Lowrider

"Dance Dance Revolution with cars?"

Plot Overview:
Not much to speak of, you're a newbie to the Lowrider scene, you're friend shows you the ropes and you're set. Build up your car and win some cash and respect.

Graphics:
The game looks nice, it's clean and pretty first gen PS2, but it's nice. There is a mix of 2-D cartoon drawings (That look like those Homies toys you get out of those egg machines at the store.) and 3-D cars and objects.

Sound:
The sound is pretty arcade-ish, nothing great or wowing. You have your basic car smashing sounds as you bounce your ride around and you have some fairly good music. There are basic crowd cheers and jeers and then there are some one-liners from the announcer. It's on par with the rest of the game.

Gameplay/Controls:
Arcade Mode: Pretty basic, pick a pre-made Lowrider and enter one of three events;
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Hop: Here you bounce the front end of your car off the ground, the person who keeps gets the highest wins.

Dance: The announcer will call out things to do like Front Hop, Rear Hop, so on. You get points by having a smooth rhythm and high hops, the smoother the rhythm and timing; the better the hop, the more the points. Person with he most points wins.

Bed Dance: This one is a Truck only event. Make the bed rise off the truck and spin it in the air, push shoulder buttons to make it dip form side to side. Most points wins.
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Golden years: Story Mode, you get to select from a few classic cars (They have seen better days). As you move through story mode winning events (Same as Arcade events) you gain money and upgrade and customize your car. Cruise the strip to get fans (do the hops the fans call out, time them right in front of the fan to make them like you)

The Controls for this game are in my opinion pure evil. You use all the symbol buttons to do front, side, and rear hops. Pushing all four at once will make your car hop all four wheels off the ground. Using the shoulder buttons will cause you to do corner rolls/hops. It's a pretty basic idea but when it comes down to it was just wrong for the game.

Overall:
You're not going to like this game, well, maybe if you like all things Lowrider. You will almost never win an event in Arcade mode, you will find the events in story mode to be annoying and boring (basically the same three events over and over). This game is basically DDR with cars, only not as fun as you would think.

Reviewer's Score: 2/10, Originally Posted: 02/04/04