Review: Moto X Mayhem
Score:
78%
Remember the old kids game of patting your head and rubbing your tummy at the same time? And how frustrated you were that you couldn’t do it while your best friend could? I think that’s how Steve felt when he passed me Moto X Mayhem to review and I promptly labelled it as a fun, challenging but fundamentally a great game. “Too hard for me” said Steve, and he went back to taking pin-sharp pictures of shiny hardware while I started reviewing this great game title.
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Moto X is a side scrolling solo racing game, where you have to take your motorbike across rough terrain to get to the finish line as fast as possible. Rather than a racetrack, this is cross country, and you’ve managed to selected the hilliest, bumpiest, most dangerous route possible. With steep cliffs, potholes, caves and tricky gradients to get over, this is not going to be a slam the accelerator down and go as fast as you can [darn it, that's where I was going wrong! 8-) - Ed].
You’re going to need a sense of balance to make your way to the finish line. First up is the throttle and brake on your bike – controlled with the touch-screen at either side of the screen, this is the easy balance, from gunning the engine, to letting the speed idle down or slamming the brakes on. Remember that it’s only the back wheel that is connected to the engine, you will be blipping the throttle most of the time to give you just enough speed.
One you've got that worked out and are sitting on the knife edge between speed and crashing, you need to think about your own balance. Rotating the phone towards the front or rear of the bike (in the vertical plane, like holding a steering wheel) will lean the rider on the bike. Pitch the phone to the front wheel, and the bike/rider combination pitches forward. Same with rotating to the back wheel - you’ll lean back.
This is absolutely vital both to maintaining traction and making sure you take off and land safely as you jump over the playing field. Land badly, you’ll be thrown off and have to start the level again. Jump while out of balance and you’ll spin in the air and crash into the ground upside down.
Can I just say, I love that the two competing systems (throttle/acceleration and balance) make a wonderful gaming system – they all need to be kept in sync throughout the levels, and because you could end up anywhere, the dynamics are constantly changing, even though it’s the same level. This slight difference, making each “play” a genuine new game, gives Moto X a lot of replay value.
There’s also some smart thinking on the part of game designers – when you die in a level, you don’t lose a life, you just have a counter that says how many attempts you've made. Back to the start of the level you go, no intermediate menus or splash screens, it’s just back into the game as quickly as possible. This keeps the flow and tempo of the game high, so hats off for making this work as smoothly as it does.
There is a steep learning curve to go through as you work out the best way of getting as much speed as possible out of the bike, the best way to fly through the air, and when to hold back and be really careful on an almost vertical hill. But Occamy Games have managed to get everything in a sweet spot where it all just works.
Challenging? Yes, but equally as rewarding. Moto X Mayhem is a twitchy arcade game that needs a lot of skill but is insanely quick to play – and perfect for a mobile game. Recommended.
-- Ewan Spence, April 2011.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at