you are competing with a ‘Rival’, who does not appear at any point during the game. You and your invisible ‘RIVAL’ are in a competition to see who can ‘PIMP’ the poor bastard’s piece of shit the most, all within a set time limit.

The path is non-linear, so you can drive to whichever checkpoint you want. When you get to a certain checkpoint, you get to partake in more stupid minigames, which are as follows. You don’t have to play them, but you’d have to pay more money. Do you REALLY want to play the Cash Roam stage again after the horrors that you had to go through? Exactly… minigames are same thing for every level, and go something like this:

Rims – Twiddle the left analog stick clockwise
Interior – Button mash ‘A’ and ‘B’ repeadedly
Bodykit – Jerk the left analog stick up and down several times
Point – hold down 4 sets of button combinations
ICE – Press ‘A’ at the right moments
Custom – Press a certain button sequence

Occasionally a red star would pop up on the GPS. I think this is where the ‘Hidden Supplyer’ from earlier came in. The Red Star offers certain parts for a set amount of time, then disappears and reappears in another area. These bastards can be hard to track down, and are required for a ‘Perfect’, so you don’t have to play this level again.

There’s also an ‘Xzibit’ challenge that pops up every now and then. The first challenge usually starts when you complete 2-3 minigames, when the challenge starts, all you have to do is drive over the destination before the time goes out. What you get are minor modifications that are just as significant as getting a ‘Red star’.

Sometimes an ‘RPM’ vehicle will come out of nowhere and try to ram you for some reason. What the fuck an ‘RPM’ is and why they want to kill you is never explained. You can choose to ignore it… or you can just pull over to the right a bit and let the idiot pass you. Since the moron cannot home in on your position while pursuing you, the fuckwit will just drive past you. After that he will simply brake while you ram into the vehicle’s back end over and over.

Defeat 20 of these stupid asses and get 75 gamerscore. That’s more gamerscore then passing a level in Call of Duty 2’s veteran mode! I think some gamers might get burned by this.

Just like the collectables in the ‘cash roam’ stage, there’s no visual sign whenever you defeat an opponent outside of ‘enemy run out of health, start spinning’ These lazy game developers cant even display a message saying ‘Congratulations, you beat a piss easy opponent’ or ‘X of Y vehicles destroyed’!

At the end, when you run out of time (or get bored), we get to a loading screen, and a cutscene that follows the following cookie-cutter formula;

- Xzibit tells the pimpee that his/her car got ‘pimped’
- The pimpee gets overexcited and proceeds to scream like an idiot again.
- Xzibit compares your car to the ‘rivals’
- Pimpee chooses the better looking vehicle.

Loading screen.

Followed by a comparison on how you did against your ‘rival’. You should be able to win if you choose the most expensive option on each part of the vehicle. Most of the time your opponent would choose the cheaper options like a fucking idiot, hence giving you an advantage most of the time.

Now that I think about it, why the fuck is there two vehicles? I don’t seem to recall these idiots owning TWO copies of the same piece of crap. Where did the other vehicle come from? Did the rival ‘borrow’ it from some other fucking idiot?

With all these ’custom modifications like Laptop computer screens and all that fancy crap in the vehicle, I don’t know how long it will be until car thieves find this gaudy hunk of metal and then proceed to have a field day while the person is asleep at night.

…and that’s it, That’s all there is to the activities. I just described a bulk of how the game works.

Get used to these activities, because they don’t change through the entire game. It’s repetitive, and boring. Every stage is the same thing. Make enough money through the “Cash roam” stage, pimp out the rides, rinse and repeat. Not that it’s a short game either. No, to complete the game, there are 15 different people you have to pimp… 15 fucking levels of this tired and repetitive crap… plus one level where thankfully is just a “pimpin” stage.

That one level is where you take Xzibit’s luxury sedan and make it even more expensive then it already looks. First there is a cutscene which has Xzibit talking to you and requesting that you pimp his car. I think this is from the first-person perspective of the nameless black guy who has ‘PIMP’ written on his back, but it’s not established.

Xzibit then gives the person the car keys, and the vehicle is never seen again.

…nah, you just go through one more ‘ pimpin’ stage. It would be more realistic to get compensation for having to do those humiliating ‘Ghost Ride’ activities by taking Xzibit’s fancy car as your own, but this game likes to piss people off.

After this is stage is done, you have completed the game. Feel free to pull out the game from the 360 and never play the game again.
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It takes a lot of balls to play a shitty game, especially when that game is permanently etched into your Xbox Live achievements record for the world to see. Sure, the basic achievements aren’t difficult to get, but anybody can play through the game, get the 200-ish gamerscore and be done.

TRUE gamers aim for TOTAL1000/1000 completion before putting the game into the pasture and FUCKING BURNING it. It might seem like a daunting task considering how bad the game is, but at the end people would praise your reckless insanity and at the least would have you commited comment on how you had the guts to dredge through hours on end by playing something like this.

For your information, I did get a 1000/1000 completion on this game, largely because I can rest easy knowing I’d never ever play this pile of crap again. Yes I will go outside, smartass…. But after I play something GOOD to cleanse away the pain.

I’d rather go to work then play this game again. Messing around with colour fonts is more fun then playing this game.

I'm done, see you all next month. When I come out of my spaceship for Red Bull and Doritos.

EDITED FOR PICTARS!!! Also photobucket likes to reduce my screenshots to tiny thumbnails for some reason.

This post has been edited by Faze: 10 March 2010 - 07:22 PM

[Supperdude9]

WOW man. I cringed just reading about how the game is set up.