Great portable massacre game, a descent rival to GTA Chinatown wars.
A Grand Theft Auto-inspired action game with 3D graphics and a wide variety of vehicles. You can play the campaign, rampage mode (beat a high score) and challenge mode (get a certain amount of points).
Graphics:
The graphics are amazing, but not faultless. Sometimes random things that are supposed to be invisible (behind a wall or a building) pop out. Also the lamp posts. If you slightly contact it, your vehicle gets stuck. The camera height is screwed up too. If you get into a building , then all is what you are going to see, is the top.
Can't go on without mentioning the blood effects. Feels great to drift-splatter someone into a wave of blood!
Control:
The accelerometer control is OK, it's hard to screw up. Though it takes a while to aim in order too shoot someone far away. Vehicles are easy to control, except the tank. Very annoying and it's hard to instantly shoot what you really want to.
Game play:
Here is the place of most complain.
In the campaign you work for some kind of criminal boss and you gotta do all the dirty stuff. Some missions are too dumb and easy, some are TOO bloody hard! F.e. the first mission in Corona city! It took me a WHOLE hour of trial to make it in time to the payphone before the kidnappers will give up (whats that about?)! The prison escape thing was also pretty hard.
In the other game modes you get random, but repetitive missions.
And they don't increase with difficulty. Oh, and you really want to beat those missions because if you don't, the game will SWEAR at you. Not the F-word, but tw@t, scumbag, pu$$y, arse and others could be heard. SO you better complete them! Also the game is something like a FPS. Even though it has a Third person perspective, you're character is nameless and stereotypical. Assuming you are really IN the game. So don't take it too personally. And your character is pretty strong. He can kill someone with just two punches. Nobody screws with him. Not even Chuck Norris.
So your best choice is to just get a load of weapons and go beat the crap out of everyone.
The police is pretty dumb. It's easy to get away from them and there isn't much difference between the star levels. It goes from chasing to bust, to chase to kill, and to chase to kill with road blocks . No FBI, no tanks. Just cops with shotguns , blue hats and big driving problems. Although there are some useless Police vans. And nothing from using sirens. No one gives a damn.
Now the vehicles:
Some vehicles have something special in them. And surprisingly the BUS is the fastest unhidden vehicle in the game. Just find a long road in the game and check it out! There are hidden vehicles too. The ultra fast Rocket Car (which has an impossible jack mission assigned to it) is cool, but you'll get your self dead trying it out, because it's easy to damage it. Then (my favorite) comes the RC Van. This one deploys little RC-car-bombs. But this makes the game boring. Just get on top of building and let the holocaust begin (the cops are too dumb to get you).
There is also this weird Helicopter that flies in a strange bouncing trajectory (reminds me of the sinus function) . So the fun ends when a certain number of times (depends on the difficulty) your 5 hearts vanish - and the game is over. When you die , it displays how much damage you have caused. That's pretty fun.
Overall:
What I like Apple for, is that a lot of apps get a lite version. But Appex decided to put a price on Payback Lite! Whats the use of that anyway? I would have liked to recommend to try the Lite out, but I can't! So if you like GTA and would have liked to have a little bloody massacre on the go without much story - this could be the game for you.
Thanks for reading my first review.