Game Reviews

MiniChase

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MiniChase

It's safe to say the protagonist in MiniChase hasn't really thought things through.

He blows a hole in a bank's upper floor and speeds his car through it, Dukes-of-Hazzard-style. (The game neglects to mention how he got it up there in the first place.)

On landing, he then gets to scoot about a tiny, blocky city infested with cops, until he collides with anything whatsoever, at which point he's catapulted from the car. (Wear your seatbelt, kids!)

A bad turn

The controls are idiot-proof. Tap or hold the left half of the screen to turn left, or the right-hand side of the screen to turn right. Very, very slowly.

The turning circle on this thief's car makes it more reminiscent of piloting a ferry than driving a nippy getaway vehicle.

This feels quite odd and in theory would suggest you should plan your route quite carefully, given that an accidental collision with even a tiny traffic cone is enough to abruptly hurl your robber skywards.

However, the game's speed is such that you never really have time to react to what's going on around you.

Rapid response

When it comes to the map, you can at least learn where roads and escape routes are located. Burn every turning, park and building into your brain and you've a fighting chance of lasting 30 seconds or so.

But when speeding cops arrive for the kill, avoiding them is too heavily reliant on luck - you often need to hope they're heading at an angle that will find them embedded in a wall rather than your car.

Even the power-ups dotted about the place aren't a great deal of help, merely temporarily flinging you into the air or giving you a speed boost, in a game that's already arguably a bit fast for its own good.

It is admittedly fun when you're in the air and two cop cars collide below, but then one will arrive from out of nowhere and smash into you, instantly ending your game.

Run down

This assessment of MiniChase might all seem terribly grouchy, given that the game is hardly attempting to be some kind of cops and robbers chase epic where you thrill onlookers by evading the fuzz for hours.

It's clearly closer in nature to the Super Hexagons of the gaming world. But the lack of polish and refinement means during play it never really gets deep enough under your skin to keep you battling against the odds.

Visually, it's an odd mishmash of styles - part ultra-clean vectors, part old-school pixelation - which feels a bit unfinished. The music is suitably upbeat, but rapidly becomes tiresome.

Purely from a gameplay standpoint, it's not bad, but there's no variety, which when combined with MiniChase's unforgiving nature fairly rapidly rams the entire thing into a wall.

Doubly so when you can get the more refined, superior but ultimately fairly similar Pako for the same price.

MiniChase

An initially amusingly brash arcade effort that quickly becomes a bit boring, and pales beside a superior contemporary
Score
Craig Grannell
Craig Grannell
Craig gets all confused with modern games systems with a million buttons, hence preferring the glass-surfaced delights of mobile devices. He spends much of his time swiping and tilting (sometimes actually with a device), and also mulling why no-one’s converted Cannon Fodder to iPad.