Saturday 27 March 2010

Revs! (iPhone/iPod Touch)

I was at a bit of a loose end today, and somehow I ended up on my iPod, browsing the App Store. Eventually, I happened upon Revs!, which was a 59p racing game, and so I impulse bought it.

It's a typical Super Sprint/Ivan Ironman Stewart-type game, something which seems to be becoming increasingly popular on the iPhone/iPod Touch. You get a choice of four cars, but all this boils down to is that you get a choice of your favourite colour, as they all look the same and they all have identical abilities. There's also a choice of two game modes: championship and time trial. I'll look at the championship first.

Once your game gets under way, it's you against the other three colours in a five lap race. The championship consists of eight tracks, and you score points for a top three finish... but if you come fourth, you're not allowed to progress. Harsh, that.


Mud, mud, glorious mud. Nothing quite like it for slowing your car down so you finish last.

Should you make it through all eight tracks, there may be more. I don't know, because my accumulated points total saw me finish fourth, and I was told that a top three finish was needed to progress. So even though I never actually finished last, the others swapped positions enough to see me cumulatively last. Bastards.

It's very difficult to do better, too. I did win the first race, and managed second in the next, but I was third every other time. Your car isn't fast enough to outpace the opponents at the beginning, so you'll always see two cars streaking away into the distance. You can collect coins on your travels, and at the end of each race you'll get the chance to upgrade. But to be honest, I never noticed any difference from race to race in the performance of my car. And as overtaking can be as difficult here as the Valencia Formula One track.


It's like Wacky Races, except all the cars are broken from the start.

Time Trial can be a promising game mode, with a constant challenge to your own times being an addictive element of any game. Here, however, I was foiled in my attempts at fun. The game provides you with a ghost car, which is nice and gives you something to shoot for. Also, the cars now have different attributes, so you can pick one according to your driving style. But it also only unlocks one track for you, and to unlock the next you have to beat a pre-determined time... which I was unable to do! So I was left trundling around the same track, wondering where the hell I could shave off the second-per-lap I needed.

Revs! is actually a decent little app for 59p. It looks almost exactly like a Commodore 64 game, and is similarly old-school in gampeplay, with the cars having eight fixed positions as you turn. It never feels exciting, though, and is definitely hampered by its harshness. You might want to give it a go for that price and for the nostalgic feel... but you'd probably be better off going with DrawRace instead.

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