Review: Cro-Mag Rally

Overview From the iTunes' page: "Cro-Mag Rally is the wildest racing 3D game since man invented the wheel! You are a speed-hungry caveman named Brog who races through the Stone, Bronze, and Iron Ages in primitive vehicles such as the Geode Cruiser, Bone Buggy, Logmobile, Trojan Horse, and many others. Brog has at his disposal an arsenal of primitive weaponry ranging from Bone Bombs to Chinses Bottle Rockets and Heat Seeking Homing Pigeons." Gameplay Cro-Mag Rally starts up with a static loading page that sports the game and developer's logos. Once it loads the soundtrack begins with primitive jungle-inspired music, a surefire way to get gamers in the mood. Then comes the 'Main Menu'.

From the 'Main Menu', you can access three functions: 'Play Game', 'Settings', and 'Info'. Let's go into depth on each. We'll start with the 'Play Game' menu. There are 2 modes of gameplay, 'Race' and 'Gather'. Once you choose 'Race' you are taken to a sub-menu where you can choose a track. There are 9 distinct race tracks, all of which are completely different in style and design. Once you choose your track, you are taken to another menu where you select from 10 different vehicles, all with varying speed, acceleration, traction, and suspension attributes, making it easier to choose the perfect vehicle for your driving style, preference and skill. Once your vehicle is chosen, you can then pick whether you want to drive as "Brog" or "Grag". One bad feature of these Menus is that if you click back on any one of them, you are taken all the way back to the 'Main Menu'. This means that after you've chosen 'Race', then your level, then your vehicle, and are at character selection, a press of the back button won't let you re-pick a vehicle , but takes you all the way to the 'Main Menu' where you have to start the whole process over. Not so much fun.

When the level starts you're greeted with track specific music fitting the theme of each track (ie. Primitive Chinese music on the Great Wall track, and Jungle Music on the Jungle track, etc.). There are 9 power-ups, or special items, to gather and use. Some are fun and add excitement to the game, like Nitro, which when used, provides a 5 second speed boost, which is always nice. Though most power-ups don't make much sense with the theme of Cro-Mag, such as Bone Bombs which explode upon impact, you can forgive the makers for the boost in fun-factor added. How Cavemen came up with the technology for an exploding bone, I have no idea, but Cro-Mag Rally apparently says they did! The other mode of gameplay is 'Gather', where you race just like you would normally, but you collect 9 arrowheads on the way. I didn't really see a point to this mode, as there are no trophies or wilder beast that you win, just a "You collected them all!" at the end. For the most part, this mode doesn't really do much of anything, and is quite pointless in my opinon.

The other 'Main Menu' options include 'Settings', where you can turn vibrations on and off (new v1.0.1), adjust sound levels, toggle music on and off, change the difficulty setting, and change the sensitivity of the accelerometer, as well as turn on and off the 'Driver POV' option, which allows you to race from the point of view of your character. Pretty cool feature I thought. Then you have the 'Info' Option, which let's you view the 'Credits', 'Help' (which opens up the help page in Safari), and the 'Other Games' option which shows the other iPhone games available from Pangea Software, Inc. Review So, it's come time for me to give you my opinion on this game. Why does my opinion matter you ask? Well, game developers may say their game is good, but is it really? The only way to tell is to get an honest opinon regarding it, and that's what I'm gonna do here. See, Cro-Mag Rally is, overall, a fun game. That's pretty much it. If you're looking for a casual, pick-me-up and play racing game, this one can do that. But if you want a complex, level unlocking, story mode with trophies and all, look elsewhere. There is no point in the game other than one-off races. You don't get rewarded with a new track or vehicle or even character no matter how much you win... you just play again.

Because of this, I think Cro-Mag Rally loses points amongst gamers. While the graphics, soundtrack, and controls are great, it has no depth, and in turn can get very boring, very fast. There are also some glitches that I think need to be worked on. One is the fact that there is random vibration while playing. We here at AppleiPhoneApps have been trying hard to figure out what that vibration corresponds to (besides bumping another racer), but with each race, I am more and more leaning towards the theory it's a random and inexplicable occurrence, which I would have hoped got fixed in the latest update (which occurred just yesterday, 7/16/08). Instead, we're just given an option to turn it off completely. This update also fixes a problem with the upper-right corner map displaying characters in the wrong places. Compare Cro-mag to another racing game, like Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D (for which I did a review just days ago), and it doesn't stand up so well. The controls and graphics, sounds and more are about the same in each game, but with Crash you get a whole lot more. You get better game modes, you get trophies, Cups, and a reason to play. For that, I think Crash Bandicoot Nitro Kart 3D is a better buy. Also, both games are $9.99, and for Cro-Mag, I think it's a bit over-priced. $6.99 would be more suitable in my opinion. Summary Overall, it's a simple and primitive kart racing game, but it's got some issues with game modes and depth, but tries to makes up for it with its great soundtrack, controls, Powerups, graphics and more.

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