Lowrider

"Feels like one big minigame...minus any fun usually found in minigames."

For a few decades lowriders have been a craze all over Northern America. They've been seen in countless movies, music videos, commercials, and sometimes you can even see people driving them down the street. It was only a matter of time before this cultural phenomenon was turned into a videogame. So what went wrong you ask? In short, everything.

Graphics - Well someone at PCCW Japan apparently thought the players of this game needed to be reminded of how it was the play games on the N64, because the graphics of this game rival even the ugliest of N64 games. The crowd at the competitions is made up of 2D sprites that have about two frames of animation, the cars have muddy textures that make them look out of focus, and the backgrounds consist of even more blocky sprites sitting in stands and moving up and down. I would say the graphics are just barely first generation PSOne material, but that would be far too generous.
Score - I could give it a 3/10 if this was a PSOne game, but this is on the PS2 for godsake, so it gets a 1.5/10.

Sound - Ha, here I was playing the game thinking the graphics were probably going to be the worst feature of the game. I can't believe how wrong I was. As far as sound goes this game is a joke. The music during the menus and loading screens are laughable at best, sounding as if they came from a broken electric piano, but it doesn't end with that. There is one Japanese pseudo rock/hip-hop that repeatedly plays during nearly every competition you play in, and to top it off, the song isn't even good. The car sound effects are passable, and the announcer simply spouts out the same repetitive phrases during competitions. For a game that is trying to portray the lifestyle involved in lowriders, the developers failed on all accounts by not acquiring any hip-hop music that would fit.
Score - The only song in the game that fits is Lil John's "Get Low", the rest is just pathetic. 1/10

Story - The game consists of a career mode called "Golden Days". You go through the basic formula of competing, earning money, and using it to upgrade your car to compete again. The career also involves travelling to other parts of a map and facing the people in that region. Meh.
Score - Pretty standard fare. Some improvements could have been made to make the story more interesting, but why waste a good career mode on this joke of a game. 2.5/10

Gameplay - Well I'll be blunt, this part of the game isn't good either. The entire base of the gameplay revolves around bouncing your lowrider and putting on a show for the crowd (yeah, it is as dull as it sounds). It follows the standards of most rhythmic games, which requires you you press buttons in sync with the symbols on the screen. Your basic goal is to make your car bounce the highest, which seems like a simple enough goal right? Well it probably would be easy if the controls bothered to have decent response time. The majority of competitions consist of mashing on one button over and over until the game finally recognizes the input and actually moves the car the way the player wants it to move. I hope the next time PCCW tries to implement rhythmic button presses they can at least try to do it even half right.
Score - Shallow gameplay at its worst. 1/10

Replayability - Besides Golden Days, the only other mode the game offers is Arcade Kings, which is basically just a versus mode pitting the player against the computer or another player. While Golden Days does offer a bit of replayability to continually customize your car, Arcade Kings has nothing to show for itself.
Score - Shallow games offer little to no replayability, this one is no different. 2/10

Overall - All in all this game just seems like a minigame of some other game. It is highly unpolished and has little to offer on its own. This is one of those games that will sit in a bargain basket for years and years to come.
Score - 1/10

Closing - Well, it's the only lowriding game on the planet, so that's got to count for something, right?.....Okay, maybe not. The concept could have been part of something bigger, but as it is, this title deserves to be on the bottom of the PS2 rankings for a long time.

Reviewer's Score: 1/10, Originally Posted: 05/09/04