Moto X Mayhem

Moto X Mayhem reminds me a lot of those addictinggames.com physics bike games that I'd played back in the day. But whereas in those I could spend a whole day finishing all the stages, it's impossible to play Moto X for longer than a couple of minutes.

In Moto X, you take control over a man riding a motorcycle through various obstacle courses. Your goal is to finish in the fastest time possible without killing your rider. You achieve this by balancing your motorcycle so as not to tip it over. Touching the right side of the screen puts the pedal to the medal, and touching the right side throws the bike in reverse. And then of course, there's the tricky proposition of balancing your rider. In an attempt to steady the bike, you can cause your rider to lean either forwards or backwards by tilting your phone. Not only do these controls seem miss-calibrated (with no calibration or sensitivity options), but the entire physics system seems floaty and inaccurate. Several times my rider simply flew off his bike for no apparent reason.

There are a mere seven levels (yes, really), each lasting for about twenty seconds. I think you can do the math. You are given five lives, and if you run out of lives, you have to start back at level one, though you can practice any of the levels individually. There is simply no inspiration in the level design, with virtually the only obstacles being ruts, hills, and cliffs. Different levels are strikingly similar. If you are so inclined, there is an online score list, so you can compare your fastest times against the world's, though this list is inevitably populated by people who have memorized the levels.

Graphics are decent but very simple. As with the level design, there is no graphical variation between stages; and the scenery quickly grows old and boring. There is no music, but rather unnecessary ambient sounds and very annoying crash sound effects.

It's pretty hard to say that a game priced at $.99 is a waste of money, but it's impossible to recommend Moto X Mayhem, in its current state, at any price. After I had finished the game in some two minutes, the first thing I did was to check iTunes to see if I had accidentally downloaded a lite version.