Developer: Mass Creation
Publisher: Mass Creation
Platform: Ps Vita
Run like hell – Review
Developer Mass Creation released Run Like hell for iOS on December 7th 2012 and has now ported the game for Ps Vita. A game all about escaping and making sure you don’t trip over obstacles.
Story
You are a nameless adventurer who has found himself in a pickle. He thinks the beach he is at is his salvation, until he realizes it is the wrong one. His boat is on the other side of the island. So he must traverse it to get to the other side and escape the inhabitants of the island, who apparently have a thing for human flesh. The ending sequence is rather funny.
Graphics
The game boasts comic style graphics which keep the story pleasant. Being hunted down as prey, to fill the inhabitants bellies can be a rather grim subject. The colours are vibrant and as you run across the island you’ll see the landscape change. You start off on the beach, followed by the lush backdrop of the jungle. You will find yourself in other places as well while escaping.
Every setting has their own dangers and though they’ll be other variations of them in later levels, they’ll be adjusted to fit the setting. A falling rock in the jungle will be a woman throwing a pot down from her tree house. In some levels you’ll find it difficult to see the difference in background and the actual debris blocking your path. After some trial and error you’ll find out just which objects to evade and which ones are just decoration.
Sound
When you start your run, you’ll find that you’ll be spurred on by the rather ominous babbling of the inhabitants. Every area has its own sound effects. The beach has the soft slopping of the waves on the sand and the jungle has the wildlife occasionally roaring. The music becomes more desolate and menacing in the ruins. Which helps you focusing on the incoming objects like wrecking balls which could take you out. Every area has one thing in common though: birds flying off and screeching loudly. Some places might have bats instead of birds, but screech they do.
Gameplay
The game is a side scrolling running game. You’ll race through the story campaign in about 2 hours. The 34 levels are fast paced and the respective regions have their own dangers and obstacles. The game starts off rather easy, you’ll jump some hurdles and dodge some obstacles, but every obstacle is what they seem. Either you jump or you duck. Later on in the game the ante is upped as wrecking balls will fly on screen and you’ll have only a moments lapse for you to duck and avoid the collision. Some obstacles can either be slid into, breaking them or jumped over. If an obstacle seems too high for your adventurer, he’ll clamber on top of it which will lose you precious seconds as you hear the mob closing in.
This is where the upgrades come in handy. You’ll come across tokens when you run. At certain places you’ll see a golden A, a misty ball, or a lightning bolt floating in the air. If you hit the A you’ll get adrenaline, which will help you run faster and climb up things faster, making it harder for the mob to close in for the kill. The misty ball will slow down the pursuers and the lightning bolt will stop them in their tracks for a second. A little annoying that you have to make do with the upgrades when the game wants you to, because they’ll activate instantaneously with one exception being the adrenaline. When you get in the later part of the story mode you’ll realize you could do with a timed lightning bolt stunning the crowd or the mist to keep them at bay. It could have been programmed to use the other buttons on the D-Pad, as it stands now only the right one gets used for adrenaline. The game builds up speed and difficulty but after a certain part in the game, the difficulty drops down to easy mode. This might be because at that point you’ll revisit the parts of the island that you’ve visited before but they hold no new challenges and the pathway is far less difficult as obstacles are less prominent.
The story mode is when you want a quick fix as each level takes about a minute or a minute and a half to complete, but should you want a longer adventure you can dive into the arcade mode. In this mode you can pick a scenery from five different ones. Beach, jungle, ruins, village and a level with a Yeti. In this course you’ll be chased by this creature. The reason as why he’s chasing you is rather funny so I won’t spoil it.
Some people like challenging others. This too is possible. You’re able to choose from two modes: Versus and Challenges.
Versus are ranked runs and in those you’ll have the choice of 2 players, you and another player, a big race containing 4 players, and a tournament which is a grand battle of 8 players. You’ll have to buy your way into the grand battle every time you want to play in it, with coins you’ll unlock as you play the main campaign and the online challenges.
When you play against others you can use the coins you win from the races to buy boosts, this way you’ll gain an advantage before the race has even started. Prices of boosts might seem a little steep but as you race more and more you’ll find earning them quite easy and they really mean the difference between winning or being defeated.
Challenges are unlocked every couple of days, giving players the chance to partake in them. This way you don’t always have to play every day, but still have a chance to complete them. People their time are shown after completing the challenge. Over the course of time these challenges are active you’ll have time to compete for the top spot. So you’ll have several days’ time to be the best for that challenge.
Conclusion
A running game with a short story mode, which is always good if you just want to play a short game or two, but also a game which packs a larger experience, with arcade mode where you can run until you drop and player versus player to see who is the fastest. Races aren’t always decided from the get go and even though you are in the lead, tripping once makes it possible to be overtaken. This makes the player versus player mode a heart racing experience.
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