Red Bull Air Race World Championship > Mobile3DWorld

By goyami @ Saturday, June 13, 2009 :: 1874 Views :: Racing

When launching a flight simulator you have to know going in that it’s virtually impossible to satisfy everyone. A developer has to decide which wildly divergent audience they’re targeting: arcade (Top Gun), hardcore (Xplane), or somewhere in between. Red Bull Air Race World Championship by Artificial Life aims for the arcade side of center and for the most part lands on the runway.

The Red Bull races involve maneuvering a light propeller plane through a series of nylon pylons, turns and loops to post the fastest course time with the least amount of penalties.

You can play in either a cockpit view or a behind the plane view as you follow the red level indicators that tell you your flight path and the correct angle and altitude you’re expected to be at. Flying too high, too low or at an incorrect angle through the pylons gets you penalties that add time to your run. Leaving the race area or flying too low for too long a time results in an automatic restart and there is no crashing.

The visuals are quite nice and at the requisite high level that’s become the norm on the Iphone with colorful, clear and nicely detailed planes and courses running at a smooth frame rate giving a nice sense of flight to Red Bull. While I couldn’t get either of the available planes, an MXS-R and an EDGE 540 to roll, you can perform loops.

Control with the accelerometer is simple and responsive but lacks the refined smoothness of some other flying games. No matter where I set the sensitivity bar it was difficult for me to make fine adjustments to my flight path. My plane seemed to turn in 10 degree increments. Subsequently, much of my flight time was spent turning right then readjusting left or visa versa. In a precision flying game this becomes tiresome. You’re given two touch button for extra acceleration and for flipping your plane on its side to knife through pylons when required.

Red Bull Air Race has very good presentation and an extensive feature set. You can play a full season with multiple races at each location or a quick season with one race at each location both in rookie, professional or championship settings. You can have a quick flight or a custom flight on existing courses or you can actually build your own course with a simple race editor. You can also download and race the custom tracks of other players. There is a hanger where you can customize your plane with unlockable aero kits, surface patterns and colors or you can run races in the custom planes of the actual Red Bull competitors. One of my favorite features is a great replay with multiple camera views that Red Bull provides after the completion of each race.

All of the racing takes place over bodies of water in 8 worldwide locations except for one in Monument Valley. While this may be in keeping with the Red Bull Series, it does tend to lend an air of sameness to most of the races. I found myself longing to fly under the bridges or between the nice skyscrapers. This is perhaps best left to a “Red Bull Gone Wild” sequel.

For those looking to perform aerobatic stunts in cool prop planes while competing in high-speed races, Red Bull Air Race Championship is about as good as it gets. Only a slight refinement in control and a little variety in racing holds it to 4 stars.

reviewed by goyami - Iphone

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