A few weeks before we have covered LightBike and how it took the storm away from iShoot at the top of the charts. Well LightBike, meet your new competition.

Light Riders ($0.99 Sale Price)

dsMediaLabs’ most awaited game finally arrives in the AppStore. The road to here took a little long, but we think it’s worth it. Does Light Riders have enough chops to achieve what its competition had done? Continue reading to find out the answer…

Forums: Light Riders

Graphics + Soundtrack

The graphics are outstanding. It’s like a color and design orgasm. It feels more polished than LightBike although the game currently only features a top down view. A 3D and a 2D view are in the works so it should add some edge to the already perfectly designed cars and elegant menu navigation (as seen by upcoming screenshots). The original soundtrack also gives a very distinct feel to the game.

More To Love

You start off by choosing your ride:

Then you select your opponents. In this page you can vary how many players you want to go against with:

You then are taken to the game screen (the text colors change dynamically with the car color you choose):

This is where Light Riders take the edge. Notice the two buttons at the sides… yeah! Boost and Speed. Boost (3 per game) of course gives you immediate but short jolt while speed you can alter by holding it longer (to go faster) or shorter (to go faster for a short period). The game also features Multiplayer over LAN currently (a full online multiplayer is promised).

Conclusion

We don’t want to say out front what we think is a better game because it’ll be unfair for both dsMediaLabs and Pankaku Inc. Take our reviews side by side and decide which one you prefer better. Just note that LightBikes has gone back up to its regular price as of this review.

Light Riders graphics and navigation somewhat satisfy the wait we had to endure for the game to come out. The developers promise a LOT of updates from new views to full internet multiplayer. As the game is right now, we think you should get it. It’s completely playable and enjoyable. It’ll also be a great investment once they roll out the update.

There are 2 changes we’d like to see though. First is some trail shadows on the mini map. They’re just tiny dots right now. Second, up the normal speed a little bit as the game feels a little slow. The Speed and Boost make up for this though, but we think it still needs to be adjusted.