Whenever I picked up a copy of Halo 3, I decided that I wanted to play Single Player first all the way through before I hopped online. I didn't want anyone online spoiling anything for me. After I did this though, I realized I enjoyed doing it because most people just seem to hop online first for games like Halo. So since that day, I've always played through the Single Player portion of a game first before ever hopping online. Now I do it out of respect for all the people that worked on the game, and also because I don't want anything spoiled for me while playing online.

What do you guys like to do? Single Player or Multiplayer first and why?

So I decided to get into reading again since I started reading the Splinter Cell: Conviction book. It's not particularily great or anything, but it made me go into a frenzy of buying a whole bunch of books and getting really into it. I read all the time as a kid, and the Book Fairs at school were my favorite thing that happened all year. So here's some of the books I've purchased recently, and if you're into reading feel free to share the ones you've read or purchased recently.

-Revolting Youth by C.D. Payne

The sequel to the book Youth in Revolt, which was recently turned into a movie. I finished this a couple days ago and really enjoyed it, I think I may have even enjoyed it a little more than the first book.

-Shutter Island by Dennis Lehane

Haven't begun reading this yet, but I've been looking forward to reading it since I heard about the movie. I haven't seen the movie yet either, but I plan on reading it and seeing the movie soon.

-Johnny Cash Autobiography

I've loved Johnny Cash's music since I was a kid, and he's one of my favorite people who has ever lived for various reasons. It hasn't arrived yet since I bought it from Amazon, but I can't wait to read it!

-The Complete Sherlock Holmes by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

Yes, I bought this because of the movie coming out. I haven't read much into it yet, and unfortunately it's going to be postponed for a while until I finish reading all the recent stuff I've bought. That's how it goes...

So that's all of what I've purchased since December. The following are my favorite books of all time, and I also encourage everyone to share theirs. :)

-The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien

I had to read this for my 9th Grade Summer Reading Project, and I absolutely LOVED it. I've re-read it so many times that I think I have every event in the book memorized by now. I think I may have even enjoyed it more than the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and I'm extremely excited for the movies!

-The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams

I have never laughed so hard while I've read a book before. Filled with so many brilliantly hysterical moments and quirkiness that you'll find yourself hurting from laughing so much.

-The Shack by William P. Young

The beginning of the book is incredibly difficult to get through because it's so sad, but it's the most redeeming and touching books I've ever read in my life. As a Christian, I learned more about God through this than anything I was taught in Church. Come to think of it, I should read this again.

-Into the Wild by Jon Kraukuer

The accounts of the adventure of Christopher McCandless (that was turned into a movie with Emile Hirsch that was also very good) as he hitchhiked to Alaska. People either seem to love or hate him for what he did, and I'm one of the ones that loved him. He lacked common sense, but I would have loved to have met him.

-Holes by Louis Sachar

The only book from my childhood that I kept. It's a great story, and one that has stuck with me ever since I read it for the first time in Middle School. It was even made into a movie with Shia LeBouf before he was a big Hollywood star!

-What is the What? by Dave Eggers

An incredible story (Mostly novelized) of the accounts of a man in Africa as he deals with war and death surrounding him, and the modern days of trying to make a new life in America. Tragic at times, beautiful in others, a great story that has many true moments but mostly fictionalized by the author. Even if you're bothered by that, I highly recommend picking it up nonetheless.

I've seen several other people doing this, so I figured I should join in on the fun. Feel free to ask my questions about myself and I will reply to all the questions. Just as a warning, if a question is too personal i probably won't answer it. Don't be offended. :)

Edit: Since there were only 4 comments I will instead reply to the questions asked in the comments to make it easier.

A thing I recently have started to get incredibly annoyed with is how people are treating game ratings. It's gotten to the point where probably 3/4 people go to a review, look at teh score, then either are happy or pissed off. I remember whenever the review for The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess was posted and instantaneously the forums were flooded with people freaking out about the 8.8 rating. Jeff Gertsmann got a lot of heat for it, but he's a man that always speaks exactly how he feels about a game regardless of what people will think about him for it. I have a lot of respect for him for having the balls in order to give it that score.

A real problem lies within GameSpot, where fanboys and fangirls lurk at every corner. It's difficult to want to post a review for a popular title, because no matter what score you give it you'll get people who don't recommend it. With my review for Mass Effect 2 I decided to write as lengthy of a review as possible, but still somebody decided to not recommend it. I'm betting that the person took one look at the score then gave it a thumbs down. I don't really care too much about it because everyone has an opinion, but it's an annoying issue on GameSpot and it just further proves my point.

The problem isn't just on GameSpot either, it's everywhere and on every site. Metacritic pretty much glorifies review scores since it's a collective of all the scores from various websites. People have even said that if a game doesn't get a score above 90% on Metacritic they won't buy it, and that's just ridiculous. You're missing out on a TON of games if you do something like that because you're not forming an opinion on your own about a game but rather you're deciding in your head beforehand that this game is going to be good or bad because it's what "everyone" says about it. I've also heard stories about certain game reviewers getting death threats over scores for a big title because of the low review scores, and I don't even have to point out how stupid that is to prove a point because it speaks for itself.

I think one of the sites that has had some of my favorite reviews is Kotaku and GiantBomb. Kotaku doesn't have any review scores at all, but instead has everything written out so that users are practically forced to read the whole review to know what the reviewer thought about the game. Rather, the reviews are organized into "Loved" and "Hated", basically an extended version of GameSpot's "The Good" and "The Bad" sections before a review. I absolutely love that they did this because they probably don't recieve as much harsh criticisms whenever their precious video-game got a 7.6. GiantBomb has a Star system that is rated on how much the gamer will enjoy playing the title, AKA how much fun it is. Sure, it's not entirely doing away with a rating system, but it's a step in the right direction since most people will actually take the time to read the review.

Of course, not all people have the attention span or time to read a full review, so there's always video reviews to watch for most popular releases. I usually read a review and watch the video review for most games I'm interesting in buying but am not too sure if I want to make the purchase or not, and I wish more people did both. But, video reviews are definitely helpful when it comes down to people who make asumptions whenever they see the review score.

I admit, I've been guilty many times of simply going to a page and checking out the review score. Sometimes it's because I don't have the time to read the full review or watch the video, other times I'm just curious to see what it is. However, most of the time I will go back and read or watch the review to understand exactly why that score was given. I wish more sites had a system like Kotaku does though, so that people that want to do stuff like that but don't go back to read or watch will just simply have to so they can know about the game.

Back to You...

But, what's YOUR opinion on review scores? Love 'em or hate 'em and why? Which gaming website has your favorite system for reviewing games?

(This is a smaller editorial than I would have liked, but I wanted to get back into the habit of writing them again.)

What would it be like if popular video-game characters were instead voiced by hot stars from Hollywood? For example, what if Christian Bale did the voice of Commander Sheperd in Mass Effect? If he did, we would get incredibly awesome voice acting complete with indistinct shouting. But what if certain game companies were terrible at casting roles, and instead we got hot Hollywood talent in roles that do not fit their voices? Here's some possibilites, complete with fake Press Releases of the announcement of their casting.

Jeff Goldblum

Press Release: Jeff Goldblum cast as Sergeant Soap MacTavish in Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2

Today Activision announced that developer Infinity Ward has cast Jeff Goldbum as the voice of Sergeant Soap MacTavish in the video-game Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2. Modern Warfare 2 is the sequel to the hit video-game Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, released in 2007 to record sales. In the original title, Sgt. Soap was a playable character who you never saw or heard from, but now Goldblum will be both lending his physical appearance as well as his voice to the character. In a statement to the press, Jeff Goldblum expressed his excitement for taking on such an ambitious role. "Yeah I'm, uh, very very excited to, uh, lend my talents to the, uh, game. I haven't really done such an, uh, role like this before but, uh, yeah i'm very excited."

Christopher Walken

Press Release: Christopher Walken Confirmed as voice of Solid Snake

Actor Christopher Walken today was confirmed to be the voice of Solid Snake in the video-game Metal Gear Solid, a new title from developer Konami and designer Hideo Kojima to be released on the Sony PlayStation. Members of the Gaming Press were allowed to see a sneak peak at the trailer for the game, where everyone got to hear first some sound clips of Walken's role. The character Solid Snake snuck down a hallway behind a bad guy holding a rather menacing looking weapon, and whenever Snake took hold of the enemy's neck he shouted "I will snap your neck, villain!" In a statement from his translator, Kojima confirmed that initially Snake was only supposed to have the facial features based on Walken, but whenever they heard he had interest in the role they gave him a call and the deal was made. Walken said to the press today that he was "Thrilled to be apart. Of the video-games. For the kids. And the people. Of the world!"

Jack Black

Press Release: Jack Black's Success from "Brutal Legend" lands him new role

Jack Black today was confirmed as the new voice of Sonic the Hedgehog. Black will be lending his voice first to the upcoming game "Mario & Sonic at the Winter Games" and in all future Sega titles featuring the iconic blue hedgehog. Members of the press were shown a gameplay clip from the game with Sonic interacting with Mario before a snowboarding event. Sonic is the only character in the game to have more than a few simple lines, as Sega wanted Jack Black's presence in the game to be major. Black sent in a recorded video of himself wearing a Sonic costume while running about his house, occasionally attacking stuffed animals and shouting "I'll get you, Eggman!" At the end of the video, he made lewd jokes about hedgehog girth and passed out next to his pool.

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If this is popular enough, I will post another one soon. ;)

Rather you have someone to share today with or not, I'm wishing you all a Happy Valentine's Day! Today I encourage all the other single people to not feel sorry for themselves and wish they were with somebody, but instead find something fun to do or hang out with some friends who don't have any plans. That, or if you've waited a long time to tell someone how you feel about them, do it today in some grand romantic gesture. Do you know how cool it would be to tell people the story and say "I told her/him how I felt on Valentine's Day."

Also, just to remind everyoe, Valentine's Day was not invented by Hallmark. Shocking?! Maybe. But you can read about it on the Wikipedia entry because I don't feel like summarizing the whole story right now...

PS: If you still want to wallow in self-misery, I recommend watching Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and 500 Days of Summer. If you're staying in with a loved one, those 2 movies are still good to watch if you're in a relationship because they are just 2 damn good movies. :P

1. Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell: Conviction

I can still remember the first time I ever played Splinter Cell on the Nintendo Gamecube, not too long into playing I was completely immersed in the story and gameplay. I was completely hooked. I went onto own the 2 newest titles, and to beating Double Agent with my friend's copy of the game. I've been a huge fan since the very beginning, and Conviction looks like it can blow everything we've played before out of the water.

2. Alan Wake

The game that has seemed for years to never want to come out will finally be released this year. I have been incredibly excited about playing this game since I first heard about it, and every new bit of information I tend to drool over. It will probably seem surreal whenever this game is finally released, and no matter what the critics say about it I will buy it Day 1.

3. Red Dead Redemption

Honestly, how many people can name other Western games than Gun and Red Dead Revolver? I played the crap out of Neversoft's Gun on the Xbox 360, and managed to complete everything 100%. I loved Red Dead Revolver, though I only managed to rent it twice during its lifespan. I'm growing more excited with every new bit of information about Redemption, and I can't wait to get my hands on a copy.

4. Starcraft 2

Oh, the days that were wasted playing the original. Starcraft was the first RTS game I ever played, and what got me into them. Starcraft was also the first game I ever played online, as my two best friends and I would spend nights after school trying out eachother's Custom Maps. Whenever this was announced a few years ago, I practically freaked out pure excitement. I will be one of many gamers waiting in line to get my copy at Midnight.

5. Halo: Reach

It's Halo.

6. Dead Rising 2

"My mama always used to tell me I'd be good at somethin'. Who'd have ever thought that that'd thing be zombie killin'?" - A line from the movie Zombieland that I'll probably repeat many times during my playthrough of the new game. I first played the original game at my friend's house, and immediately I was completely hooked. I think I must have played that game for 5 hours straight, and it was the game that I always played whenever I went over to hang out. Interestingly enough, I was playing Dead Rising on his 360 whenever he got his first Red Ring of Death. To this day, that Xbox rests on a shelf along with the case for Dead Rising.

I also could have said "You kill Zombies with chainsaws attached to a motorcycle" for my reason for wanting it.

7. Fallout: New Vegas

I never played the first 2 Fallout games, but I did however play the last title Fallout 3. A setting like Las Vegas for a Post-Apocalpytic game is perfection, as a city like that is filled with millions of people and gamblers. It should be interesting to see how the game plays out, and I'm very excited for the first peek at gameplay.

8. Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier

It kind of took me by surprise whenever this game was announced, as even though I was playing Advance Warfighter 2 recently it didn't really occur to me that a sequel could be in the works. I am very happy that there's a new title on the way. Though there isn't too much info available about the game, I'm sure that whatever Ubisoft has in the works it's going to be fantastic.

9. Just Cause 2

I used to play the demo for the original game all the time, as for some reason I wasn't interested enough to want to buy the full game. It was filled to the brim with ridiclous action, and it looks like the sequel is going to top everything about the first game. The new hookshot can be used to scale buildings, hook onto helicopters, or even create a makeshift jetpack out of a propane tank. I think the name of the game should be changed to "Just Awesome 2."

10. Alpha Protocol

Though the game was delayed late last year, my interest in the game has been high since I first read about it in Game Informer. Since I first played Mass Effect, I have been completely hooked on Roll-Playing Games, and from the looks of it Alpha Protocol is going to be added to the list of fantastic RPG experiences.

Other Titles: Battlefield: Bad Company 2, Sonic the Hedgehog 4: Episode 1, METRO 2033, Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening, The Adventures of P.B. Winterbottom, Call of Duty 7 (No info available yet), Prince of Persia: The Forgotten Sands.

To help tide you over until my review of Mass Effect 2 is posted (That's actually why I did the Borderlands and Pimp My Ride reviews, but whatever) I figured I'd create this list of things that annoy me in gaming.

-Objectifying Women. Oversized Breasts in Tomb Raider = More scary than the enemies.

-"I've fallen and I can't get up!" When a boss or enemy character has you cornered, and every time you try and fight your way back to your feet, you're knocked back down again. Most often in these cases, you'll die, which makes things even more annoying.

-Edward Paddlehands - When a newer title has character models where their hands are basically paddles, as their fingers seemed to be all meshed together. How is this possible? I like to think that they all accidentally spilled lots of Superglue on their hands.

-Bad Cameras. Nothing's worse than trying to either try to see what you're supposed to do next, fighting a boss, or just generally exploring a game than when a bad camera ruins everything. Recently in the game Ninja Gaiden 2 I found the camera tougher to beat than the boss I was playing.

-Bad Dialogue. "Oh my God, dude, that's so awesome!" No it's not, and you need to learn new words.

-Poor Voice Acting. Thanks for not being able to get Christian Bale in the Terminator Salvation game, but at least you got a decent sound-a-like. Oh wait...I was being sarcastic! So sorry about that...

-"Sorry, Mario. But The Princess is in another castle!" Ever thought a quest was finished, only to have it extended a little longer? Going from point A to point B time and time again gets more tedious than anything after a while.

-Disappointing Bosses. I beat Ganondorf at the end of Wind Waker in less than 5 seconds. I beat him in five seconds. That's as many as 5 one second's. And that's terrible. (Still loved that game regardless.)

-Pointless Mini-Games. "GHOST RIDE THE WHIP - PRESS THE BUTTONS THAT APPEAR ON SCREEN." Wait...what? What's going on? Where's Xzibit?

-No Transportation. Ever been stuck in a game world and had to get to a certain location, only either the game forces you to walk or there's no form of transportation around? Soon the exploring of the game's world will become more frustrating than anything. Hopefully when you get there the Princess won't be in another castle...

-"What am I supposed to do now?" A game that offers you no hints on what to do or where to go next can often lead you to explore aimlessly wondering what to do next for a long time. Finally when you discover what to do, you realize it's 4AM and you have work or school in a few hours. Thanks, game designers!

-Power Overwhelming. Ever gotten so frustrated trying to defeat a boss that you've wanted to smash your controller? Or even suceeded in doing so? Some games don't even offer you a fair difficulty setting, and that can either give gamers a good challenge or piss them off so much that it'll cause self esteem issues. Maybe that's why I had trouble talking to girls in Middle School...just couldn't beat that one boss...Hmmm....

-Repetive Music. DUN DU DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUN DUUN DUUUUUN DUUUUUN DUN DUN DUN.... Thanks for giving me a reason to want to gouge out my eardrums, I never thought I would need a reason but now I do.

-Invisible Walls. Evidently, somewhere in the world, when you try and go to someplace cool you'll find an invisible forcefield. That's what worries me about taking a trip to Iceland, what if I want to go take pictures of a cool field but there's an invisible all there? Oh well, there's gotta be a glitch somewhere!

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I could go on and on with this list, as there are seemingly endless things that have annoyed me in video-games. But what has annoyed you guys in gaming? Or if you can't think of any, what's a funny or frustrating incident involving one of the things I listed that you experienced?

BORDERLANDS

Review by WeaponXY

The Good:
Graphics give the game it's own distinct personality and identity in a crowded market of games, Unique combination of FPS gameplay with RPG elements are spot on and just plain fun, Loot is a delight to collect, Because of the "bazillion guns" you never want to miss an opportunity and getting a new badass weapon, Some hilarious moments, Ending revelation about a certain character is very funny.

The Bad:
Story isn't all that interesting, Ending is a little disappointing, Enemy characters regain health whenever you have to respawn.

Whenever I first heard about this game, it was back whenever it still had it's normal appearance. At first glance, I thought it looked a lot like the game Fallout 3 and I didn't really give it too terribly much interest at that point. I heard more and more about it as time went on, but whenever I heard about it's change in graphics I really began to take an interest in it. Suddenly the game was given way more distinct of a personality, and Gearbox Software's RPGFPS had my full interest.

How the game originally appeared.

The game kicks off with all the characters are riding on a bus, all of which who have just arrived on the planet Pandora, to the song "Ain't No Rest for the Wicked" by the band Cage the Elephant. This song gives you a great introduction to the game, and sets the mood perfectly for the rest of the game because it seems everyone on planet Pandora is a little bit wicked and out to earn some money. Each character cl@ss has their own distinct abilities and special skills, and it's rather difficult to pick from just one since they all seem to be good characters to choose from. For me, I picked the Siren named Lilith (I changed her name to Zoe early on in the game) for my first playthrough of the game. I haven't gotten the change to try out and other cl@ss just yet, but I did enjoy playing with this cl@ss quite a bit as the Siren's Phasewalking ability helped me out in some difficult boss battles. I managed to get to Level 35 in my playthrough, and a good thing about the game is that it's fairly easy to Level Up since most Quests seem to give you a good amount of Experience for completing them. On top of getting some good XP, most quests will additionally give you some money or a new gun to play with. Speaking of guns, one of my favorite weapons I came across in the game was called the "Boomstick" which gave a rapid fire of 6 explosive shells that could quickly take down an unshielded enemy. Nice!

Along the way in the game you'll run into a bunch of interesting characters, mostly all of which are fairly interesting and have some amusing dialogue. One thing that disappointed me about these kind of things though is that when you accept or complete a Quest, there isn't any dialogue for it and you're left reading the screen. It would have been nice if there was a cutscene for completing each quest, but I can see why the designers left it that way. While exploring the world, you begin to realize that walking gets incredibly old very fast, so luckily not long into the game you get to use the "Catch-A-Ride" Stations to get a vehicle. Luckily for you, these vehicles can shoot Rockets and Machine Guns for taking

out enemies, and if you don't feel like shooting at them you can just run them over, which amusingly splatters enemies instantly.

The gameplay of Borderlands seems to take a few cues from various popular games, especially that of Call of Duty. There's the famous "Aiming down the Sight" mechanic, along with clicking down the left thumbstick in order to sprint. But there are a few more implementations to the gameplay mechanics beyond this, which really set it apart so much that it doesn't even feel like the controls were as borrowed anymore. Of course, the RPG elements in the game and various abilities set it apart from games like Call of Duty and Halo, and implementations like the Loot System and Leveling Up make you think you're not even really playing an FPS anymore. By far my favorite thing about the gameplay was the RPG elements of it, and the Loot System (Borrowed from games like Diablo) was a fantastic idea. Because of the Loot, you'll never want to avoid taking a look at a certain gun you've come across again. Then, of course, you'll always find yourself picking up money just in case you come across one of the game's many vending machines and want to buy a new weapon, shield, ammo capacity upgrade, or any other various things.

I mentioned above that the new graphics were what got me interested in the game, and it's rightly so. The game looks very good on an HDTV, and if it weren't for its distinctive art $tyle most gamers (like me) may not have even given it a second look. In early screenshots of the game, the graphics looked good, but it would have come off as a bit drab since the game's world hosts a lot of desert scenery and some rather uninteresting looking landscapes. Luckily, the designers implemented some very interesting buildings and locations that cut into the landscape and add even more personality into the game. One of the most interesting locations I saw in the game was a fortress complete with a huge saw-blade outside for cutting into the ground, and admittedly I half expected I was going to have to destroy it. Not all of the locations and buildings in the game are too terribly interesting or distinctive, but each town you visit in the game seems to offer its own little quirks and characters, and most of them have cool shops and bases. Another one of my favorites was a bunch of platforms rising above the bottom of a cliff to find a boss on a Heavy Turret overlooking it all.

Boss Battles are always very fun to play.

The sound design and voice acting (when it was implemented) were all wonderfully done, and each character's voice sounds like the actual voice these people would have if they were real. All of the sounds for the weapons and gun fire all sound fantastic, and oftentimes just plain awesome! Some of my favorite moments in the sound design came from the creepy voice acting of the Psychos, who would chase after me saying "Time to play! Time to play!" If it weren't for such chilling dialogue from these characters, I may have been a lot less threatened by them. Good Voice Acting is always complimented well by great dialogue, so it was great that each character said things that created plenty of laugh-out-loud moments. "He ran off with it, along with a few pairs of my unmentionables," and who can forget the Clap-Trap robots amusing lines including "Oh God! I'm leaking! There's oil everywheeeere!" and "C'mon everybody! Check me out! I'm dancin'! I'm dancin'!" Okay, so the Clap-Traps might get a tad bit annoying after a while, but they were amusing in your first encounters with them.

The ending of the game seems to roll by rather abruptly, and the final boss battle is tough but still a tad bit disappointing. I don't want to spoil anything, but from a game as seemingly interesting as this one you were starting to expect that there was going to be a very interesting ending. Luckily for us, a sequel has been hinted at by Gearbox, so hopefully they can continue on the ideas from the first game and hopefully give you a much better ending. But, this does deserve mentioning that there is an incredibly amusing reveal about a certain character that will make most gamers laugh out loud, and it'll be rather interesting to see how that develops in future titles.

Overall, this is a game that I will advise no gamers to overlook. I have recommended this game to many people, and I will continue to do so to anyone that enjoys a good First Person Shooter or Role Playing Game. This unique blend of genres set it apart in a crowded market of both, and the "Concept Art" $tyle of graphics just make it even more distinctive. Borderlands is one game you do not want to miss.

Overall Score:

9.0

Check out the regular review here.

(Reviews for Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age Origins are coming within the next few days. Hold tight!)

The Good:
Xzibit is in it, Soundtrack is fairly decent

The Bad:
Everything else.

I'm going to come right out and say this now, my favorite thing about the game was the theme song whenever you start up the disc. "If you wanna be a player, but yo wheels ain't fly, you gotta hit us up, to get a tricked out ride! You gotta pimp my riiiide!" I listen to it all the way through before I play the game because it makes me feel slightly better about myself that I spent $12.50 on this horrid game, I should at least enjoy a certain aspect of it rather than nothing at all.

On the Xbox 360, the game looks fairly decent, but it still looks like an original Xbox game.

Each ride you decide to pimp starts out the same, Xzibit shows up at some crazy person's house who will then spaz out and have a compulsive usage of the word "awesome" like it's tourettes. These character models are so terrible that they don't seem to blink or even move their mouths at all, like they're some sort of robotic teenagers programmed to only be completely idiotic. Xzibit will crack a few jokes about their cars and the condition of it, and some of those will at least make you grin if not give you a brief laugh, but it's nothing too redeeming. But then here's the interesting thing, before you can pimp their ride you have to first go about Pimp City and earn enough money in order to do it. That's when you go about doing the same things over and over until you finally earn enough money, and here's where things get interesting. You can earn money by ramming into other cars on the road, at which point magical golden coins will come flying out and you'll earn some money. Somehow, your car remains perfectly intact through all of this. How? I don't know, Pimp City is notorious for not making any sense.

Then you have the choice of playing these atrocious mini-games that are 100% pointless to anything, but at this point you begin to realize that that's the theme of the game. There's a mini-game called "Ghost Ride the Whip" where your character gets out of the car and dances next to it while it ghost rides down the road. In one of these mini-games, all you do is press the A button, in the other you actually have to press 2-3 different buttons. This is a fairly amusing mini-game the first few times you do it, but after a while you begin to dread whenever you have to do it again. Then there's the pointless repetitiveness of driving about the city and finding coins to spell out "PIMP!" and smashing into billboards and Parking Meters. At least these latter two things give you achievements if you get them all, because if they didn't there is no reason you would want to do this whatsoever.

Xzibit is an entertaining presence in the game, but it's still not anything interesting enough.

Once you collect enough money in order to pimp out a customer's ride, you finally get go about tricking it out! Excited? You shouldn't be! Because it's not what you expect at all! Instead of just putting you in the garage and letting you select cool things to put on the car, you have to go about the city collecting items from various shops while a rival driver goes about pimping the exact same ride. What the HECK?! Okay, how did they get ANOTHER ride from the customer when they clearly only picked up one before?! Oh, right, this game is supposed to not make any sense. I almost forgot.

Moving onto the sound, there are a few things about the game that you can expect to enjoy. Some songs from Xzibit's album "Full Circle" are on here, and at least a few of them are distracting enough to help you forget how terrible the game is you're playing. But then there's something I realized, whenever you go about doing something that requires the sound to be shut off, the song you were listening to restarts. I swear I listened to the same song 5 times in a row because of this, and because of that I wanted to take the game outside and smash it with a sledgehammer. Oh wait, I'm sorry, that's not the only reason why the game made me want to do that. Then you've got the voice acting. I'll just sum it up quickly because I could fill up several paragraphs with synonyms for the word "Horrifying" and "Terrible." As soon as you get your first few customers, you begin to realize that the Developers must have just picked the only people that showed up to audition, because it's like having knives shoved in your ears repeatedly having to listen to these robot-teens say "Awesome" and "Sweet" incredibly often. At least Xzibit did a good job.

The driving mechanics are incredibly busted.

Overall, the only redeeming values about this game involve the man himself, Xzibit, but not even that seems to bring the value of the game up enough to make you even want to give it a look. If it weren't for the fact that my friend bought it too, I would have never even thought of it. I'm not ashamed to admit that I bought this game, only because it was out of a joke, but I am ashamed that I spent $12.50 on this. I think it's worth $1 for every point I gave the game - a whopping total of $2.50.

Final Score:

2.5