This review was originally published on Gaming Horizon, GameBump's predecessor. Its format does not match our own but we support its content. It was written by Eric Dayday.

187: Ride or Die can be described as part Mario Kart, part Twisted Metal, and part Grand Theft Auto all rolled into one giant game. You would think that borrowing heavily from those three great franchises would result in a good game, but unfortunately, there are other things that keep it from being just that.

I mentioned that 187: Ride or Die has a dash of Mario Kart in it. When you first pick it up and race, that’s exactly what it will feel like, just with a paint of “gangsta” applied. You’ll race around tracks, driving over weapon and health power ups as you shoot at your rivals. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it? Instead of karts you have cars (or in this case, whips); instead of tracks like Bowser’s Castle, you have ghetto concrete jungles; and instead of a tag team of Mario characters, you have a sexy driver and a thug responsible for the drive-by shootings.

The type of gameplay described above is known as a whip race. There are two other types of modes that you’ll come across in 187 – deathmatch and mine field. Deathmatch plays exactly like Twisted Metal, where the goal is to completely destroy all your adversaries. In deathmatch, however, you have two lifebars. The first of which is for your gunner. When he loses his entire lifebar, the armor on your car begins to dwindle. When both lifebars are drained, the team is destroyed. You can pick up health power ups littered throughout the stages, but keep in mind that to restore the car’s armor, you’ll need to have completely refilled your gunner’s bar.

Mine field plays like a whip race, but all weapons have been changed to mines. It makes traversing the tracks even more perilous. Even though mines are given a red glow to help you see where they are placed, it is still very difficult to avoid them sometimes. I will say that in 187, there is nothing greater than the satisfaction of knowing that someone behind you just ate it on one of your mines.

During the game’s story mode, there are other types of races like elimination, where the last person on each lap gets taken out, but for the most part, the gameplay will stick to one of the three mentioned above.

The best part of all this is the multiplayer. Whether it’s online or offline, the multiplayer action is darn fun. Offline, you can play the other modes in split screen fashion against a friend, or choose to co-op. And if split screen isn’t your thing, it does support system link for 2-4 players. In co-op, one player will be responsible for driving while the other acts as the gunner. The sweetest feature is that the gunner has the ability to shoot in all directions, instead of just straight ahead or behind as it is set up in single-player. The gunner also controls the boosts, which makes no sense to me. Maybe the developers wanted to give the gunner more fun. I say shooting at other drivers is all the fun you need as a gunner.

Online multiplayer is a straight-forward affair, offering the same types of gameplay as offline multiplayer modes sans the split-screen stuff. However, not giving the gunner an independent “look back” when playing online co-op is a horrendous oversight, considering that the driver and gunner on more than likely miles apart on separate televisions.

Lastly, the soundtrack is supplied by Guerilla Black, who also voices the character Dupree in 187: Ride or Die. I thought that the soundtrack is pretty good, so fans of his or of hip-hop in general may want to let the game sit for a while just to give the tunes a listen. Here’s hoping for a separate soundtrack release.

The game is fun for a little while, but there are spots here and there that drag down the game. The first is the variety of modes and tracks. The three I listed – whip race, deathmatch, and mine field – are all you get. There are a few “don’t get caught by the po-pos” stages to break up some of the monotony, but those stages don’t do enough to add more flavor. Then there are the track designs which are boring and uninspired. Hell, most of them look the same, with their bland grey buildings, a light post or two in some places. The game itself sports a sort of washed-out look to it as well.

There’s also this annoying little scene that occurs every time you blow up another car. The game goes into this slow-motion Matrix effect that shows the car blowing up. While this is occurring, your car is still moving, but of course the game just has to show you the car blowing up, so it doesn’t matter that you may be driving towards a wall while all of this is happening. It totally breaks the flow of the race and is a wholly unnecessary feature. A text message saying that someone was taken out would have been just as effective, instead of overplaying the fact.

Playing the same three races over and over again in the seemingly same five environments gets old after first handful of races, and unfortunately, playing through those races in the story mode is the only way to unlock more cars and gunners. And the story is atrocious, only made worse by the horrid script and lazy voice work.

The weak story involves Dupree, who looks like Biggie Smalls Lite. He is involved in a gang war with Cortez and calls on his boy, Buck (voiced by Larenz Tate), to wreak havoc on Cortez’ gang. How this is achieved through racing in neighborhoods whilst shooting at one another is beyond me. Nothing can save this paper-thin story, but the really bad script further ruins it.

The script tries way too hard to be “cool”, or “ghetto” if you will. Liberal use of the phrases “fo’ shizzle”, “bust a cap in his ass”, and words like “gangsta” and “whip” makes everyone sound stupid rather than hard and tough. In fact, the script is pretty damn funny because of it. The text doesn’t even match whatever a character is saying at times. So add those mistakes on top of a script that sounds like it was written by a bunch of middle-aged guys in suits trying to find their inner thug, and you’ve got yourself one heck of a laugher. I feel kind of bad for Guerilla Black and Larenz Tate for having to actually say some of this crap, and by the way they delivered their lines it sounds like they couldn’t believe it either and were there just for the paycheck.

The saving grace of the story mode is that it can be completed in co-op mode, so at least you can share the laughs with a friend.

187: Ride or Die has all the markings of a quick cash-in, following in the wake of the GTA series, most notably, San Andreas with its mid-90s ‘hood theme. Its low production values – limited variety of gameplay modes, cookie cutter story, and bad scripting – really kill any potential this game had. Single-player is fun for an hour or so, and the multiplayer and online modes will add some more time you spend with the game, but not much else. You’re better off playing Mario Kart, Twisted Metal, and Grand Theft Auto separately than playing this.

Graphics look a little washed out and all the tracks look the same.

The GTA infused-Mario Kart gameplay is actually fun – for a little while at least.

Soundtrack's nice, but the bad writing stacked with lazy voice acting ruins everything else.

Multiplayer stuff really spices up an otherwise dull game.

Online matches will extend the amount of time you spend with 187. It’ll collect dust after that