Arctic Smash review - Two games, not worth the price of one

Essentially Arctic Smash is two games in one. Both of them involve sliding down a mountain on a board. And both of them are sort of just average.

There's nothing particularly wrong with either of them, but there's nothing particularly memorable about them either.

They're just sort of there, and you'll lose interest with them after a pretty short time.

There are just better snowboarding games out there. Much better snowboarding games. And better one-touch arcade games.

Snow bored

The first of the two games is split up into stages. You tap one finger on the screen and you change direction.

You tap it again and you change direction again. Weave through trees and buildings and get to the finish line.

There's a yeti involved as well, who sort of pushes you on to go further down the mountain.

If anything it's far too challenging for its own good. There are tougher games out there, but this one is just a little too harsh.

The other is an endless version that sees you sliding a finger left and right to avoid the same sort of obstacles. It's far more casual, and it's recommended that you stick your headphones in while you're playing.

The second is the stronger of the two experiences, but it's still not the most exciting thing you're going to do this week.

In fact it's probably not the most exciting thing you're going to be doing while you're doing it.

There's nothing mechanically wrong with the game really. Some of the collision detection is a little wonky, but you can get past that reasonably easy.

That's if you're willing to put the time in, which you probably won't be.

Even the art style here is lacklustre. It's not broken, it's not ugly, it's really just there.

Once your eyes have drifted away from it you'll find it almost impossible to remember any defining feature about the look of the game.

And the gameplay is almost exactly the same. It just sort of drifts past and then a shiny thing will distract you and you'll wander off.