Car Mania: iPhone App Review
July 29, 2009 by Robb
iPhone App Review: Car Mania
Reviewed by: Robb Lewis
- AppStore Link
Price: $0.99
The App Store has brought a slew of ingenious games to iPhone owners all around the world and Car Mania is no exception. If you like Flight Control, you will love Car Mania.
In Car Mania you must direct different colour-coded vehicles to their respective garages on the map. There are taxis, police cars, motorbikes and even lorries. To direct them to their specific area, you drag a path to where you want it to go. At the top of the game screen there is a ‘road rage’ meter, which fills up when cars crash, get stuck behind other cars or stuck at construction work. When this is filled (no matter which game mode you are playing), the game is over.
There are three game modes in Car Mania, which are unlocked when you get to a specified amount of happy drivers. Your ‘happy drivers’ total is shown at the top of the screen on the main menu. Survival is the first game mode. In survival mode you have to direct traffic to the designated areas, and see how long you can last before your road rage meter gets to 100%. Survival has totally unlimited time, so how long you play depends on your skill (my best is about 13 minutes). Time Attack is the same type of gameplay as survival, except in time attack you have four minutes to get as many cars as possible to their destination. Road Rage is slightly different to time attack and survival mode. You must cause as many crashes as possible within the three minute time limit. It isn’t as easy as you might think, as the vehicles won’t rear-end each other, so it has to be head-on collisions.
There are three levels in Car Mania: New York, Freeway and Central. New York has two garages, blue and yellow, and has four areas where cars will appear from. Freeway is, as the name suggests, a freeway. There are two lanes of traffic, which both split into three so you end up with six lanes of traffic to direct. This level appears easy at first glance but after a while, it becomes incredibly difficult. Freeway is also the one level that doesn’t have road rage mode, as there is no way to make vehicles crash. Central, in my opinion, is the hardest of the three levels. You have four different garages to send vehicles to, as well as a train that goes through the centre of the map randomly throughout gameplay (you do, at least, get a warning when it’s coming). Construction works will appear at random times, accompanied by drilling sounds and vibrations. You must tap these three times to get rid of them, because if you don’t, traffic cannot get past, and your road rage meter will fill up very quickly.
Car Mania supports OpenFeint for high scores, so you can see your Facebook and Twitter friends scores, as well as see where you rank on the global leader boards. You can listen to your music while playing as well, simply by pressing the ‘play music’ button on the main menu. Everything about Car Mania is beautifully designed and well thought out, right down to the sound effects. This game is one of the best games I have played and the 99c price tag will hardly break the bank.
Score:
9.7 out of 10
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