Move over Temple Run. Chillingo’s new runner Endless Road is an entertaining new isometric racing game that looks gorgeous and plays even better. The premise of the game is simple enough. You drive a car along a collapsing road, dodging obstacles such as other vehicles and collecting coins that can be used to upgrade your vehicle. Endless Road takes this simple premise and adds cool visuals, responsive controls, and sharp gameplay that is just incredibly fun to play.
Endless Road ditches the 2D side scrolling and over-the-shoulder 3-D perspectives of most games in the endless-runner genre in favor of a fixed top-down perspective. This gives you a good view of upcoming obstacles and rewards. Despite this eagle-eye view of the action you will not likely make it very your first few tries. The endless road moves lightning fast, which gives the game a somewhat steeper learning curve than appears at first glance. Furthermore, the game has some crucial mechanics that may not be very obvious at first glance but are vital for success in the game.
First of all, collecting coins is very important.
In many games the coins/rings/whatever that you collect are beneficial for extra lives, etc., but are not requirements for success. In Endless Road you simply will not last very long if you do not collect enough coins to unlock the power-ups and new cars. Coins can also unlock shortcuts that make future attempts on the road much easier in the beginning.
Of course, getting coins can sometimes be more dangerous because the lanes with the most coins tend to have more obstacles. You have to balance the danger of getting more coins versus making it further down the road for a higher pay off at the end. You can also earn coins by completing the missions that display at the beginning of each run. Many of the missions are simple tasks such as making it a certain distance, but some are more difficult such as landing on a car after a jump.
Spend your coins on the power-up upgrades as soon as you can.
The bonus power-ups give you special moves that you can use to avoid a fiery death out on the road. The Nitro power-up was my favorite. That boost of speed saved my bacon more times than I can count when I was mere seconds from being swallowed up by the rapidly vanishing pavement. SlowMotion is useful for when things on screen are getting way to hectic to plan your next move. I didn’t use the Bomb power-up, which pushes away any cars in the vicinity to a safe distance.
The last power-up, Jump, is about what it sounds like. It lets you tap the screen to jump over entire sections of the road that are too congested to plow through. It’s important to save all of these power-ups for when you really need them. Nitro should only be used when you are seconds away from dying. There are plenty of speed strips on the track to boost your speed without wasting a Nitro boost that could mean the difference between life and death later.
The maps of Endless Road are beautiful to look at, but you can also choose to spend coins to unlock additional colors. This may be tempting at first, but your priority at the beginning should be unlocking power-ups and new cars. There is always the option to go to the cash store and spend real money for coins, but unlike many games that allow you to spend real money it’s possible to unlock all these extra goodies through simply playing the game without it feeling like a grind.
Article Contribution: Michael Clark wrote this marvelous article. He is a freelance writer and writes for various websites. His kids love to play Tom and Jerry games, sometimes he also enjoys with them.