Matt recently introduced the idea of the Three Word Wrap (a quick 3 word review), so I thought I would do a three word wrap for Red Bull Air Race World Championship and then explain myself. So here goes:
Try The Demo
You might think that’s an obvious one and in a way it is, but there are valid reasons for me saying that.
Red Bull Air Racing aims to recreate the thrills of the high speed racing series on your iPhone. When you first load up you get a video showing you the real deal that they are aiming to replicate, and to an extent Artificial Life have succeeded. They have created a nice looking tilt-controlled racing game which features the official circuits and planes from the Red Bull series. It also allows you to customise both planes and courses to your heart’s content.
So why do I recommend trying the demo first?
Well, despite all the good points, a racing game of any type either wins or loses based on its controls. Despite re-calibrating numerous times I couldn’t quite get the controls to fit my style. Even with me trying to adapt to the controls being imposed on me, I found them limiting. Rather than a nice analogue feel to the steering – where the more you turn your phone the more the plane turns, and responds to small touches in order to get the perfect racing line – you are stuck with a system where the plane only turns in fixed increments.
Tilting the phone will activate the first increment, tilt it further and you activate the next which means that you are constantly twisting your device left and right in order to try and get your plane to somehow stay on the racing line.
Another major turn off was the loading screen, or more to the point the regularity with which it appears. Fair enough you can do your full race without a loading screen, but even navigating from one part of the menu to another brings up the loading screen, and it isn’t as if it is just a brief appearance either, it will be there for at least 5-10 seconds. As you can imagine, clicking into a menu, getting loading screen, realising it’s not where you want to be, exiting, loading screen, selecting next option, loading screen can get quite annoying.
It is a real shame that these issues exist as technically and graphically Red Bull Air Racing is a nice game. All in all these things might not be deal breakers for some people, but hopefully these are issues Artificial Life can fix in future updates. Since the issues are there it really stops me from recommending the game for you to go straight out to buy, but since there is a free demo version available I would recommend giving that a go, seeing what you think and then deciding for yourself if it’s worth upgrading to the full version.
[For some reason, the lite version isn’t free, but costs 59p. I find this a bit strange – if you’re going to shell out, then there’s not a great deal of difference between the free and paid versions. Why not make it free with only one level? – Matt]
Red Bull Air Race World Championship
Version reviewed: V1.0.1
Category: Games
Company: Artificial Life
Current Price: £1.79 (currently on sale)
Works on: iPhone & iPod Touch
