The Blogtastic Blogfest That Is Getmeoutofthis.net!

If you clicked on the link in Tuesday’s post, you might have noticed that Monster Trucks Nitro has an iPhone version. It’s true! And since it too, was on sale, and was only a dollar, I also gave it a try. If you make an interesting-looking iPod Touch game for a buck, I almost certainly will buy it. I’m like that.

The game actually works pretty well. On the screen, on the corners, you have a little virtual brake pedal and a virtual gas pedal. There’s also a Cruise Control button, if you’d rather not hold down the gas, which is a nice idea. To lean your car, you just rotate the iPod. It works really well, though you get some weird views you don’t get while playing the PC game because of it. Nitro, instead of being deployed by the player, is now just sort of a generic speed boost, much like going over a set of arrows in Mario Kart or something. That takes a little of the finesse of using the nitro in the PC version out of the game, but at the same time, I don’t have any idea where you’d put a button for that that would work well, so I don’t have a problem with it.

Visually, the game looks almost exactly like the PC version, though a little dumbed down. If I didn’t have the PC version’s stuff maxed, it would probably look pretty similar. It looks nice, though. The iPod Touch is kind of a hoss like that. The wheels on the monster trucks do seem very oddly detached from the trucks themselves in this version. They get really out there! But it doesn’t really affect gameplay, it just looks funny.

Gameplay-wise, most of the “tricky” levels seem to be missing. These levels are designed purely to test your skill with keeping up your speed. The goal times are much harder to achieve because of this, as well, with takes a little of the casual feel away from the game. You really have to know exactly how to lean your truck to maximize your speed and whatnot. It’s still plenty of fun, though, and as I said, it controls impressively well.
Still, it’s hard to overlook the fact that there are only 8 tracks in this release. At $1, I have no problem with this at all. Especially if you want to go for the gold times for each different truck (which all do handle a bit differently) you can get plenty of fun out of the game, and each level only takes 30 seconds to a minute, which makes it perfect for just picking up and playing. But I have no idea what the normal price for the game actually is, and I would have a hard time recommending it at anything other than a buck.

Man, there are so many neat little games like this out for the iPhone and iPod touch, though. Maybe I’ll spend some time reviewing some more of them this week. I really do need to find myself a good review site for these things… there has to be one out there.