Kamikaze Race review

Kamikaze Race is a fun and addictive survival game for the iPhone from TastyPlay where your task is to weave a speeding car down the freeway in and out of traffic and avoid crashing into cars. One crash and you’re dead, and have to start all over, so you have to think fast and act quickly. The game starts out with you on the slow lane, and your car gradually starts to speed up. As you gain speed, you’ll have to move to the fast lane and use super sharp techniques while changing lanes. You are judged on both time survived and speed reached.

The controls are done using two large easy to hit buttons for changing lanes left and right, and they are time sensitive so if you hold the button down longer your car moves across a bunch of lanes, versus a quick tap for realigning your position in your lane. There is no physics based controls, which would be a nice option. You get 5 power bars to start with and if you lose one bar for every time you side swipe a car. Obviously head on collisions and slamming on the back of other cars at high speeds will blow up your car immediately. The audio is very realistic and makes the game exciting. Each game starts with the sound of your engine starting and revving up. There are also sounds effects for crashing, changing lanes, cars whizzing by on the other side of the freeway, and the sound of your engine even changes as your speed increases. The graphics are well polished with a wide variety of different cars going at different speeds on the road, ranging form school buses trucks, to speeding sedans and limousines.

The freeway in the Kamikaze Race has 9 lanes on the right side and 3 lanes on the opposing side. As you might have guessed as a Kamikaze driver you can, and will have to use the opposing traffic’s lanes at times in order to stay alive. Plan your moves in advance and watch out when you go under bridges of crossing freeways, as you’ll not see where you are for a split second which could cost you a lot when you’re flying down the road at over 300 mph. Speaking of hitting high speeds, you start out with a Stinger, and if you hit 350 mph without crashing, you’ll unlock the Vulcan car, and at 400 mph you’ll get yourself a sweet Banshee. Other fun achievements include surviving 30 seconds on the opposite lane, surviving 100 miles, going 2 minutes undamaged, and finally hitting Speed Devil at 500 mph.

If you loved Canabalt, you will love Kamikaze Race. The game supports local and global online scores, and you can show off your triumphs on Facebook as well. Overall, Kamikaze Race is a very original and well made survival game that is super addictive and fun to play, well worth the price.

Here is a video demo of the Kamikaze Race app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of Kamikaze Race was written by Joe Seifi on December 23rd, 2009 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Fun, Games. Page viewed 8172 times, 1 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.