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If you can tolerate Muscle Run for long enough, it does hold some entertainment value – just not in the way that you might expect. For a game that’s about speed and precision, you’ll find yourself unable to achieve either most of the time. It’s only once you discover the comical physics of the racer when you’ll breathe a sigh of relief that your money didn’t all go to waste.
Story mode is where you’ll be spending the majority of your time. Split into various stages, each level constitutes a series of challenges as bland as unbuttered bread. Clearing all of these will ‘reward’ you with a final race that, erm, isn’t actually a race but instead an additional list of objectives for you to trudge through in your American muscle car.
Controlling your ride comes down to tilting the device left and right whilst it does the accelerating for you. Holding your finger on the screen will put the car into reverse – important knowledge to have, considering you’ll be using it when you collide with almost every vehicle that comes your way.
If you don’t eventually submit to the awful responsiveness of the controls and ride the hard shoulder, the alternative is to enjoy the unintentional but hilarious sight of giant trucks and saloon cars flying into the air as you swerve into them. Collision detection doesn’t fare much better either, being as reliable as National Rail in the middle of winter.
Upgrading the various cars on offer with money earned through races or in-app purchases (which aren’t needed) is something you’ll want to do early on to make handling more bearable. The price-to-content ratio is excellent, but that means nothing considering you’ll get bored long before you reach the end of the road.
Version Tested: iOS 5
Played for 4 hours.
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