The moment I saw the trailer for Slingshot Racing, I knew I'd need to check it out. This iOS game has impressive 3-D graphics and a brilliant, original control mechanic.
Slingshot Racing appeared, on the surface, to be the Infinity Blade of racing games: great production values married to great design. But its overreliance on clichéd iOS design tropes is a big turnoff.
Slingshot Racing's main draw is its control mechanic. Instead of forcing the user to press on-screen buttons for steering, brakes and gas, its cars automatically drive forward. By touching the screen, players cause their car to temporarily launch a grappling hook that connects it to one of the many spinning nodes placed around tracks. The nodes are usually placed in curves, and hooking to them at the right time will allow your car to swing around the corner without the need for traditional turning. It's Cut the Rope design applied to a racing game.
If you play the game for more than a few minutes, you quickly pick up how to use the hook to control turns perfectly. Much of the game's challenge involves learning the exact right moments to launch your hook and let go. Hooking on for too long will cause your car to crash into a wall, and not hooking on for long enough will send your car careening straight ahead into obstacles.
It's all very well designed, but I found myself wanting to put the game down after playing for about half an hour. It hurts me to say it, but even though Slingshot Racing is a great-looking, well-designed game with an original design that works perfectly for iOS, I don't like it.
Part of what bothers me is the presentation. I've complained before about too many iOS games using the same old "collect the three stars in this level" wrapper that Chillingo popularized, and it seems particularly forced here.
You're always trying to get a "three bolt" rating on every level in Slingshot Racing, and every time you beat one of its levels you'll have to sit back for a second and watch the bolts animate as they add up. It's annoying the first time, and it only gets worse once you've played 30 or so levels.
Why? Why do I need three bolts? Does every single iPad and iPhone game have to be broken down into bite-sized levels with a three-star rating system, cutesy characters and lots of buttons urging you to tweet your progress?
But really, I don't want to play more Slingshot Racing because the game design doesn't go anywhere.
The best games introduce a unique mechanic and then do surprising things with it as the levels progress. Slingshot Racing, like too many other iOS puzzle games, just gets more difficult.
The best iOS games –– titles like Cut the Rope or Land-a Panda –– put spins on their own mechanics to keep things interesting. They add twists and turns to the basic gameplay that allows players to get better at the game over time while still encountering new challenges. With so much choice out there it's tough to become attached to something that starts out clever and doesn't build on that.
