Have you ever celebrated Christmas before? If you have, then you’ve certainly gotten a huge, promising looking present. You tear through the wrapping paper, you rip open the box. A bead of sweat goes down your neck, your heart is racing. But, out of nowhere, inside the box was a pair of pink bunny rabbit pajama’s. Kinda the same feeling I got when I played Uber Racer.

When you first start Uber Racer, the opening screen pops up, and then you head into your garage with your car in it, which is basically your menu. It gives you a few options, Career, Quick Race, Car, Options, About, Profiles, and Trophies. At this point, I think I am about to cry. The game looks really nice, and its got tons of features and goodies for me to waste my time with. The suspense heightens as I click Quick Race. It gives me a choice of the tracks I’ve unlocked, (You can always unlock more in career mode) and it gives me options to run the race in forward, or reverse, what racing mode I want (Race, Elimination, One vs One) and it lets me pick how many laps I can race, and how many cars I am gonna race against. (There’s a limit of 4 cars in a race) I tap start the race, and it shows me various cutscenes of all the drivers I’m racing against. Its kinda cheesy, but its nice to have something before the race. Once the cutscenes are over, the race is on. One of the first things I notice during the race is the graphics. The graphics are really nice (some of the textures could use a little work), and detailed and there is even a damage system. Unfortunately, the sense of speed, physics, and controls are terrible. It feels like your going the same speed almost the entire time, even if your going 90 MPH or 30 MPH. The Physics are almost like Jet Car Stunts physics. I run over a rock or ledge, and my car goes flying everywhere, or if I get bumped I spin out of control. The track is really slippery, even on straightaways. Its hard to even talk about the controls, you steer with the accelerometer and tap on the right to speed up, and left to break. Sounds easy right? Wrong. It’s almost impossible to get a good control on your speed, and even the accelerometer needs adjusting. It feels as if you are driving a hovercraft. So naturally, I look for the pause button. First I find a camera angle option with three sub-options; hood, front, and trailing. I finally find the pause button. Unfortunately, the other options are to Resume, Restart and head back to the Menu. I searched the game high and low, and there were no control options at all, which almost makes the game unplayable to me.

The Career mode in this game is your fairly typical Career mode. You race along pre-determined events to earn the games form of currency, oil. The more oil you earn the more you can upgrade your car, and eventually, buy a new car. You have to finish in the top 3 to move on, and the higher you finish, the more oil you earn.

The music in this game is decent, although it gets boring over time. There is an option to turn it off, and let you listen to your own music, which is nice. The graphics in this game are good. There’s really not much to say after that, there not a determent to the game, and they menu’s are fantastic, the actual race graphics disappointed me compared to the menu’s. Uber Racer doesn’t come preloaded with any social gaming service, but it does include achievements and trophies, and allows multiple save slots, just in case you want to earn all the trophies multiple times. There are multiple flaws in this game that are difficult to overlook. The controls, physics, handling of the cars, lack of multiple difficulties, lack of any kind of gameplay adjustment are all flaws that bring this game down for me. On the bright side, I experienced no framerate problems on my 4G iPod Touch (As expected)

Overall, I have mixed feelings about this game. It’s fun and has decent graphics, but its flaws are extremely frustrating. After one race, I was ready to throw my iPod against the wall, I just couldn’t get the hang of it. The most frustrating thing is, I thought I would love this game. Playing through the game, I find multiple flaws throughout, including lack of adjustments, physics and controls, which are all fixable things. It’s hard for me to recommend this game in its current state.

Short Description: Über Race 3D is seems like a mix between the career of Real Racin 1 and the driving physics of a hovercraft.

Modes: 6
Difficulties: 1
Total: 6
Levels: N/A

1-5 Point Scale:
Music: 3
Modes: 4
Replayability: 4
Networking: 3
Gameplay: 3
Graphics: 4
Performance: 4
Controls: 2
Physics: 2
Overall (not an average): 3

Über Race 3D on the AppStore


Gameplay Video: