Review: Nano Rally
by Matt Fox
August 31, 2009
Overview
A top down racing game where you put your driving skills to the test as you attempt to get the best time trial for on track. Race a miniaturized car through vast environments like the kitchen, bedroom, office, and even through your outside garden. A fun and unique take on the "toy car" racing genre, but is it worth your time?Features
Surprisingly, this game is loaded with features with a much needed update on the way as well. (more on the updated features later) For starters, there are over 25 different tracks throughout the six types of environments: Kitchen, Bedroom, Office, Garden, and two Secret tracks.
You have the option to customize the car's attributes like the handling and acceleration for example. This is used to modify the way the car handles on each different course. You can also change the controls to touch or tilt based and change the gas from auto or manual as well.
Each one of your "best time" scores are saved into the game and there is an online score board for each stage so you can see how you stack up against the competition. The game also has the option of single and championship races as well as the ability to play your own music through the iPod portion of your device.
As far as the updates go, the devs have added some much needed additions/fixes to the app. The first addition comes by way of racing lines. You will now have the ability to see exactly where you need to go on each track.
Next is the camera, it is now "fixed," which means instead of the screen moving when you turn it will stay in a "fixed" position as you round each turn, etc. The last fix has to do with the difficultly of the game, it will soon have the option of Easy, Medium, and Hard. According to the devs, this update is currently "in Apple Review."
Breakdown
The Good:
I think the main thing this game has going for it is its originality. It's kind of like if "Micro-Machines" met "Toy Story" and then they decided to set up a race track around the house. The graphics look great and the environments really add another level to the game.
The Bad:
The game is extremely hard for a lot of different reasons. For one, the controls do not work very well. Using the touch based controls is next to impossible with the moving camera and the accelerometer controls are better, but not by much. The camera is really a drag in this game. The update that is on the way is claiming to fix this, but we'll see. There are certain times you lose where you are suppose to go and it causes you to hit a wall or fall off the track. Again, the update that's coming is adding race lines for navigational purposes, but in the current version there is nothing.
Back on the difficulty of the game, it's not only really hard but it's all time trials. Rally racing is all about time trials, yes, but that still gets annoying racing against time and nothing else. Again, the update that is in review is adding Easy, Medium, and Hard settings and another update down the line will add AI racers so we'll see how it plays after that.
