Review: Pile Up!

The Overview

Pile Up! is Clickgamer's entry into the hugely competitive traffic control genre of games. Four different colors of cars approach each of the intersections you control. When you want them to pass through and leave through their appropriate exit, you simply tap them. If you wait too long, drivers become impatient and just randomly drive through the intersection. You can always direct cars to the exit of the wrong color to clear congestion. Of course, you do not score points for doing this.

The Features

When you first start the game, Pile Up! asks you to choose whether you drive on the right or left side of the road. This is a nice gesture to international players. You can always change this later to mix up game play. The game integrates with your Twitter account to post high scores. Of course, everyone else pretty much uses OpenFeint or Plus+ now, so this does not seem like much of a feature. Pile Up! comes with three built in maps. The second two you must unlock through playing. However, this is incredibly simple to do. You can also double the play speed to make the game game slightly more challenging.

The Breakdown

The Good There's not much good to say about Pile Up! The game play is extremely repetitive. The graphics are just okay. The sounds are actually fairly annoying. The Bad There are only three maps available - though this might be a good thing because it doesn't take you long to realize there is not much substance or challenge to this game. Whenever you send a car to its destination, it turns white with no indication of which exit it is headed toward. This is the most frustrating on the roundabout level when you have no idea where half the cars on the screen are going. Also on the roundabout level, the game hiccups often. This seems to happen when a car approaches an exit and the program has to decide if the car is supposed to leave there or not. Admittedly, I have an ancient 1st generation iPod Touch but this is still unacceptable for this simple of a game.

The Verdict

Pile Up! doesn't add much to the traffic control genre. In fact, there really is not much to Pile Up! at all. With only three maps, no achievements, and extremely repetitive gameplay, Pile Up! is not worth your time or money.

Related articles