Danger Racer
|
| Danger Racer

Endless runners live or die on the basis of a single overriding factor: replay value.

Canabalt, for example, draws you back repeatedly with its thrilling sense of momentum - a sensation you yearn to experience again and again.

Jetpack Joyride combines addictive kinetic thrills with a compulsive collection mechanic, infecting you with the frequently misleading knowledge that you are just one more go away from beating that high score.

While Danger Racer is seemingly aware of this fundamental truth, its bungled attempt to translate it into an enjoyable endless driving game runs out of fuel miles shy of its intended destination.

Potholes

Problems are apparent the moment you take to the road. Rather than viewing the action side-on and zooming from left to right, you're presented with a top-down view of a motorway that you must traverse in a vertically scrolling fashion.

At first, control is sluggish and cumbersome as you coax your car around traffic in pursuit of cash drops, fuel canisters, and maximum milage.

The problem is, as the game progresses and you begin to level-up your vehicle, nothing much changes. No matter how many engine upgrades you purchase, you can never escape the feeling that you're hauling a cinder block through drying tar.

This lack of speed combines with the game's horrible collision physics to create an experience that is by turns dull and frustrating.

Stuck in neutral

Given the lack of excitement to be found in the handling, your eyes will start wandering over the cash and upgrade icons in search of a speed injection or long-term goal.

However, in a genuinely shocking turn up, I had enough money to purchase every single upgrade the game had to offer after four two-minute sessions.

Having kitted the (still painfully slow) car to the nth degree, there was nothing left to focus on but a few destruction-oriented achievements, the distance meter, and the same never-ending stretch of grey asphalt.

All of this serves to undermine any replay appeal Danger Racer might have conjured up, rendering this endless runner endlessly boring.

Danger Racer

With little pleasure to be found in either the journey or the destination, this is one highway mobile motorists should avoid
Score
James Gilmour
James Gilmour
James pivoted to video so hard that he permanently damaged his spine, which now doubles as a Cronenbergian mic stand. If the pictures are moving, he's the one to blame.