Price: $2.99

Publisher: Rocket Racing, Inc.

Inspired by the real life group of mobile racing enthusiasts, Rocket Racing League straps players into a virtual unmanned racing unit for a wild series of twists, turns, and breakneck speeds. A departure from the futuristic and wartime dog fighting titles, this is built around more traditional racing modes such as arcade, drag, and laps. With gorgeous 3D backdrops and a pulsating soundtrack, Rocket Racing League is tough to beat for the next best high powered issue in speedy competition.

With fully online multiplayer capabilities, an extensive career mode, Wi-Fi abilities, and five track locations, Rocket Racing Inc. generated a pretty deep game for the $2.99 price tag. While battling your way through the career, each track has four different modes to conquer, with different achievements, hidden items, and more than enough difficulty to keep you busy. Customizing your ship can become pretty crazy as well, as nearly any piece can be splattered with every color of the rainbow, and unique decal packages are unlocked with each completed challenge.

Rocket Racing League easily connects to a worldwide scoreboard as well as Facebook, so you can feel free to challenge friends and other mobile gaming warriors to beat your time consuming records. After a particularly impressive run, there’s also an instant replay option, allowing you to cycle through six camera views while reliving the heart pounding action.

Each distinct level carries its own vibrant colors and skylines, with deliciously rendered landscapes for you to navigate at speeds reaching 600 miles per hour. Nevada and California are particularly dazzling, with golden and auburn mountains, stark blue skies, and obstacles threatening to wreck your expensive craft at nearly every turn. While selecting your cruiser’s color scheme, the game interprets everything accurately, with hardly any glitches or hiccups which seem to occur far too often with similar titles.

To match up with the adrenaline laced racing action, Rocket Racing Inc. delivered a pumping soundtrack, filled with heavy riffs, double bass drums, and an overall straightforward rock experience. At times it was almost slightly silly sounding, but it was easily preferable to the obnoxious drum and bass electronic headache which frequents similar games. While accelerating or hitting the turbo boosts, the engines whistle away as your craft bursts ahead of the competition, coming though clear as day.

There are two distinct control options, with a number of calibrated features to allow players the maximum amount of ease while rocketing under bridges and over hillsides at high torque speeds. The accelerometer is the familiar system of tilting your device to control the aircraft, along with a brake and gas button. If this isn’t working out, feel free to attempt the virtual joystick, although this lasted about three minutes with me before I was ready to throw my iPod across the living room. However, I’m sure some people will find one is better than the other, and the amount of customization involved makes it slightly easier to get the hang of everything.

Challenging, fast paced, and wonderfully visual, Rocket Racing League is an entertaining mobile adaptation of the real life competitions (which I never knew existed until playing this). The control has the capability to frustrate some players, but some practice will make things plenty easier over time. Amidst an avalanche of racing titles in the iTunes Store, Rocket Racing League is one which is actually worth the price tag.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 5 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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Price: $6.99

Publisher: Disney

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Disney’s latest title, Split/Second delivers an experience unlike almost any Disney game before it.  Like the action intense movies that have recently defined Disney’s Hollywood lineup, Split/Second is exciting, fast and not necessarily made for kids.  This title has the honor of being released at the same time as its console counterparts on the XBOX 360 and Playstation 3.  Having played those versions, the iPhone and iPod Touch version has definitely lost something during the translation but nevertheless is worth a look.

The game’s plot revolves around you being in a Hollywood style racing show.  At least that’s the plot as I understood it.  Unlike its console counterpart, the iPhone/iPod Touch version doesn’t really get into the nitty gritty details of why you are racing around a track with bombs dropping from overhead in your path.  That’s right, bombs drop in your path.  In fact, that’s where the game gets its name.  You, as the driver, need to be able to make split second decisions and maneuver quickly out of the way as competitors try any number of ways to knock you out of the race.  On the console, this works brilliantly as you can see these bombs coming and you know what to expect.  On the small screen of an iDevice though, the obstacles are extremely hard to see and often result in the obstacle causing you to crash.

The game offers 3 modes; season, quick play and multiplayer.  Unlike some other racing games, multiplayer not only allows you to race against others players via the usual Bluetooth and Wi Fi (locally) methods but also allows you to race against 4 real life players online.  It’s a nice touch but it still suffers from the aforementioned trouble of not being able to see when and where an obstacle might crush your dreams for a first place finish.  In my play time, I didn’t have any trouble with lag from the Online connection but I did have trouble during single player mode with some graphical lagginess.  More on that in a bit.

The game includes 3 tracks, 9 different tracks and 15 cars.  While none of the cars are real, they all look pretty cool and have different strengths and weaknesses depending on which one you pick to use.  The season mode allows you to play 4 or 5 maps at a time and as you unlock each, you will be able to move on to a new location.  One of the nice things about Split/Second’s season mode is that you can play the maps in any order you would like.

The graphics within the game are decently done but they aren’t anything special.  Especially considering the racing genre on the iPhone and iPod Touch is filled with some of the best looking games on the App Store.  The big problem with the graphics lay with the screen size.  It’s simply too small to see some of the minute details you need to see in order to crash your opponent effectively and to be able to maneuver your car out of the way of danger when your opponents launch their own attack.  The graphics also suffer intermittent slowdown as you drive occasionally (even though I am playing on an iPhone 3GS) so be careful before buying this game on anything less than the latest generation of iDevice’s.

The music within the game is fast paced and the sound effects are done well as well.  No surprises there, but one thing that is surprising is that the game doesn’t allow you to listen to your own music.  A game that has you playing for hours on end should have this feature by default.  Possibly it will be added in an update.

There are a few things that really make me want to tell you to pass on this game for now and one I have as yet not mentioned.  One thing that would possibly help you from crashing so much is a standard in racing games everywhere, the 2d map view that is usually shown in the top left hand corner.  This map allows you to see how far along you are on the track and also allows you to see which way the next turn is.  That map is simply not here and that lack caused me constant frustration as I continuously crashed into walls over and over again.  The only way to combat this issue is to memorize every track you race on which for me is simply not an option.  Hopefully a map like this can be added in a future update but for now, the lack of one makes me tell you to pass on this title.

Split/Second certainly is a fun idea; cars, bombs, speed.  In the end though, it feels like a game that was rushed to get out the door in order for it to be ready for the console releases (which are extremely polished).  Hopefully Disney continues to support this game and fix it up as they go.  For now, I recommend passing and if you really need a racing game on your device, pick up Need for Speed: Shift.

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Overall Value for it’s $6.99 price point

Overall: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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Price: $2.99

Publisher: Handmark, Inc.

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Who remembers the Super Nintendo and arcade classic, F-Zero? This is what immediately bubbled up from my childhood memories as soon as I started playing Phaze, which expands upon the futuristic racing title with fast paced action along curvy tracks while snatching power ups and battling against rivals to capture first place. Fire missiles, drop bombs, and hit boosts to reach blistering speeds capable of making your eyes tear. The concept is certainly there, but did Handmark, Inc. truly deliver?

With 16 levels, 4 difficulty settings, 10 race crafts, and 6 weapons, Phaze certainly makes a valiant effort to live up to the $2.99 price tag, which is by no means extravagant. Fully rendered 3D graphics and the option to create your own soundtrack raise the bar even higher, and the game continues to expand as you play. So far, so good, right?

It’s not until further examination that the flaws within Phaze start to become apparent. The lack of a radar map to track your competitors is baffling, as is the tendency for your ship to crash into the wall and quickly explode, especially before you unlock the upgraded vehicles. Also, it feels as if the start and finish line isn’t as clearly marked as it could be, especially when previewing the track during course selection.

The animation and graphics are practically liquid smooth, rolling off the screen as you barrel through the courses at speeds reaching nearly 1000 mph. Chock full of backgrounds, clouds, mountains, and starry skies, each level has its own unique feel. The vehicles emit blue and purple trails while accelerating, growing larger as you hit boosts and roar past the competition. After completing a circuit, the camera rapidly rotates 360 degrees around your ship as it begins a victory lap.

Loaded with pulsating techno beats and electronic sounds, Phaze delivers an appropriately futuristic soundtrack to fit the game’s motif. The effects are plentiful as well, with high pitched acceleration, blasting missiles, booming explosions, and frantic alarms alerting you of incoming attacks. This is all great, but my favorite piece is the ability to disable the audio and play music from the iTunes library. While this seems like it should be an obvious feature, there’s far too many games which don’t utilize a similar system.

There are some quirky issues with the control, but most of this is remedied with practice becoming easier over time. The options menu allows you to adjust the sensitivity, as acceleration, speed, and turning are all dependant on tilting the device in different directions. Tilting forward speeds up, backwards slows down, and so forth, with the iPhone flashing red if you go too far. The system works fairly well, but when approaching higher difficulty levels and later challenge levels, it can become tough as nails to avoid bursting into a fiery inferno against the barricade, or losing control of the ship.

Although not without a few pitfalls, Phaze is a quality racing title amongst a wave of others within the genre. Others might have some smoother controls, or at least a radar map, but the ability to play your own music sets Phaze apart for me. Buckle up, blast off, and hang on for a lightning quick ride through interplanetary race tracks along brilliantly colored backdrops.

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Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall Value: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars

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Price: $2.99

Publisher: Mobigame

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Like reliving the games of the past in all of their pixilated glory?  If so, Trucker’s Delight may be for you (or maybe not).  In the same vein as Outrun or any other racing game from the late 80′s/early 90′s comes the newest game from Mobigame.  Truckers delight has one twist to the standard driving/racing game – your character is set in hot pursuit of a very attractive girl who flipped him off after he made an advance.  Your duty, as a redneck truck driver, is to chase her as long as you can and continue to hit her car from behind.  Because nothing shows how manly you are like running your 16 wheeler into the back of a suped-up sports car.

Those of you looking for a deep gaming experience will absolutely not find it in this game.  In fact, it has one of the shallowest premises I ever seen in a game.  That being said, if you are hoping to get a lightning quick glance of some 1980 style video graphic boob, you are in luck.  There is at least one power-up that allows you to lick (no I’m not kidding) the clothes off of some large chested females as you pass by them in your truck.  After licking off their clothes you are rewarded with an amazing 1 pixel per nipple graphic of them being thrown in the air (seriously, I couldn’t make this stuff up).

Despite the horrible graphics and stupid storyline, perhaps the game could be saved by good gameplay.  Unfortunately you won’t find any of that here either.  Basically as you drive down a road, the oncoming cars continuously increase in number and you need to continuously make a 30 second timed checkpoint in order to continue.  You won’t ever catch your prey, but you will get close to her after every checkpoint.  Once that happens there is nothing to do except for to run your truck into her car four or five times and then like a bat out of hell, she’ll simply drive away from you- until the very next checkpoint.  Then she’ll slow down because she enjoys getting hit from behind (get it?).

The game comes off trying to be a mix between a game like Outrun or another older racing game mixed with Leisure Suit Larry type antics.  The end result is a game that is not satisfying on either front.  The driving aspect is extremely boring after a few minutes and there are only 3 power-ups available.  The power-ups don’t even seem to be randomized.  Instead you get them in the same order every time (one every one or two checkpoints).

If you’re a 10 year old looking for a little cartoon nudity, this game might be for you.  Otherwise if you’re an adult, make sure you’re really drunk before firing this one up because otherwise it’s likely you won’t have any fun with it.  At $2.99, this game is a must pass.

Overall Value for it’s $2.99 price point

Overall Value: Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Graphics: Rating: 2 out of 5 stars
Sound: Rating: 3 out of 5 stars
Controls: Rating: 4 out of 5 stars

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