Evel Knievel, one of Superscape's best-known and longest-serving mobile mascots, has been conducting his death-defying motorcycle stunts on phones for more than a year now. The first Evel Knievel mobile game, Evel Knievel Evel-ution, was able to impart some of the fun of daredevil stunt riding via a simple side-scrolling gameplay mechanic. Basically, you had to guide Evel off a ramp, help him balance while in midair, and then land the jump. Evel Knievel Evel-ution 3D, on Verizon's V Cast service, is similar to the first game in most respects. You're still trying to wow the crowd with wheelies and jumps, and you're still wearing a leather suit modeled on the Confederate flag. However, now you're paying far too much for the privilege. Simply put, Evel Knievel Evel-ution 3D doesn't look good or play well enough to justify its premium price.
This game takes you on a grand tour of Evel Knievel's gloriously insane career in the late 1960s through the 1970s, from the opening jumps on the Las Vegas strip to the other crazy engagements in California and Canada. Each stop consists of two parts. First, you have to blaze around a track, while jumping through flaming hoops and such, to fill up your trick meter, which indicates when you've warmed up the crowd for the coup de grâce. Once that's done, it's on to the main event, which is usually an extra-long jump over some arbitrary number of cars, big rigs, or other pieces of machinery. Your performance in these tasks dictates your final score, which is then posted to an online leaderboard...if it's sufficiently impressive.
You're operating under a clock in both the warm-up and the main event sequences, which means you have to hit a lot of tricks in a row, because any and all biff-ups result in lost time, as well as a cut off of your trick meter. The tricks, for their part, are essentially glorified minigames that suffer from a serious lack of variety. There are only two principal tricks to worry about: jumping off ramps and popping wheelies. Getting the ramps right takes a little practice at first, but it soon becomes second nature. A meter on the left side of the screen will rise as you pick up speed before a ramp, turning from yellow to green once you reach the necessary speed to clear the gap. You can't simply accelerate over the top of a ramp, because you might venture into the red zone, meaning you'll fly over the landing ramp entirely and crash. You also need to carefully keep your balance while in midair by helping Evel shift his center of gravity the right way. Wheelies aren't nearly as complicated. When popping a wheelie, the viewpoint switches from behind Evel to a side view, and a balance meter appears. If you can keep the Tony Hawk-style meter centered for a short while, you'll wheelie successfully.
Evel Knievel Evel-ution 3D's stunt gameplay actually isn't bad, because it gets the simulation of velocity and balance mostly right, and the level layouts require you to keep a close eye on Evel's speed and bearing. The problem is the formula never changes in any meaningful way. The stages get marginally more difficult, true, but you still have to complete the same stunts over and over again in various combinations. A little more content would have helped this game's cause a lot.
As it stands, though, this goes stale after about half an hour, especially since all the levels, which purportedly take place in varied locations, look almost exactly the same. Whether you're motoring through downtown Vegas or rural Canada, you'll have to look at the same drab, fuzzy nighttime cityscape, although the California levels add palm trees, much to their credit. Fortunately, Evel looks pretty good on his bike (especially when he tumbles off of it), and the game runs at an acceptable frame rate. The game lacks sound effects on the LG VX8000, but the music is excellent, featuring a number of different funk tunes played in MP3. There's one flute track in particular that will almost certainly get stuck in your head.
Overall, Evel Knievel Evel-ution 3D is an average game on V Cast, which means it's basically a mediocre value. For motorcycle stunt action, you'd be better served with a 2D offering, like Nate Adams Freestyle Motocross or the original Evel Knievel Evel-ution. You'll get more thrills for the buck.
