Video Game Review: VS Racing
VS Racing
Genre(s): Racing
Rating: 4+
Players: Single player/Up to 6 players over Wifi
Developer: Maciek Drejak Labs
Console(s): iPhone, iPod Touch, iPad. Required iOS4
Description: Experience the thrill and excitement of full-on arcade racing! Challenge your friends, iPhone against iPhone! Test your skills in the exciting single player campaign!
I’ve been hanging out to get a copy of VS Racing for a while now. Somehow I found it on Facebook (Isn’t everything on Facebook found ‘somehow’) and I eagerly watched and waited for it’s release. The screenshots promised a return to the arcade style racing I remember growing up with. Memories of flinging the arcade machines steering wheel to get the car around the corner when a few pixels on a screen was the pinnacle of video gaming! It’s funny how the memory is always better than the reality.
I must stress that I haven’t looked at the multiplayer mode. I’m sure it would offer a bit of fun but since there is no option to play online I’m stuck with the people in my house. While I live in a house with 5 others, no one has an iPhone, iPod or even an iPad. For reviews sake lets just say that multiplayer gameplay is the same as single player gameplay with the addition of being able to yell at the other driver. Everyone happy with that? Great.
Initially, VS Racing is good fun. The graphics are nice and the touch controls are easy to use. Point the car where you want it to go and thats it. Take your finger off the screen to break but you wont need to, racing flat out is the only way to play, just like the old days! The first tracks are easy without being boring as you acclimatise to the game.
Unfortunately, VS Racing becomes a bit of a slog from here. Only 6 tracks are on offer and they are pretty much all the same. Getting a track with a bit of dirt excited me much more than it should have because that’s about as good as it gets! If you like jumps, water or anything cooler than a third of a slide on some brown stuff you are going to get real bored, real quick! Fall behind too far and you will get a boost to make sure you are always in the mix while occasionally in the later levels you will get the chance to grab a power up that sets fire to the cars you touch. Don’t expect it too often though as it only comes by once a race.
Single player also offers a story line as corny as any Super Nintendo game. You play as an arrogant racing driver who is mentored firstly by an old guy obsessed with scrap-booking and then a mysterious masked stranger. Along the way you meet the girl you let get away and your nemesis who is dating her. Clearly the makers were after a corny story but there are no laughs here. Not even a cameo from Jack Nicholson can drag out more than a ‘heh’. A corny story can be fun, this story feels like it was written by an 8 year old boy. You will probably have more fun quickly tapping the screen to skip it.
It’s worth mentioning VS Racing also offers an accelerometer control option. It’s just tilting the screen as if the car was a ball and VS Racing doesn’t try to hide it, using an actual ball in the tutorial to teach you the controls. I felt more like an idiot than a racing driver using these controls. Stick with the touch controls.
VS Racing offered so much potential but fell well short of delivering. As with most iPhone games I find I’m convincing myself that a later update will save the game but I’m not sure with this one. Any update would need to bring some interest. Water, jumps and more power-ups are clearly what it needs. Fingers crossed the developer is working on that right now! At it’s current ‘special launch price’ I wouldn’t feel too bad about buying VS Racing but once the price goes up probably give it a miss unless you have a few friends to play with over wifi.
Reviewed on an iPhone 3GS iOS4.2.1
Affiliates
