Traffic!

Surely two of the best times to play mobile phone games are when suitably engaged upon the toilet and when on the train. And at times like these, the subject of the game sometimes has an odd resonance.

When playing a plumbing game on the lav, for example, you might pause to consider the absurdity of the moment. Equally, if played on the train or another form of public transport, Traffic! may provoke a similar sensation.

After all, one of the few benefits of coping with the screaming babies and airborne viruses that plague public transport is that you can generally leave the road rage and rush hour jams for the driver to worry about. So what better way to spend time on the bus, as it lumbers through the clogged arteries of an urban one-way nightmare, than to play a game in which you direct traffic?

With gameplay centered on a particularly busy crossroads, in Traffic! you have to tell each car when they can go by selecting it and giving it directions. Of course, what with this being a crossroads, the cars are not only going to be driving straight ahead but will be turning left or right, too.

To further complicate matters, the various cars all move at different speeds, and then there are the stranger sights, such as the UFO and the tank that blasts nearby vehicles with its cannon.

There are three different game modes to get stuck into. The main one is the Mission mode, which features discrete levels, each of which has a specific objective. Next comes the Arcade mode where you just have to get as many points as possible whilst trying to avoid causing a terrible orphan-making pile-up. The last one, Snake mode is a bit more of a novelty: it's essentially a car-themed version of the classic Snake.

Apart from the latter mode, which takes place on a plain grey background, the crossroads that the game is played on always remains the same. That said, the general presentation levels are great. The graphics have a great cartoony quality to them and there's a massive variety in the vehicles in the game. And while there aren't a great many sound effects in Traffic!, the musical cues are spot-on; there are quite a few catchy tunes packed into a remarkably small number of kilobytes.

Unfortunately though, despite the obvious attention that has gone into the game to make it as slick as a patch of black ice, actually playing Traffic! is disappointing.

In particular, a core part of the gameplay involves taking into account which way the cars want to turn. Apart from the cars that want to drive forwards, each of the cars has a little flashing icon on either its left or right side, indicating a left or right turn. This may sound intuitive, but when each car is only a handful of pixels wide, an icon on the left hand side looks much like one on the right.

Now, consider that there will generally be up to 20 cars on the screen at any one time, many of which will be adorned with one of these flashing little blobs. The headache-inducing end result is enough to cause eye-spasms, and a severe loss of sleep.

Trying to take it all in to play Traffic! as we imagine it should be played – by factoring into your moves the direction that every car will turn – simply doesn't work, in practice. Even a determined player will soon be reduced to randomly pressing directions and hoping for the best.

It's such a shame – completely aside from the generally solid presentation and veneer of quality, this is not the sort of game you see every day. Similar ideas have been used in games such as Traffic Jam and the Air Traffic Controller games, but this still has a certain spark of originality that your average run-and-jump platformer or match-the-colours puzzler lacks.

Ultimately, Traffic! feels a little like missing that bus or train. A cocktail of infuriation and disappointment and a wasted opportunity.