Nitro Chimp Review

Writing a review of Nitro Chimp is really a waste of time because it’s a game about a chimp doing stunts on a motorcycle. I imagine some readers have frantically picked up their iOS device and gone and downloaded the game right now, because chimp doing stunts on a motorcycle. I mean, the other 400 or so words in this review may be useless. But for those somehow still on the fence, the rest of the review is provided as a courtesy:

The motorcycle that the player's chimp rides has no brakes because stunt chimps live life in the fast lane. There are three things that can stop stunt chimps: one, running into barriers, best avoided by sliding off to the side or jumping over them. Two, getting punched by a rival gorilla that lso wants to do stunts and collect coins. He’s a jerk. Finally, massive head trauma will do the stunt chimp in, so complete those flips and other stunts properly!

Nitro Chimp succeeds at blending together an endless runner with the kind of stunt-based gameplay of something like MotoHeroz has. It’s fun to do flips and chain together stunts, what can I say? And I can buy hats for my stunt chimp. The screenshot utility makes it extremely easy to take cool action shots by freezing the action and rotating the camera around. The missions do a good job at informing the player of what they should be doing, like chaining together stunts for more points with higher multipliers. The controls do a generally good job at executing stunts with swipes and gestures used for flips and individual stunts while in midair. And again, it’s a game of stunt chimps. That in and of itself is a massive pro for this game.

Nitro Chimp’s angled perspective looks cool, but in practice it reveals many of the same problems that a game like Pitfall has: it’s just too darn hard to see obstacles coming up. I often felt like my failures were random, or because of small timing windows more than anything else. If the obstacles were more visually apparent, it would help a lot. I used the button controls for steering; because one finger needs to be used for stunts, using each thumb to move left and right a la Super Hexagon unfortunately is not possible, but it would feel natural if it was implemented. Many of the power ups and upgrades are buried deep in the shop, their important purpose hidden away by the game unless specifically explored by the player.

Nitro Chimpsis not perfect, but for a game about high-flying stunt chimps, it does the job. Ride on, radical simian. Ride on.