Review: I Must Run
Score:
77%
'Running' games are something of a trend in the wider smartphone world (e.g. on iOS) and so it's not surprising that one such has turned up in full commercial form for Symbian. I Must Run offers oodles of polish and atmosphere, all desperately trying to disguise the genre as the one-trick pony that it is. Still, it's good value for money at a mere £1 in the Ovi Store, even if its main purpose is to keep your teenagers happy in the back of the car for an hour on your next journey.
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The idea is that you’re a wrongly convicted marine who busts out of prison on a dark, stormy night and has to run across the rooftops, fighting your way past obstacles and leaping the gaps between buildings. Fall at any point and you start from the beginning - frustratingly, though addictively.
The atmosphere is set up with a pacy techno soundtrack, but the visuals and aural attack continue with a hovering helicopter (animated and audible), rain and lightning effects (complete with display shaking during each strike) and smoothly animated backgrounds that show off the parallax scroling made possible by the GPUs inside the new Symbian^3 phones.
Quite why your marine decided that this was the day to break out rather than waiting for a dry, overcast night, isn't clear, but off you go anyway. Gamelion has divided the touchscreen into three quadrants: left is punch (you can whack barrels and other bizarre objects - why would anyone place a post box on a rooftop?), right is jump (of course) and the bottom section instructs your hero to slide.
So you run. And run. And jump. And punch. And jump again. If this sounds a little monotonous then that's because it is - a little. Thankfully, the rooftops and obstacles are randomly generated and so never the same twice, while the degree of difficulty is perfect to present a serious hand-eye coordination challenge. In fact, so much of a challenge that in an hour's playing while preparing this review, I didn't get far enough to try any 'sliding' - or even to reach the promised construction yard and train station scenes. I'm obviously not fast enough on the touchscreen, to my shame!
What adds interest to all of this, besides the aforementioned atmosphere, is that the gaps and heights are also random and that there's basic physics at play. As you run, you gently accelerate - the faster you're going, the further you can jump. Hit an obstacle (without punching it out first) and you slow down. If presented with a particularly challenging jump you can tap again in the 'jump' zone to perform a little barrel roll and so gain a little extra distance. Your marine character animates beautifully and there's a genuine feeling of pace and peril.
Aside from the accomplishment of getting further into the game, there are points to be racked up (and added to the local high score table), with various bonuses and multipliers, as shown in the screen above.
Yes, this is a simple 2D running and jumping game. But it's cranked up to the max in every way and there's nothing else Gamelion could have done while staying true to the genre/franchise. And it's well worth £1 of your hard earned money.
Play I Must Run on a wet night in with the lights off for maximum effect!
SteveLitchfield, Ovi Gaming and All About Symbian, 3 March 2011
Reviewed by Steve Litchfield at