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What do you get when you combine Extreme Road Trip 2 and Hill Climb Racing (Two of the
best iPhone racers I've played in recent times) and
slaughtering loads and loads of zombies?
You get Earn to Die of course!
Despite the odd title, Toffee Games and Not Doppler brings us an awesome iOS and Android port
of this brilliant Flash game.
You're a zombie apocalypse survivor tasked with making your way to
the west coast of the United States
from where survivors bunkered in an old military facility have sent a distress call.
You'll need to make your way across the desert in any vehicle you can find
The only thing that stands in your
way is the journey, crates and a whole load of zombies.
The controls are very tight. The angle
of your car is controlled with the arrows
on the left side of the screen
and accelerate and boost is taken care of on the right.
While there's not as much emphasis placed on the subtle angling of
your car whilst it's airborne like there is in Hill Climb Racing and Extreme Road Trip 2, there's certainly a lot more mayhem.
Each attempt to complete a stage will add a day to the total time to complete your journey.
Your goal for the story mode is to complete the journey in as little time
as possible.
As you progress the layout of the stages becomes more and more difficult to
traverse.
The number of zombies increases
and the zombies gain abilities like being able to chase after you and latch
on to your car to slow you down.
As levels get harder and longer you'll definitely want to upgrade that sweet
ride in order to complete your journey.
Starting out with a busted beetle, you'll eventually find yourself
nestled within the confines of a mustang an armored car, a school bus,
a big rig and more.
Each of the progressive vehicle upgrades will make your traversal slightly easier.
Engine upgrades grant the vehicle more power, an upgraded gearbox transfers
more power to the wheels,
and upgraded
tires transfer that power to the dusty roads ahead.
Each car has an automated grinder device, like spinning blades and chomping claws that allow you to cut through
zombies and crates like a hot knife through butter.
There's a huge variety of guns to take them out from a distance and a boost option
that allows you to clear obstacles and hurtle through the air.
Most of the upgrades add a visual flair to your vehicle which make you look more badass as you burn your way through the desert.
Don't forget the most important upgrade of all. That is of course, gas. The more
gas you have the further you can travel
and when you run out, you've got to try again.
In the story mode, the levels seem to always require the next vehicle type in order
to pass successfully.
I'm okay with this as lends itself to a greater sense of accomplishment and progression.
Some of the later story missions seem to drag on a little but they didn't tend to
fall in the boring or grindtastic arena.
At the time of writing, there didn't seem to be any evidence at all of in app purchases
being available. My hat is off to Toffee Games and Not Doppler for
this approach
and for providing such a fully featured game at a low price.
Pretty much my only gripe with this title is that you need to complete the
story mode
before being able to access
the other two game modes. I managed to complete the game in
116 days which took me approximately three hours.
This could be heavily reduced if you're smart about the upgrades to choose and
carefully finesse your way through each of the levels.
You can compare scores via Game Center although a select few people have... *ahem*
"skillfully" managed to complete the story in 8 days.
There's only 8 levels... so... yeah.
The other modes you unlock are the championship where you compete for the
shortest time on individual tracks.
The cars are set but you can select which upgrades you'd like within a limited budget.
Fuel is unlimited for this mode and you're ranked via online leaderboards courtesy
of Game Center.
Halloween mode - a newly added game for the completionists out there
tasks you with selecting any fully upgraded car on each level and attempt to
smash all the carefully placed pumpkins contained in each.
Easier said than done. It will require some sharp reflexes and hitting the right jumps in order
to smash those pumpkins.
Fortunately, each time you replay a level, you don't have to collect
pumpkins again
as it remembers which ones you've collected.
This enables you to experiment with different cars and try different
tactics in order to smash all the pumpkins.
The graphics are nothing special
but it is fast and certainly looks sharp on the iPhone 5's Retina display.
The mellow-rock soundtrack can at times be quite repetitive,
but the amount of zombie chewing mayhem going on the the background
definitely drowns this out nicely.
This is quickly becoming one of my favorite iOS games. I would love
to see an endless mode similar to Hill Climb Racing where collecting gas tanks
will replenish your tank
but all in all this title is immensely satisfying.
Pick it up now for iOS and Android. I'll put the link the description below.
Thank you so much for joining me folks. This has been Alex for Game Mob.
That's www.gamemob.com.
I'll see you again next time.