Race Or Die is a text-based role-playing game–a genre of iPhone apps that floods the iTunes App Store–about the seedy world of underground racing in the same criminal vain as Drugwars was for the Texas Instruments graphing calculators everyone used back in high school.
You start off with a single car and a dream of getting rich running an international racket of racing tricked-out rides against other enterprising auto-vehicular shysters.
At first the game seems like nothing more than a series of unfriendly menus, but they quickly become second nature once you dive in. You must do jobs (deliver contraband, burn rubber) or race to earn experience points and money, which in turn can be used to earn hourly income or upgrade your ride with sweet rims or illegal mods, or just buy better ones altogether.
It’s here that Race Or Die takes on a twitchy, Facebook-game-like quality. Enthusiasts can really get into the game’s rhythm of leveling up by investing $100 real dollars to buy in-game digital enhancements. Is that worth it for a free game? That’s up to you, but Race Or Die is completely immersive as-is.
Your stats will regenerate over time (timers tick down the exact amount of seconds before you get more fuel and money, for instance), and while you might run out of fuel or money, you’ll never run out of things to check up on or do. Who knew illegal car racing had so much in common with Dungeons & Dragons?
