We’ve seen many of these “Wipeout” insipired games before, well this one comes really close.

Phaze: Futuristic Racer ($4.99; FREE)

When I first saw the screenshots for Phaze I thought “cool, a futuristic racer”. Then I saw it was by Pazzazz Games and my heart sank. “Oh no, it’s just going to be a futuristic version of GTS World Racing.”

Thankfully I was wrong. The game looks better, it sounds better, and most importantly, it’s a lot more fun to play.

Presentation

The game looks great. Like most 3D games it suffers a bit from clipping, which is noticeable when you’re riding the rails. Also, if you watch the background you’ll notice some draw-in, especially when you’re at the bottom portion of track section heading upwards. That aside, the tracks are a pleasure to look at. The cars are well rendered. The backgrounds are also very nice. One race you’ll be looking at fluffy clouds and majestic mountain tops, and the next you’ll see outer space and gigantic planets. There locales are very diverse and appealing to look at.

I like the sounds, which are vastly improved over GTS World Racing. In fact, I even don’t mind the sound of the engine, which usually bothers me in games like this. What I can’t stand, however, is the annoying warning siren that goes off when your energy is almost gone. The only ways to get the sound to go away (besides disabling sound) are to either increase your energy or die, and obviously the second option isn’t a very sporting one. The music is really good, and if my ears aren’t deceiving me there are at least three separate tunes in this game.

Controls

The controls in Phaze are wonderful. You tilt the device left and right to steer, away from you to accelerate and towards you to break. If you tilt the device too far away from you the screen will start turning red and eventually actually flash a message saying that the device is too flat. There is a sensitivity adjustment bar in the options screen, but this is one of the few racing style games for any mobile platform where I haven’t had to mess with such a thing. There is a button to activate power ups in the lower right portion of the screen, which is as responsive as everything else in the game.

Game Play

Phaze is about as basic as you can get. There are four levels (easy, normal, hard and extreme), and two modes (single race and championship, which is racing all 16 tracks), and your objective is to race and win. There is no earning money, or upgrading your vehicles or anything like that, and it’s not needed. This is a simple futuristic racing game that plays well and is fun.

You do have a choice of vehicles, however, which starts out at three and grows as you win races. Ultimately you’ll be able to choose from ten different racers. Each has three stats: power, shield and agility. There are no descriptions for these stats, but logic would say power is how fast you can go, shield is how much damage you can take, and agility is how well you can maneuver. I will say that unlike many racing games, you can actually tell a difference in handling depending on which racer you choose. I’ll also offer this bit of advice: if you’re a “rail runner” like I am, make sure you have a strong shield rating, or you will die – a lot!

Along the way you’ll encounter a few goodies to make your trip easier. Power ups include energy, boost, shield, missiles and bombs. You can only carry one power up at a time, so if you haven’t used your current one as you’re approaching a new one that you want, you might as well use the current one. Bombs are my least favorite because you just sort of drop them and hope another racer runs into them. Missiles give you one shot at an opponent, so make it count. Energy replenishes some of yours, which you lose when you hit things. If this goes down to zero you die and lose a precious few seconds while reincarnating, so keep your energy as high as you can. Shield temporarily blocks you from any damage and means you can have fun plowing into other racers. Boost temporarily speeds you up. There are also green boost points every now and again that work the same as the power up, only they act instantaneously.

One thing I really appreciated about Phaze was that the easy mode was easy. In fact, one might almost say it was too easy, as I was able to beat all but one of the races in first place. The reason I like this, however, is that it gave me a chance to see all the tracks and know what I had in store in the later difficulty levels. There have been so many racing games where I never got to play very many of the tracks because I couldn’t place well enough to unlock them. Of course, when you move to normal the challenge is suddenly kicked up several notches. I have as yet to beat the first race in normal mode, though I have come to the conclusion that the boost points are the key. It seems the computer can use them as well, so if you miss most of them there’s no chance you’re going to win.

Suggestions

The main suggestion I’d offer is some sort of mini-map so you can know where the other racers are. It’s nice to know what place you are in the race, but it’s better to know if you have any chance of catching up to the others or not. A multi-player mode could also be cool.

Conclusion

For those that enjoy their realistic stock car simulators, good for them. Personally, I like the fast, fun and slightly unrealistic, and I think Phaze covers that quite well. The game looks great, it sounds good, and the controls are spot on. Best of all, I can actually complete a championship circuit at some level! I don’t know if this is the best racer out there, but it’s certainly been more than its share of bangs for a few bucks.