Fast and Furious: Adrenaline

I have a dirty secret – I quite enjoy the Fast and the Furious films.

They’re not something I’d deliberately go out of my way to watch, I quickly add, but for me they fall into that ‘entertainingly bad’ category of film occupied by the likes of Cliffhanger or Running Man. The sorts of films you’d catch while flicking through channels on the TV and end up watching to the end anyway.

It seems that I-play hasn’t really cottoned onto what makes the films at least slightly bareable to watch though, as Fast and Furious: Adrenaline isn’t entertaining in the slightest - it’s just plain bad.

The basic idea is the same as that of the original Fast and Furious: Adrenaline iPhone game, and takes its inspiration from the reboot of the film.

Your task, as a young and presumably dashing street racer, is to ‘take’ areas of the city by driving really fast and winning events. These events come in the form of straight-up racing, drag races, time trials, and moments of being pursued by some of the most pathetic cops you’re likely to see.

Every so often another gang will challenge for a part of the city, thus forcing you to dip back to that event and beat it again. This odd repetition of events is more annoying than fun – especially if you’ve just beaten that section – but the obscenely easy difficulty does make things more bearable.

As you progress through the game, you unlock new vehicles depending on how ‘furious’ you were in a race – breaking the speed limit, drifting your car, or jumping contributes to the points tally. It turns out, though, that the first car I unlocked – called the ‘Profesore’ - was so much faster than every subsequent vehicle that it ended up being an utterly pointless endeavour.

The game may be old in mobile years (slightly longer than dog years), but the graphics and speed do pretty well at being both fast and furious, especially during the inner-city sections with their bright city lights and twisty streets.

The controls, however, aren't quite so hot, with the accelerometer defaulting to ‘stupidly twitchy’ and brakes considered something entirely optional to gameplay. It also doesn't help that your fellow racers seem content to keep within the speed limit.

Try to look for a more discerning kind of racer online and you’re in for a shock, as every single piece of multiplayer has been stripped out for this version. While the lack of real-time simultaneous play is a technical limitation and can be excused, the exclusion of the social networking challenges and online leaderboards is baffling.

With missing features, and hardly any real ‘racing’, if Fast and Furious: Adrenaline popped up while channel surfing I’d turn off the TV.