Pocket Racing Review – 2D racing gone mobile

Gameplay: Pocket Racing’s challenge comes from it’s racing style, time-trial. The faster you can whip around each track the higher you’ll be ranked on the game’s online leaderboards. Leaving the track results in penalty time added to your time at the end of the race. Once you complete a race you can race against yourself in the form of a ghost. Ghosts are unique to each track, and specific to lap counts (3, 5, 7) and the car you use as well. Each car handles differently, some are faster than others and some drift around the track if you turn too hard. There’s always new content coming via updates; most recently, OpenFeint achievements.

Unfortunately in terms of multiplayer there’s nothing to talk about, lacking both local and internet but it’s something Measured Software has discussed interest in adding a type of turn-based multiplayer when we interviewed them a few months back and we’ll happily wait and update this review when it’s available. Currently theres an option to download the ghosts of other players, it’s an interesting concept and we can find it pretty distracting and only the top 300 players on the leaderboards are available.

Controls and Interface: Steering is handled by carefully-turned touchscreen controls. Pressure and duration change the cars direction and acceleration is handled automatically by the game. All 5 of the available cars handle differently, making this a much deeper game than we originally thought. Some cars are faster than others while some drift around turns if you make them. We definitely feel this method is more suited to situations you would likely be playing mobile games in. The way the player is positioned relative to their phone doesn’t affect steering and it’s an annoyance we experienced with Speed X, which requires recalibration every time you change your angle.

Graphics and Audio: As a 2D racer, Pocket Racing lacks textures and engaging 3D graphics and to make this short, we don’t miss either of them. The tracks are well drawn, colorful and challenging. Colors are bright and their’s a nice contrast between the actual track and the surrounding grass or environment. We noticed a tearing issue due to the screen not refreshing fast enough if we looked too hard. It isn’t that big of a bother but it’s unsightly in screenshots.

Sound effects are as well-done as can be expected. Sounds of your engine as you whip around the tracks or drift around the corners can be heard alongside the electronic/rock soundtrack. The game really needs at least another 3 music tracks, the one the game comes with quickly becomes irritating, but at least it’s easy to disable and it stays disabled.

Wrap-Up: Pocket Racing fills our racing addiction in a nostalgic and fast way. It’s common that I’ll want to race once or twice and finding myself looking up at a clock an hour and a half later and realizing all the time I was just playing it. We seriously recommend Pocket Racing to anyone who enjoys racing games and likes a challenge. It’s by far one of the best games we’ve reviewed here at DroidGamers and it gets improvements all the time.