Noting just one gameplay feature in Activision's Pimp My Ride sums up the utter ridiculousness of it all; in a game where the goal is to turn junkyard rejects into flashy respect-worthy cars, gamers can earn cash by slamming into other cars on the road. This is no joke, and is a good indication as to the thought and care that went into this painfully bad game.
The object of the game is to drive around the city earning cash to trick out a customer's beater. After selecting a customer to help, the game provides a minimum budget for fixing up their car. Gamers have a few options to earn the cash, which never change from one car or city to the next. Cash can be earned from driving to the conveniently marked 'Cash Tokens' on the GPS map, smashing into cars so that coins fly out of it (a la Super Mario Bros.), or playing one of a few mini-games. It is almost as though a small town farm girl who dreams of going to California because she thinks of all the money lying around on the streets designed the game.
Driving from one spot on the map to the next is tricky, thanks to an odd control scheme and display flaws. Rather than going with the tried-and-true 'A' for gas, the developers tried to give gamers something different by awkwardly applying the right trigger as gas and left trigger as reverse. The 'A' button actually serves as the hand brake; which is the only brakes your car has. Once you have the driving controls down, the game has the option of allowing gamers to select the location they want to go to in the GPS, and providing a green arrow directing them to the spot. Despite intending to be a convenient feature, the game's default view turns the green arrow into a jagged green blob. The odd angle makes the arrow's point and two side-flanges look about the same.
All of the mini-games are marked on the map, and are mind-numbingly simple. The first of them is to drive past a group of people, hold down the left bumper to set your car on cruise control, and hit a series of buttons before reaching the end of their group. Somehow, this impresses the group, and you earn cash. The number of buttons the player needs to hit before the end increases as the game progresses, but the incredibly easy task is almost as silly as the thought of getting money for just driving by a group of people and waving.
The other two mini-games are essentially the same as each other, with minor differences. 'Ghost Ride The Whip' game has players dancing alongside their slowly moving, empty, vehicle. Gamers are asked to hit a series of buttons before the timer runs out, and how quickly they complete the twelve rounds determines how much cash they get. Again, the number of buttons required for each round increases through the game; but getting to see any difficult rounds will be a struggle, as most gamers will give this game about an hour in their system before ejecting it for good.
A slight, and hilariously simple, variation on 'Ghost Ride The Whip' is 'Hot Stepping'; where gamers are given a horizontal bar rather than a vertical one. Instead of hitting several different buttons before the timer runs out, gamers hit 'A' as the button icon crosses the center of the screen. It is a slow-moving, one-button, rhythm game that has the player dancing outside an empty car for cash; again. The best part of the game is watching the awkward dance goofs caused by incorrectly hitting the buttons, which players would almost have to do on purpose.
After you have gained enough cash to pay for at least the minimum budget, a two-minute timer begins, allowing players to gain a little extra scratch for the repairs. After the time runs out, the game introduces the customer in a cut scene in the vein of what happens at the start of each episode on the MTV show. An excited customer, looking to have their car fixed-up, greets Xzibit at their door. The customer lays out the issues with the car, and lists off a few hobbies that help determine what direction gamers should take with options on the car. The entertaining voice-acting and decent character rendering is one of the only solid portions of the game, as the customer's description of their car is always campy and hilarious.
Gamers next find themselves in the customer's busted-up car, and notice a two-minute timer ticking downward and a progress bar for your upgrades, as well as another marked 'Rival'. Rather than the mini-games and cash tokens, the map now marks the locations of various specialty repair shops focusing on the needed upgrades. Time runs down whenever you are not in a shop choosing an upgrade, so getting from one shop to the next is vital to the success of your competition, which the game forgets to mention until after your first car is pimped.
