A racing game in your pocket, every boy’s dream surely. Now this dream may become a reality with the Android Game – pocket racing. This game offers up to five different cars and up to eight different tracks, with the number of laps being either three, five or seven. It also offers an in game achievement system and most importantly to gamers, a hark back to old days when car games were a simple affair and easy for everyone to understand.
With its top down viewpoint the old-school ethos is immediately visible, the tracks are all simple with no graphical extravagance noted, but they are all varied enough to provide differing experiences. The cars from a graphics perspective are all the same apart from the colours which is to be expected because of the viewpoint. The presentation and the menu system of the game must however be praised because of the high quality, it could easily be a fully fledged menu system for a console game.
The red time tells you how time off track you have spent.
The control system is odd at first with the left half of the screen turning the car anti-clockwise and the right side manoeuvring the car clockwise. Initially this is a confusing system and you will find you car crashing rather than turning. However given some faith and perseverance the control system is easy to use because there is no need for acceleration. There is also an in game option to assign the left and right steering to physical buttons but that is a personal choice and one probably dependent on what phone you have.
Gameplay for the game is top-notch with the each car being slightly different to drive, further to this each of the tracks having a best time in which you can save and race against again to beat yourself. The inclusion of easy practice and practice is also a wise decision to ease people into the game. However the master-stroke comes in the form of downloadable ghosts from the global leaderboard to race against, this potentially gives a limitless potential of opponents. If there is a negative is no option for local multiplayer.
Vrooooom! Sorry but it was just too tempting.
Overall this is a great little addictive game, the graphics are adequate rather than spectacular, but the gameplay more than makes up for this. While the control is not perfect it can easily be personally customised which shows some foresight by the developer. Had the game included local multiplayer this would have been an instant download, but for now it’s just a great game.
AndroGamez Score – 8
http://www.measuredsoftware.co.uk/
Warning: Spoiler!