Tap Tap Revenge 3 review

Tap Tap Tap! Move over guitar hero. The folks at Tapulous have released the 3rd installment of the iPhone app series Tap Tap Revenge 3. The game follows the same style as the previous 2 games where you tap to the beat on pads on the iPhone or iPod touch screen as the song plays, but this new version adds a ton of improvements and new features such as push notifications, online play, chat, rich profiles with avatars and more. Create a player profile to get started, by typing in a username and picking whether you are male or female, and choosing an avatar for yourself. Depending on your sex, you can navigate through a whole bunch of characters to choose one that best represents your style. Once you get going, you will see the main homepage of the TTR3 app. Here on the top you will see a comment blurb, which is the top news item of the day. Tap that to read more news from the Tapulous team. For example you can watch a short 2 minute tutorial on how to play the game.

In the middle of the page you see your avatar and your stats, saying what level you are on, and how many experience points you need to move up to the next level. Here you will also see how many coins you have (you start out with 5,000 coins) and a link to get to the Store. The TapTap Store is where you go to buy Tap Tracks and avatar items. Tracks are songs that the game uses when you play a game. There are both free and paid tracks and the store is organized by many categories, sort of like the Apple App Store itself really. Some of the tracks are sold as “in app purchases” and cost money, while there are a good number of free tracks as well. Free tracks include hits by Fall Out Boy, AFI, LMFAO, Tiesto, Stroke 9. Premium tracks sold include Smashing Pumpkins, Killers, Foo Fighters, Korn, Tiesto, No Doubt and more. You can the top 5 free and paid tracks or browse featured, artist, free, and even do batch downloads. A new feature has been added that allows you to download all free tracks in one shot (this takes a really long time, so be ready to wait). Once you buy or download a track, Tap Tap Revenge 3 starts downloading it and then you can choose a level “Easy” or “Hard” for the given track. Downloading tracks seemed quite slow in our tests, and at one time it actually hung and we had to restart the app. It seems Tapulous servers are taking a beating from the onslaught of eager fans buying TTR3. They suggest that you turn Bluetooth off, plug your device into a power outlet and turn off WIFI and use the 3G network on newer iPhone models. We have not tried these but it just seems that the app could be suffering from its own success a tad bit when it comes to online gaming and track downloads. The avatar Surf and Turf store the place to buy a bunch of accessories for your character, anything from a beach ball to sunglasses. You can redeem coins to buy stuff in the avatar store. There is also a store called Pure Dance where you can buy hip dancer clothing and accessories to dress up your avatar.

On the bottom you see a nice rotating dial with a big red button. Here you can see the tutorial, start a quick random game, play online, 1 player, 2 player, chat, and edit game options. The playing screen has been updated dramatically. There are 3 lines on musical balls coming down and the new design gives the balls a very nice curved runway to roll down. The background is now themed and changes depending on the track you are playing. For example it could be a moving gallery of photos and cover art from the currently playing artist or just a series of cool animations and visualizations. You see your score, streak, and hit percentage on the top. On the left is the score multiplier counter which goes all the way all the way up to 16x. On the right is a tap accuracy bar that indicates if you are early, on time or late. If you are perfect you should only see a green circle at all times. After each game you see your score, tap accuracy and longest streak, along with coins and experience points you earned.

Now probably the best and most exciting part of Tap Tap Revenge 3 is the Online game mode where you can compete Live with other TapTap users and your friends. Browse through a list of rooms and see a wait counter for each room. Join any room you want to play in and TTR3 starts to download the track. Sometimes if the game is about to start you won’t have enough time to download the track and you will get a pop-up message saying you need to wait for the next round. You will see a list of all participants in the room and can also chat with them before the game starts. Here the last winner is also honored with a nice top placement. Tap any player to see their profile and add them as a friend. Once the game starts you will see the top players listed with their avatars in the top right instead of the accuracy bar, and your place in the current race. Online play features weapons and shields that let you crush your competition, or just throw them off their game like lightning bolts and slime balls.

Buy this game, even if its the last game you plan to buy for your iPhone this month. It will keep you entertained for days and weeks to come.

Here is a video demo of the Tap Tap Revenge 3 app on the iPhone

AppSafari review of Tap Tap Revenge 3 was written by Joe Seifi on October 7th, 2009 and categorized under App Store, Featured, Fun, Games, Music. Page viewed 10460 times, 3 so far today. Need help on using these apps? Please read the Help Page.