E-Punk – Shooting cars to save the planet! for iPhone Is Interesting But Falls Short

E-Punk iPhone iPad Game Review

E-Punk – Shooting cars to save the planet! [rating: 3/5]

There are many apps based on an interesting premise that doesn’t quite deliver. Eco-Punk by nitako is an interesting concept that has great potential that doesn’t quite follow through. What could be an entertaining game just seems to fall short in a couple of very key areas.

In E-Punk you play a punk rabbit skateboarder who’s taken on a mission to clean up the streets. The player skateboards in and out of traffic, picking up garbage as you go. Points are awarded for each piece of garbage collected. Traffic must be avoided at all costs while collecting trash, if your rabbit is hit even once by a vehicle the game is over. You can have your revenge against the polluting vehicles though by collecting either a purple or red power up. The purple power up make your skateboarder indestructible so you can destroy vehicles at will. The red power up gives you an automatic gun that allows you to do the same. Use either power up wisely as they are time limited.

Difficulty increases gradually the longer you survive in the game by adding more vehicles and the speed with which they move around the game area. In addition to this,E-Punk provides three modes of play: Classic, Blitz, and Timebend. Classic mode is a traditional progressively harder mode of play. Blitz gives the user to 60 seconds to survive and collect as many points as they can. Timebend is like Classic mode but the traffic will slow down and speed up based on how fast your character does.

Controls are simple and easy to understand. A tap and drag motion moves your character around the map. A tap and fling motion will send your character shooting off independently for a brief period of time.

As I said at the beginning of the review, I feel like E-Punk has a lot of promise but fails in a few key areas. First, game play is very repetitive. The entire game is played in the same small area. The background does not change and you can’t even move outside the small city block. Even repeating the block over and over again would be preferable to just locking the player into one area. This effects gameplay a great deal.

The second area is the damage model. Although it is very realistic, ending the game after getting hit once by a vehicle goes against most video game conventions. Even shooting games have a gradual damage model of some kind. Getting knocked out of a game so quickly and easily is very discouraging to a player and apt to make them want to put the game down then continue. To its credit, Eco-Punk does implement global leaderboards and achievements through OpenFeint.

Eco-punk is a fun little arcade game limited by its shortcomings. Solving these issues would greatly enhance this game and make it a solid pick.

The Good:

  • Interesting concept
  • Social gaming
  • Easy controls

The Not So Good:

  • Repetitive gameplay
  • Overly realistic damage model

Reviewed By: Erin Peterson

Price: $0.99 (iTunes Store)
Updated Feb 19, 2010
Reviewed Version: 1.0.3
Size: 32.8 MB
Languages: English
Seller: Mashak Eng
© 2010 Nitako

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