Car Jack Streets

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Car Jack Streets is a top down shooter by Tag Games. $4.99

The wait is finally over. Car Jack Streets is the long awaited Grand Theft Auto game to hit the App Store. Car Jack Streets is similar to the game by Apex Designs called Payback, but some different features brings this game out on top. Car Jack Streets follows the story of Randal Meyers, who owes $1,000,000 to casino owner Frankie. He has given you a chance to repay your debt by giving him $50,000 every week until it is paid off. If by the weeks end the cash isn't paid, Frankie's men will come after you and will end up killing you for good. Any of the whiz bang mathematicians will figure out that if you get through the entire game without dieing it will take 20 hours to complete. The way the game has been set out greatly extends the value that Car Jack Streets will provide you, and the storyline along puts this game way out in front of Payback. For those who don't know, Payback has many different game modes where set scores are to be earned to unlock the next level/city. While there are more modes and areas to explore, I don't believe it lives up to Car Jack Streets. This game has brilliant graphics and a great soundtrack from upcoming artists to match. Killing people has almost never been as fun, due to the console game Grand Theft Auto taking that position.

Car Jack Streets has killer graphics. The graphics have more of a cartoony look about them opposed to Payback's 3D graphics. I found Car Jack Streets to be alot more detailed and generally better looking. The amount of detail provided for everything is Car Jack Streets is really good for what is basically a mobile port. The game is usually running without any glitches or lag in the final build. We previously played a old build and it had alot of problems with the game freezing. The build we reviewed Car Jack Streets on still has these problems, but I generally only find the game freezes after 30 minutes or more of gameplay. This shouldn't be a problem as Car Jack Streets is designed to be played for about 15 minutes at a time.

All the controls for Car Jack Streets are located on the screen itself, and work surprisingly well. To walk around there is a D-Pad located on the left of the screen. To pick up weapon, disguises and health you just walk into them. To shoot there is a button on the right side of the screen. Some guns have auto-target on them so when standing still you will automatically rotate to aim at nearby civilians. To hop in a car a button will appear when you are close enough to one. To drive instead of using the D-Pad they have separate the controls. To go forward or reverse the buttons are on the right side of the screen and the turning controls are on the left. The final build includes a Turbo button that puts you to top speed for a short period of time. In the first build I played there was no turbo button and you could drive without the need to hold your finger on the accelerator. I found this a great idea, but apparently others did not.

Car Jack Streets provides you with the full city life experience. There is a heap of sound effects in this game. While walking you can just hear your footsteps as the bustling city life is happening all around you. Tag Games has gotten music from some great upcoming artists for the fully fledged radio stations that you can listen to while in the car. This is close to the standards of GTA, where I assume they got the idea from. Unlike Payback I found it to have more of an actual 'radio' feel to it rather than just music playing while driving.

The way the game works is that to earn back the $1,000,000 owed dollars you must make it through missions. These missions are obviously not, help the lady across the road missions, they include killing people, blowing up gang members and other illegal crimes. These missions are all optional to complete, as after a few days you will have multiple options to try and complete. Some missions are spur of the moment things and generally have bigger awards. These include Going Postal and killing 10 people in 30 seconds or blow up enough cars within two minutes to attract the polices attention. As well as missions you can get money for completing tasks or 'felonies'. These include things like Car Jacking x amount of cars or Killing x amount of gang members. Each felony has 3 levels so they take a few weeks to become a true gangster. Like GTA and Payback, if you start killing too many people you will earn a star and police will start coming for you. If you lay low for a while they will forget about your crimes. Gang Members will also come after you if they find you, and the one sure way to get rid of them is a shot to the head. Many different guns are available around the city to use, from Machine Guns to Flame Throwers. Another side objective in the game is to find all the 50 mystery packages around the large city. I haven't found all these so I can't reveal what you get.

As you can probably tell I can talk for hours about everything that happens in Car Jack Streets. This is an amazing game both in the way of gameplay, graphics and sound. This is by far one of the best games on the App Store, and certainly one of the longest games. Car Jack Streets has perfected what I need from a Top-Down GTA game, not only being cheaper than PayBack but far better. After a long wait time for the game to be approved I would seriously recommend buying this. A heap of non-stop real time fun! Do you think you can survive to pay Frankie's debt? I sure hope so!

Gameplay- 10/10
Graphics- 9/10
Sound- 9.5/10
Overall- 9.5/10

I would recommend this game if you enjoyed- Payback

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