Welcome Time Wasters!
This week I had a little more time than last so I could sit down at my computer and enjoy some desktop gaming. I’ve been enjoying a really fun browser based game this week, but that’s not what I’m here to talk to you about. I feel like that game deserves a little more of my love before I make it a Time Waster. Instead I’ll be taking a look at another smartphone game, Subway Surfers.
Subway Surfers is a game about a graffiti artist who is trying to escape from a policeman and his dog. I can get behind playing the bad guy if it’s for a legitimate reason.
For example, if the villain is actually trying to do something good but has to do bad things to accomplish it, that I can understand it. Subway Surfers isn’t presented in that way. It just seems like a bunch of kids who like vandalizing public places for fun. It’s not that I have anything against graffiti. I think graffiti is a really cool art style, when done in designated areas.
Gameplay in Subway Surfers is addicting to say the least. Players control the character by swiping their finger across the screen for different actions. Left and right swipes make the character change the lane that they’re running in, while up and down swipes make the character jump and roll respectively. Also double tapping the screen will put the character on a hover board which grants them immunity from a single hit.
Along the way our little deviant can grab power-ups to help in his escape. These power-ups are: Super Sneakers (Can jump higher), Jetpack (Fly above the level for a distance), Coin Magnet (self-explanatory), and a 2X Multiplier (Double coins collected). Power-ups can be upgraded to last longer with the coins collected throughout the levels.
Like most mobile games Subway Surfers allow players to connect via Facebook and compete against one another. The competition is to see who can get the highest score, and adds a nice bit of replay to the game.
Subway Surfers features a lot of unlockable content. There are a vast amount of characters that can be earned and most of them also have extra outfits that can be bought. The system works but has one problem, it’s way overpriced. Some characters are unlocked by collecting items, while others can be bought with coins. There is one character that requires the player to find 500 of his unique item to unlock him. With there being at least 10 other characters to unlock and some of them also needing special items that appear randomly, collecting 500 of this character’s one item is ridiculous. Then there are the characters that are bought with coins. I usually bring in anywhere from 700 to 1,000 coins a run (seems like an okay amount), but characters cost anywhere from 7,000 to 980,000 coins! Sure coins can be bought with real money to speed along the process, but that’s still a hefty fee. The prices are set so high that rather than drive me to keep playing to unlock those expensive characters it makes me want to put the game down.
Sound in the game isn’t anything great either. The music is boring and isn’t anything memorable enough that I could hum it once I put the game down.
I will give the game a compliment for its graphics. The fleshed out 3-D characters and environments are nice to look at and have a good style to them (reminds me of this old game I had called Disney’s Extreme Skate Adventure). Extra care is given to characters and alternative outfits so that it doesn’t feel like a waste to purchase them.
Overall Subway Surfers is a fun and addicting game. It has nice graphics and plenty of characters and extras to unlock. Unfortunately the extras and characters are so expensive it feels more like a chore than a challenge to unlock them, and the audio isn’t all that great either.
Subway Surfers gets 3.5 GiN Gems out of 5.