REKT! review
:: ONE TRACK MINDPrice: $1.99
Version: 1.1
App Reviewed on: iPad Air 2
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REKT! is a stunt driving game that's oddly reminiscent of the early Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games. The game involves driving a car through a stunt course and carrying out all kinds of crazy maneuvers to rack up a high score and achieve certain objectives. It's not a terribly complicated game, nor one that is particularly varied or challenging, but it still offers up some light, colorful fun that can scratch that Tony Hawk fix if you've got it.
Tricked out
In REKT!, you drive a car through a crazy arena full of ramps, loops, tunnels, and other sorts of stunt contraptions. During each play session, you only get one minute to drive around and try to stunt your way to the highest score possible. Doing things like flips and spins by swiping when airborne are the easiest way to earn points, but you can link your tricks together and build multipliers by doing things like drifting and driving through boxes when not sailing through the air.
In addition to stunting all over the place, each run of REKT! has three side objectives. These can be as simple as hitting a target score or trying to do specific tricks, but can also depart from trick-oriented gameplay entirely. There are times when you may need to hit specific waypoints in a certain order, gather letters scattered throughout the course that spell R-E-K-T, and even do basic maneuvers like brake.
Whippin' whips
Almost all of REKT!'s gameplay seems directly inspired by the Tony Hawk games, but there are a few key ways where these games differ. The first–and most obvious difference–is that REKT! only has one map. While this is a bit disappointing, it's worth noting that the course in REKT! is pretty huge and varied and the game itself has a few different ways to mix up the experience that don't involve changing venue.
When players achieve enough objectives or hit certain scores, for example, they can unlock new cars. These cars don't have different stats or anything, but they give you something to work toward and they all look pretty neat. Also, as players create larger combos of tricks, REKT!'s environment starts changing colors, which definitely adds a nice change of scenery to the arena you're always driving around in.
Gassed out
REKT! is a reasonably good imitation of a Tony Hawk game, but it's not a game that will really stick with you for very long because of its lack of other courses. The things that REKT! does to try and make up for having only one course are welcome and shake things up a bit, but these things alone are just not enough.
In its App Store listing, the developers of REKT! promise that more arenas are on their way, which is certainly a good thing. As it stands now though, REKT! kind of feels like a demo of a game rather than something that has enough to it to stand out in its own right.
The bottom line
REKT! takes the ideas of Tony Hawk's Pro Skater and streamlines them into a neat little mobile package. The only problem is, that package is a little too small at the moment. With only one course, REKT! can entertain for a few plays, but then runs out of gas relatively quickly. When more courses come, REKT! will potentially be a great game, but for now, it just feels more like a proof of concept.