Speed City - 3D motorcycle racing game for windows Mobile | Best Windows Mobile Games / Windows Phone Apps Review

Aug 16, 2009 Posted by kinnikun in App Store, Games, Racing | 5 comments

Speed City – 3D motorcycle racing game for windows Mobile

Developer : Omnig Soft

More Apps from this Developer : Click Here

Speed City

Did you hear the great news? There’s a free, regularly $19.99, 3D motorcycle racing game on Total Access! The description says, “With stunning city scenes, lifelike physics simulation, and exciting street racing, you’ll definitely feel the pulse of Speed City!” Those words almost guarantee that the game will be out of this world. So are you ready to download it? Not so fast. Before you get excited and look for a link, read the rest of this review.

Speed City, from OmniG Software, entices us with a few nice looking screenshots and tempting descriptive words, but is the game really worth $19.99? The fact that it’s free on Total Access may be an indicator of what the game is really worth. By the way, does anybody think the screenshot on Total Access makes the game look graphically better than the shot from my phone? It sure felt like it once the game started…

(Total Access image on left, screenshot from my device on right)

The first thing I noticed about the game was it looked horrible on my device. The faster my bike went, the worse it got. There were graphical glitches across the board and if you got near any of the objects in the game they just became more pixilated than they already were. I guess they were right about the “stunning city scenes” because I was definitely stunned – in a negative way. The second thing I noticed was the music was repetitive, annoying and soon gave me a headache. Then I realized there weren’t any sound effects – just music! That already ruined part of the experience and it was only 5 seconds into the game.

Controls

So bad graphics and sound, but how about gameplay/controls? As I shake my head in despair, gameplay and controls were not much better. It’s never fun to use the directional pad on a phone to play games, yet this game forces it on you. You can switch to touchscreen mode by pressing a super tiny icon, but it’s even worse than using the D-pad. As you can see in the image, the onscreen D-pad is spaced out and in a bad position. I think you can move it around the screen, but why bother? Driving games usually allow usage of the g-sensor, have touch and drag play anywhere on the screen or use the full screen for finger friendly goodness. This game gives you a bad virtual D-pad. The worst part of having bad controls is that it takes away from the gameplay.

The only saving grace of the game was the randomly generated track paths. I thought that was innovative for a mobile game. Too bad the controls make it difficult to keep up with the competitors. My favorite part of the game has to be when I uninstalled it. I was happy to see it go. The final verdict? Don’t waste the time it takes to sign up/in for the free download.

Pros:

- Randomly generated track paths

Cons:

- Poor graphics
- Annoying music
- No SoundFX
- Bad onscreen controls
- Not fun