Endless Road Review – A stylish endless racing game

Our rating:

By: Chillingo Ltd

Version #: 1.0.2

Date Released: 2012-11-21

Developer: Chillingo Ltd

Price: $0.99

User Rating:

Loading...

Download App

Endless Road gives me very mixed feelings. On one hand, I love it. On the other, I hate it. Read on, please.
Endless Road is yet another endless racing game, in the same vein as the classic Canabalt, but with a setting akin to Cubed Rally Redline. You drive a car in a road, while avoiding obstacles and keeping your speed high enough to keep you from dying. What? Yes indeed: the road disappears in the bottom and is created in the front. If you are too fast, you disappear as it is created, if you are too slow you fall as it is destroyed. Controls are simple enough: tap in the right part of the screen to change lane to the right and on the left to change lane to the left. In the middle-bottom to activate a powerup.

Graphics are pretty good: a 3D isometric view of a falling landscape (on the left) and the appearing landscape (on the right.) The part of the road that is “being born” as you drive appears in a ver cool, Inception-like, unfolding 3D effect. You have to see it to enjoy it, though. Graphics have one minor problem. Most objects on the road are cubes or related to cubes, with very crisp lines. And on a first generation iPad, they don’t look very crisp. I’m pretty sure in a retina device they should look awesome, but they don’t in my case. Disappointing, at least a little. To add insult to injury, the game sometimes (specially when you start a drive) is somewhat unresponsive to movement. I could expect this in some very fancy 3D driving game, but come on. This is a very simple game. I am pretty sure a good JavaScript developer could create something very similar you could play without lag in Mobile Safari. Yet the game fails to respond quickly enough. It’s only occasional, luckily.

On the bright side, Endless Road (although being called endless) is composed of predefined road sections. Every time you finish a section you have to choose right or left… And this determines the next section. Almost all are different themed, and some are very cool. For example, you can ride the subway in one of them, drive through a 6-lane highway, a 2-lane cliffhanger or several different labyrinths. Or among UFOs. Or in a volcano. Or… (I have discovered 28 areas already.) Great for my tastes on this part.

And yet to add to the hate, this is a Chillingo game. As usual, the game is polished enough to be cool, but of course, it is almost impossible to unlock new cars without paying for them. A usual run is around 3-5km, which results in around 50-70 collected coins. To unlock the first unlockable car (Formula 1, I have it already…) you need 7000 coins! I will spare you the math: you have to play this average run a hundred times. To simplify it there are 3 “missions” available that give a larger reward. For example, jumping over a police car (disclaimer: found a bug and this mission is locked for me…,) or driving 2km without a collision. For the most basic car. Of course this goes away if you buy an IAP to get more coins, but I find this quite insulting. The game is not free (priced at 0.99$ I think it is very cheap, though,) but I’d rather pay 2.99$ for this with simple unlockables (like Cubed Rally Redline has!) than giving Chillingo any money through in-app purchases.

In short: The game is very good and will keep you entertained for long hours. But as other Chillingo games, it is meant as a player-money milking scheme.

Editor note: Endless Road has been updated with a new world and extreme mode, where new road designs keep appearing without needing to turn. Awesome!