iPhone Game Review: TaxiBall ($2.99)
4 Comments// Posted in Reviews, Video Games, iPhone by Sean on 09.21.09.
I thoroughly love (present tense) Self Aware Games’ Word Ace, so I thought I’d check out their other game, TaxiBall. The game is sort of a mix between Super Monkey Ball and Crazy Taxi. Now Crazy Taxi is probably one of my favorite games of all times, so I was doubly excited about playing this game (past tense).
In TaxiBall you use tilt to move a ball around a world where you pick up people and drop them off at other destinations. What I do like about the game is all of it’s social networking features, such having a profile that shows your stats, awards, and a friends list. What I don’t really like about the game, is just about everything else.
For some reason this game just doesn’t pull me in. The concept sounds great: a Crazy Taxi sort of game created for optimal support on the iPhone. But it’s just a little too bland for me. I feel like much of the fun of the game is probably going back through the levels and trying to get a better score. But I just don’t want to. There simply isn’t enough to make me come back. And for some reason the controls just make me angry. I don’t know what, but I just feel like the ball is constantly not doing what I want it to. Oh and you HAVE to go into the settings and recenter the “neutral position” of the ball. Otherwise when you are tilting forward you can’t even see the screen. I just feel like this default neutral position (despite being truly level) should have been optimized for a normal person without them having to go into the settings.
Conclusion
For a Word Ace and Crazy Taxi fan like me, this game still didn’t do it for me, especially not three dollars worth. As much as I want to support the Self Aware Games studio, I simply can’t recommend this for anyone. But there is a lite version for the game, so definitely check it out and see if this is the game for you.
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Hey, Sean – thanks for taking the time to give Taxiball a shot. Sorry to hear you didn’t like it. I’m curious, though, if you could maybe talk a little more about what it was you didn’t like about the controls. Thing is, we’ve had feedback all over the map – some people love the controls, a few people (like yourself) absolutely despise them.
I’m not going to (completely) blame it on hardware, but every so often, the accelerometers in the iPhone totally lose their mind, and the control is completely broken, but I’m guessing that’s not the case, here – particularly if you played it more than once. (if you restart the game, it usually seems to reset the accelerometers.)
As for the neutral position, it’s a matter of taste – we put in the calibration so that you could reset the neutral position if you wanted to, but for me, the game’s about tilting a ball on a plane, and I never got used to playing on a tilted plane – mentally, it didn’t make sense (to me). But we didn’t want to force the player to play looking down at the device, thus, calibration.
At any rate, I just wanted to say, “thanks for taking the time to check it out.” – glad you’re still digging Word Ace, though! We’re still working on the printed deck, so hopefully soon, your awesome homemade deck can have an “official” partner.
Cheers.
seppo
(lead designer, self aware games)
It’s hard to pin down, but I feel like it was done the best that it could be with the platform, though it may have been the physics. It felt sort of delayed, like if the ball is going one direction and I tilt to go the other way, it takes too long to do what I want.
I would suggest though to ask the user to calibrate before starting the game. Like I completely understand why you have the calibration there, I just think it needs to be more obvious. I played through a couple levels thinking the controls were just terrible until I realized the calibration was even there.
Thanks for reading!
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