A new take on the endless running genre, Temple Run sees the main character doing an Indiana Jones out of a temple clutching some priceless golden idol while being pursued by what looked to me, on first inspection, a lot like apes with giant eyes for a head.
The third person 3D view has allowed the developers to get slightly more creative with the character movement in the game world, allowing you some sense of freedom in your demise with your choice of direction at junctions as well as adding sliding under obstacles, utilising the tilt control to move you to the left or right of the path you’re running on to collect coins. They don’t sound like huge additions but they certainly added a little more to the game.
The coins are a similar system to Jetpack Joyride if you’re familiar with it, allowing you to buy various power ups that you’ll stumble across as you flee the hoard, single use items that allow resurrection or a distance boost and cosmetic items like characters and wallpapers. They’ve included the option of buying more coins through an in app purchase process to short cut the grind if it’s a bother to you.
The game starts off fairly sedately; you feel that you’re almost leisurely hopping over roots and ducking under the flaming limbo bar at the beginning, at least until you stumble on a root and then the eye-headed apes are back on to remind you why you’re legging it in the first place! The pace changes seem to creep up on you, you seem to get to 1000m with relative ease before it cranks up the speed on you. My reactions seem to start faltering from 1500m but I’m getting old! The only issue I’ve found is the random deaths I seem to get when running along some form of slippery grey wall, running too long at the right or left of the wall seems to have you slip into oblivion arbitrarily it seems.
A nice addition to your gaming arsenal with some pretty solid gameplay to break out when you’ve got a few minutes to kill.