Pixel Boat Rush Review
Race till you super-explode.
Luck, though, plays it hand too heavily. This is what made me abandon the game. I was happy playing through the career mode at first, but once the difficulty spiked I found myself losing races due to chance more than anything. The frustration I felt is much like the frustration in a blue-shell heavy race in ; the game felt like it was completely against me. Before I started hating it, though, the game felt ok.
The controls for driving the boat are as follows: you touch the right side of the screen to go, you touch the left side to shoot guns. That’s it. Very simple. Driving, though, is made way harder than the controls would make you think by the way your boat reacts to waves. If you speed recklessly, the waves make your boat launch up into the air. Being suspended in the air makes your boat lose speed, so the name of the game is to brake before the waves so that you don’t fly off.
Personally, I think it would have made sense for the developers to swap the controls. Having your finger control the gas on the right side means that it’s constantly in the way. And if you have big fingers like mine, that becomes an issue.
The driving is too easy to master. So, the weapons should have kept the game interesting. But they did not. Instead they make the game annoying.
Every lap begins with the racers receiving ammo. This means that you are likely to blow up around this time, since the racers behind you unload their guns immediately. I found that I had to distance myself from the other boats just to survive the checkpoints, which was an interesting dynamic at first, but got frustrating at harder levels. Plus, this dynamic of carnage at the checkpoints means that when a boat gets away from the pack it is virtually impossible to catch up with them, because you’re still fooling around with dumb explosions at the checkpoints.
My favorite boat, since it was by far the cheapest, is called “Fuzzy”. It has decent speed and acceleration and everything, but the things I liked the most about it were its weapons. One is the “Stunner”. It faces forward and slows any enemy it hits. Fantastic if you were, say, racing. The other weapon is a mine, which is unavoidable for whoever’s behind you. “Fuzzy” is the way to go in this game, if you are unlucky enough to have to play it.
The graphics are another reason I don’t like this game. The developers went for a retro look, hence “Pixel Boat Rush”, but I thought the smooth curves of the waves and the polished look of the menus detracted from their supposed “retro” aesthetic. It was like watching a sprite Mario fight a perfectly rendered boa constrictor; the two draw styles were not in sync. Also, the colors are terrible and chintzy. The pixel sunsets are made up of the gaudy colors a five-year-old would choose.
In conclusion, this game is good for a while but overall a pain to play. The weapons are a constant nuisance, the driving gets dull very quickly, and the graphics are what you would expect from a coloring book. I enjoyed the first few hours of gameplay, mostly because there was stuff for me to figure out, but once I had nothing new to learn the ridiculous weaponry drove me nuts. The only reason I would give for buying this game is maybe its humor. It does have some clever references and puns. The rest, though, is god-awful. For it to become a hardcore game, a yacht would have to change.
2015-01-03
Supply Hardcoredroid
Pixel Boat Rush Review - App Review 4U
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