Mobile Games Roundup
Reckless! Shoot! Dexter! Angry! Buka!
Reckless Racing HD
- iPad /£2.99
- iPhone / £1.79
- Android / $2.99
If looks could kill, Pixelbite's top-down Reckless Racing would leave you all slumped and bleeding over your expensive gadgets, wishing for a slightly less inglorious fate.
It all starts off so promisingly. In the spirit of Micro Machines and Super Sprint, you race furiously across a series of lavishly detailed environments, screeching around corners while trying not to fall off a cliff. As a formula, it's one that still stands the test of time when done properly.
Sadly, there's simply not enough substance to it. With just five tracks (eight on iPad), you'll see most of what the game has to offer in the first 20 minutes, especially as the Bronze difficulty level is so hilariously obliging. The game only deigns to challenge the player at Silver, by which time you've probably started to lose interest.
Strangely, local multiplayer is entirely absent (something Danger Derby has already proved lends itself brilliantly to the iPad). On the plus side though, online multiplayer gaming is a piece of cake to set up, and offers a much more enjoyable way to play - assuming anyone's playing it, of course. Of less interest is the throwaway Delivery mode where you have to drop off packages within a time limit.
Perhaps with a more considered campaign mode and a better sense of structure to the whole thing, Reckless Racing could have been a classic. As The Monks put it so succinctly: nice legs, shame about the boat race.
7/10
Dexter: The Game HD
- iPad/iPhone / £3.49
The Dexter TV series would lend itself incredibly well to a Heavy Rain-style investigative thriller adventure, played out from multiple perspectives. Sadly, this is not that game. Instead we must suffer an excruciating hotchpotch of stealth-lite, mini-games, and face-meltingly awful visuals.
If the Miami Metro blood spatter analyst had any idea about the crimes against entertainment that Marc Ecko Entertainment had perpetrated with this sorry excuse for a videogame, his 'dark passenger' would be well within his rights to carry out a violent execution.
Like a typical episode from the show, the game dips into all the facets of Dexter's sociopathic existence, from caring partner to blood spatter analyst to exterminator of 'deserving' serial killers. Sadly, each and every portion of the game feels like it has been designed by people who have never played videogames before.
Even the simple process of walking around feels like an elaborate endurance test, and whether you're evidence gathering, tailing your target, or just trying to have a nose around your apartment, you'll want to hurl your expensive Apple device across the room within about five minutes.
By the time you've engaged in the spirit-draining faff that comprises the confusing and borderline unplayable mini-games, you'll begin to question the sanity of the individuals responsible, and yourself for persisting with this witless sham. Even Michael C. Hall's voice-over contributions can't salvage this pitiful exercise.
1/10