Hill Climb Racing

Somewhere in the mountains lives a hillbilly who makes a living out of racing. Hikers climb mountains, racers drive cars, and this homie does both. He makes a living by treading the hills, just by treading them, and he will stop at nothing to continue his tireless journey-even if it means breaking his neck the number of times equivalent to the age of the Universe in days.

At the start of the game, you start off small. Immediately available are one vehicle and one track, but there are dozens of them waiting ahead. You take control of Bill Newton, the protagonist, as he hopes to drive the farthest he can. Of course, your car drives terribly, but it is almost impossible to miss coins, the currency of Hill Climb Racing. Every car is essentially roofless, and those that do have roofs only have them as Newton's shield before being destroyed. Your shaggy driver is like a bobblehead, but this head you do not want to smack. Everything about the game is silly, from amateurish graphics to the fact that the fictitious car manufacturers appear to neglect the safety of the driver. The latter said, it should come as no surprise that the player must watch Newton's head from hitting the floor, the ceiling-pretty much anything. If you fail to keep him safe, you get what you deserve: a snapping sound of his neck. The car's fuel gauge serves as a timer for when fuel is depleted, so you'd better not slack off and keep driving if you want to find a fuel container.

The spirit of Hill Climb Racing is the physics. If I may, I will just call them Newtonian physics, after Bill Newton, so whenever I use "Newtonian", just do not confuse that to mean Isaac Newton. The physics here are cartoonish and "fun", and the fun is that it is smooth, bouncy, and floaty. It is also playfully shrewd in its attempts to flip the player car over, but when mastered, those attempts may be thwarted to perform stunts like flipping over or staying in the air. The stunts reward the player coins, and while levels become increasingly difficult, it is satisfying that the value of the coins to collect also increases. Just as a note, the fictitious manufacturers were thoughtful enough to engineer the vehicles to be indestructible (although parts of some cars can be broken off), and it is only the fuel and Newton's head that needs to be worried about.

And just as if it could not get better, see yourself spending the coins on upgrade. As I said earlier, your car is sluggish, but you are experiencing only the shell of the Newtonian physics as you struggle to keep your car even, and it does get better. You have choices to either purchase a locked vehicle, a locked course, or an upgrade. Vehicles are anything from conventional motorcycles and monster trucks to quircky police cars and what almost looks like the car that few from The Jetsons to just plain silly stuff like the Santa's sleigh, and some of them have special surprise features that I will not describe here. I told you all of the game is ridiculous. The same could be said about the courses, which include the conventional grassy hills of Countryside, the Highway, the Moon, the Nuclear Plant, trees in the Forest and Christmas to drive over, the Boot Camp, Rooftops, and hilariously, Rainbows. Some of those levels are designed to feel like a platformer instead of a racing game. You drive off from one which is very original on the part of the developer, Fingersoft. The cars and courses have their own physical properties, and some of them are more suitable together than others. And of course, the upgrades will improve your vehicle's performance and are certain to enhance your experience. If you have the patience, you will find yourself driving a powerful beast, flipping over and collecting millions of coins. We do have a few road cones to watch, however.

Newton must be living by himself, as he's got no one to compete against. In fact, there is eerily no one other than Newton himself. There is no multiplayer, but there is the consistent game mode of driving without stopping, so the only person Newton wants keeping his vehicle going and his head safe is whoever on Earth might be on the other side of the screen. As players, we could play separately and compete for the farthest distance, but I think the bigger flat tire is having a single game mode with a single objective. Ultimately, no matter what you race with or what you race on, the cycle is drive-flip-upgrade-new record. After a while, the repetition exhausts you and you feel like pitting for your fuel. Once you gas up, you either feel like doing something else, or you have enough fuel and patience to repeat the cycle. Even if you choose the former, you will probably race again because of the fun physics and the silliness.

CONCLUSION: After a while, you would pull your car key out of the car and look to something else to do, but if you enjoyed Hill Climb Racing's goofiness and the physics, you are almost certain to put it back in. -- 85%