Game Reviews

Riot Runners

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iOS
| Riot Runners
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Riot Runners
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iOS
| Riot Runners

Arguably, endless-runners are the App Store's version of fast food. They're sharp sugary hits of pure gameplay, with nothing that that's good for the brain or the soul, but enough sloppy lumps to convince your gut it's full for a while.

At least, they are when they're done well. Done badly they're full of gristle and bone and chunks of awful things that get stuck in your throat and make you choke up swear words and sad noises.

Riot Runners is one of the latter. It's sluggish and generic, often glitches out at the worst possible times, and spends most of the time not being very much fun at all.

Not a riot

The game is a 2D side-on runner that sees you playing as a legless robot trying to escape from some mean looking bigger robots that don't quite stick to the ground properly. You jog to the right automatically, and tap to jump. A double-tap performs a double-jump.

There's a stark silhouettey art style that apes the likes of Limbo and Badlands without capturing any of the charm or vitality that those games create. Instead it feels lifeless and, often, a little unfinished.

It's not the only thing about the game that lacks polish. Sometimes the controls don't work, leaving you strolling into lumps of scenery and ending your run early.

The frustration these mishaps cause is compounded by a vein of cruelty that sees you cut down so quickly sometimes you're not entirely sure what happened.

Throw in some uninspiring design and a strangely weighted jump that never quite feels like it's going to get you over the obstacles thrown at you and you're left with a game that's easy to put down.

Run for it

Riot Runners wants to feel like something new and exciting, but really it's just a jumbling together of a bunch of ideas borrowed from other endless-runners that never really hangs together as a cohesive whole.

There's nothing here that you haven't seen before, done more competently or in a more interesting manner. Riot Runners doesn't really promise much, but it manages to deliver even less.

Riot Runners

A sluggish, un-fun endless-runner that adds little to the template, Riot Runners is better off avoided
Score
Harry Slater
Harry Slater
Harry used to be really good at Snake on the Nokia 5110. Apparently though, digital snake wrangling isn't a proper job, so now he writes words about games instead.