The cover for Street Riders is probably the worst cover we’ve ever seen for a game. We think Ubisoft forgot to commission someone to do it, so it had to rush out some artwork mocked up by the CEO’s 18-month-old Labrador. It’s terrible, truly awful. Abysmal, in fact. A lazy-as-hell port of the lazy-as-hell 187: Ride Or Die, Street Riders basically involves you racing around a couple of streets that all look exactly the same and shooting at cars whilst getting shot at. The driving itself is incredibly soft, demanding absolutely nothing from you, presumably so you can focus on the shooting: an equally pathetic element of the game. Here is a game that forgets to be a game, but even that’s not the worst part.

That would be the style. Sorry – ‘style’. Drenched in the most appalling hip-hop chic, Street Riders not only has an insidious soundtrack, offensively stupid dialogue (“Select the next hood you wanna blaze in. Ya heard”), it has your gunman hold his gun sideways when he fires, which is just about the most irritating thing anyone can do. They cuss and swear as well, as though they’re trying to reach the quota necessary to get the 16+ rating. We want these characters to be real so we can kill them. But not in a street race.

Aaron Asadi