Rumble Cars

When I see a game in the Marketplace for $.99 that looks to have good graphics from the screenshots and provide some basic entertainment value I'm a bit of a sucker. After all, aren't we all suckers when it comes to a bargain... willing to say "it's only a buck" provided that the game tickles some sort of fancy within us. That's one reason I think Apple's marketplace has been so successful. In the early going there were lots of good $.99 games. That seems to be changing, though, as the newer games and the bigger names are finally starting to creep up in price. But I digress...

Rumble Cars is a simple game that uses the accelerometer to control a car driving down a continuously straight road. You're mission? For some reason you want to crash into and destroy the blinking, red cars. After bumping into them about 8 times they turn into regular cars and it's a race to the next one with each level consisting of having to do this a set number of times. Race?... well not a race, because this game doesn't seem to care how fast in which you complete your objective and that just seems odd in a racing game. Your car does have a limited health and running into other (friendly?) cars as well as driving off of the road does damage to you and I presume that gets more difficult as the game progresses, but boredom prevented me from finding that out.

That's about it. Observations?

• The help screen has abundant typos on it like "hitting the other cars except the targetd one" on it.
• It seems to take too long to find the next target car which contributed greatly to the boredom factor.
• Little reason to play on after level 0.
• Once I quit, I have to use an App Killer to play again... otherwise I get a black screen.

Ironically I can't help but feel that there's another, better game in here somehow, somewhere. I like the accelerometer control. In fact, the accelerometer control is the highlight of this game as it's kind of neat driving your car at first, but that alone does not make a game. This would be a better game if it was simply a racing game with, dare I ask for, curves/turns? Better yet shooting at the enemy cars (instead of bumper cars) and some power ups might actually make this a hit. Those features along with the existing game engine would be fun.

As is, avoid this one... even at $.99.