Many of us have Woo’d and Wow’d while watching the dirt-bike competition of ESPN’S X Games. Those professionals can pull off some amazing tricks with their bikes while going at neck-breaking speeds. Mad Skills Motocross (iTunes Link) by Turborilla for the iPhone really brings that experience in the comfort of your own hands.
The goal is simple, beat your opponent to the finish line or successfully master mid-air tricks to pass the level while maintaining the most important part: not crashing!
There are 2 exciting modes in this game: Career and Time Trial Mode. Career mode will have five different divisions to race through while time trial mode will make you race against your previous time in an attempt to beat your own high score.
The controls are fairly simple. On the bottom left area of the screen will be your gas and break buttons, with the steering buttons on the bottom right area. You will use your steering controls to balance your bike forward or backward so that you can land safely or hit those jumps at just the right angle. The iPhone’s accelerometer can also be switched on for those who prefer not to use the controls.
It’s the landing part that’s tricky. Mad Skills Motocross is not an easy game. Just a slight mislanding is all the difference in the world. In other words crashing often means losing so it takes some time to actually get the physics portion of this game down. For example, you will need to make sure that you don’t hit jumps at full speed because you need to land at the right angle to hit another jump. You will find yourself restarting a level countless number of times until you literally memorize all the quarks and hiccups that the track throws at you.
Graphically, this game really doesn’t feature anything to scream at. It is however, very fun and offers gamers a different kind of exciting motorbike racing game unlike any in the App Store today. With over 52 tracks, challenging game play, intuitive physics engine and more, it’s a bargain at only $.99
Good Points:
1. Great Physics Engine
2. High level of replayability
Bad Points:
1. Would like to see some better graphics
2. Small margin of error made the game way too difficult and that resulted in too many restarts