Sharknado: The Game - iOS

Pay to not play as much.

While I'm a fan of the "Forever Runner" series of games, made more popular and famous by the game Canabalt, it's not really the first game to do that kind of approach. Having played a lot of arcade games, the first ones were along the lines of trying to keep going for as long as possible to get the highest score possible, it seems the Forever Runner games are taking that quick, pick-up-and-play approach to instant gaming, further helped by titles like Flappy Birds for the side-scrolling variety of play and then there's the 3D versions with games like Temple Run and now, Sharknado: The Game.

Play from the start or spend chum in boosting to level 2, 5 and 9 respectively.

From the off, we're establishing that this is the game, not the film on which the game is based, and as such we don't get to see Tara Reid trying to avoid sharks by screaming loudly and being all breasty about it. Neither do we see a multitude of people having their heads taken off by projectile sharks launched from the circulation and upward draft of high speed air currents. What we do get however is a Forever Runner game where we try to avoid obstacles, attack sharks, go surfing and ultimately kill a tornado while riding a shark and carrying a chainsaw.

So at least some of the original film's artistic license with physics, remains.

Get coin, avoid shark, pick up Razzie.

The controls are simple enough, swipe left and right to change your "lane" as you travel into the screen, rather than tilting it, so it's more keeping in line with the Despicable Me: Minions game, while swiping up will make our hero jump and swiping down will make our hero slide. However, each round of the game is split into three sections. The first involves running down a street towards the Sharknado while avoiding barricades, vehicles and various sharks, the second has our hero surfing up a torrent of water while sharks swim towards him and lastly the final section is our hero riding a shark, while holding a chainsaw, surfing it THROUGH the Sharknado itself while cutting up enough sharks to kill the entire Sharknado.

And then it's back to the start but harder and faster.

Tyre Iron does some damage.

For the sheer audacity alone, it's funny the first few times. After that it becomes par for the course and we get to focus on the other mechanics behind the game. Coins, weapons and chum. Coins are often found amongst the level and usually in places where you have to negotiate around some risky little problems but all coins that are collected are stored and can be spent on things like the weapons. The weapons allow our hero to basically be immune to sharks (and nothing else...) in that he clobbers the shark into a bloody pulp and the weapon weakens a little each time. Once it's used up, the sharks must be dodged again. It does give you a little breathing space however. Lastly there's the chum, which lets you retry levels without restarting and can also boost your starting level to a later one. Chum being earned by killing lots of sharks and each successful defeat of a Sharknado multiplies up the score.

The "Boss" so to speak, killing it from the inside.

It can be a fun forever runner if you want to try it out, the music and audio are clearly tongue in cheek when the starting lyrics for the 2nd round are "Go go go go, Sharknado, runaway from the Sharknado" and sung in a rather kitschy style, you can't help but chuckle at the game. But then perhaps that's the problem, we're more laughing at the game and its source material than laughing with the game despite that the game is clearly making fun of the films, it's falling short of being enjoyable in the long term. But, it's worth giving it a try if only to see yourself killing a tornado full of sharks with a chainsaw.

Canabalt

The Endless Runner type of game has been around about half a decade for now, being the kind of the game where a character of some non-specific denomination, is set to run forever within a setting or scene on a mixture of traps, incidents, tricks, platforms etc. that are procedurally generated within the game until such a point occurs that the player fails to make a jump, collides with an obstacle or drops dead of a heart attack (which is more the player actually having the heart attack, but we're not talking about Evil Otto at this point)

Canabalt is one of, if not THE first, of this Endless Runner type of game. The premise and controls are incredibly simple and this is a saving grace for the game. While other games might have controls like jumping, ducking, boosting and other such things that overly complicate an issue, Canabalt just has JUMP as the sole control. You do get some variation in this single command in that holding it down will make your runner jump higher.

The game is entirely monochromatic but that's not a reason to dislike it. The style is almost bordering upon the arty classification of imagery. Greys and whites adorn the scenery and background, forming the buildings and skylines and the very weird alien geometry. Having said this, the game is rich in hidden back-story all of which leads to wild guesses but easily backed up by the graphics on display.

From what can be ascertained, you're one of (if not the) last person around and decide that to escape, you're taking a full speed run at the nearest window of your skyscraper and saying "defenestration is my bitch" before hurling yourself out of the window and (hopefully) onto the rooftop of a nearby building. The longer you run, the faster you get while leaping from one rooftop to another. Sometimes you'll be required to leap into a window of a building and out the other side in a sort of "jump, but not too high" trap, which all adds to the random challenge within the game.

Other things to navigate around are the cracked buildings which will fall when you land upon them, so if your speed isn't quite sufficient you will end up falling to your doom. Other tricks and traps are the boxes littering the rooftops that CAN be beneficial in slowing your speed, but hitting too many too soon will drop your speed beyond what you'll need to make the next jump and you'll slap face-first into the wall and slide to your death.

In so far as the only real enemy involvement here, there are bombs that can be fired from off screen to land upon the buildings while you're running across them. Which can be heard to be fired if you have the sound up or headphones in (with some sound at least... I swear, some people are so overly literal...). While there is in some versions, the giant leg of one of the silhouetted monstrosities in the background which will come crashing down upon a building and take it out entirely, leaving you to land on the "knee" of the leg and jump off again quickly to the next building.

All of this occurs randomly and no two runs are ever really the same.

But that's half the story, the backgrounds and scenery do tell a sort of story. Some large mechanical quadrupeds are roaming the background and either scanning or lasering the area while plumes of cloud steadily rise from place to place. Getting to further distances show very odd and very alien looking architecture in place such as what appears to be UFO mother ships, obscurely built and positioned (ominous even) towers that are so striking out of place you can't help but ponder the origins while forgetting to leap across platforms. Ships occasionally fly past and sometimes mask partially the sounds signalling the incoming attacks of bombs or legs and it ALL adds to the atmosphere and mystery within the game.

We may never know, but we don't need to know.

The game itself is responsive, considering it's built with the idea of just one button for control; it should be and needs to be. Thankfully, it is and does its job rather well in being the sole controllable method the player has (boxes, not quite 100% controllable), and the audio of the music tracks accompanying it are testament to the talent of the composer. The game recommends wearing headphones for playing it and it really should be undertaken, if only so then nobody else has to listen to your obnoxious gaming on the bus! (Along with your Justin Bieber records, you shallow shit)

Adding into the replayability of the game (still not sure if that's a word but oh well) is the inclusion of a leader board in most of the non-flash versions, allowing you to compare yourself to thousands of other people who managed to press button repeatedly at random intervals in a non-scientifically qualify able comparison of alike and almost alike. You might get to 30,000m and doing some of the most bowel-tightening difficult jumps you've ever seen with reflexes so fast that the Flash is going to be impressed, or run 300,000m and occasionally had to hop over a few gaps with no bombs or legs turning up to fuck up your "impressive" distance.

With this realisation, there's no achievement in getting first place, or any place, or getting better if the game is bowing down and sucking the knob of the God of Random Numbers and you're getting the sloppy seconds defined as either simple running and jumping, or parkor-ering your way around orbital minefield central. BUT, ignoring the poorly situated idea of a leader board, the game itself is well worth a use as a casual time-spender or long term session burner depending upon how well you like it. It's worth a check at least if only because a) it's one of the first Endless Runner games and b) it does it REALLY well that many other types of this game could and should learn from it.