Car games are cool. Car games that feature RAD TRUXX are cooler. Redlynx’s MotoHeroz combines racing and stunt driving, and even though the resulting blend has a few bumps and potholes, you’ll have too much fun bouncing around on big fat tires to stay irritated for long.
Car games are cool. Car games that feature RAD TRUXX are cooler. Redlynx’s MotoHeroz combines racing and stunt driving, and even though the resulting blend has a few bumps and potholes, you’ll have too much fun bouncing around on big fat tires to stay irritated for long.
MotoHeroz was initially released for WiiWare, but it’s received a significant upgrade for the iOS. The basic concept remains the same: you race various breeds of monster truck over uneven terrain and through loop-de-loops. Typically, you must beat a ghost racer in order to earn stars in each of the game’s multitude of levels, but there are other objectives, too. You might be asked to make long jumps, perform crazy stunts, or even tow the level’s goalpost to the end of the track. Whatever your task, you need to earn stars to progress to later levels. It’s the Circle of iOS Life.
The controls in MotoHeroz won’t stump you for a second. Using on-screen virtual buttons, you press forward to scoot forward, and back to drive backwards. You also have access to two buttons that indicate clockwise and counter-clockwise movement. These come into play when you make a sweet jump and want to top it off with some flips. More importantly, the buttons are also necessary to right your vehicle in mid-air so that you have a smooth landing. A good touchdown is vital for victory: if your truck loses momentum after even one poor jump, you can easily lose the whole race.
Luckily, there are a couple of ways to help you gain the upper hand. Each of the game’s racetracks gives you the opportunity to earn coins and upgrade your vehicle’s top speed and acceleration. You can also upgrade the lifespan of the items you’ll find scattered throughout each race, including springs that let you jump high (bo-oi-oing), jetpacks that make your truck airborne, and speed boosts.
Alas, said items reveal one of MotoHeroz‘s flaws: they can be difficult and awkward to use (especially the jetpack, which sends your truck careening around the screen if you don’t know what you’re doing), but are often necessary to finish a race. In the same vein, racing to the end of a level is a reasonable goal, but some of the others–like carrying a goalpost to the end of a track–can be frustrating, and breaks up the pace of the game. These choppy events are made worse by the fact that when a character has something to say to you at the beginning of a level, they’ll do it every single time you’re forced to start over.
MotoHeroz does a few things wrong, but it does a lot right, too. It’s a lot of fun to race against randomly-selected online ghosts, and spitting in the face of gravity will grant you an undeniable rush of joy. Just be prepared for some repetition, though there are worse experiences to repeat than bouncing along rough terrain in a monster truck.
