Rally-X Rumble

Namco's infamous yellow dot-gobbling hockey puck Pac-Man has already featured on iOS both in its original glory and in a 21st century re-imagining of the classic game Pac-Man Championship Edition DX.

The studio has now re-jiggered another of its old faithful for the iOS platform. Rally-X Rumble hails all the way from a massive 1980s arcade box, and boasts similar top-down maze-running mechanics.

Can Namco’s Rally-X Rumble remake claim to be as game-changing as Championship Edition DX was for Pac-Man? Start your engines and let’s find out.

In Rally-X Rumble you have to drive a little neon car around a maze while completing various mode-based objectives. Those objectives range from collecting flags in the Rally-X Classic mode to painting the course with your chosen colour in Paint the Town mode.

There are other cars to crash into, which will cost you precious lives. You can use smoke screens to try and trap your enemies, but enemy cars are the least of your worries in any case.

Rally-X Rumble controls about as well as a Sunny Delight-fuelled child on a Toys R Us rampage. It's fast, unresponsive, and intent on rebelling against your will.

Rally to the cause

One of the saving graces of Rally-X Rumble is the multiplayer. Of the three modes available at release (more are promised soon) two are specifically based around multiplayer.

There's a certain amount of fun to be had when gaming with friends, and the issues with the controls are less of a hindrance when the ‘enemy’ clearly has the same problem as you.

It does take a while to find people to play with, though, so unless you've arranged to play be prepared to wait around for players to join in.

The presentation of the game walks the line between derivative and spot-on depending on your love of Pac-Man.

In fact, if it wasn’t for the tiny neon car in the centre of the screen a Rally-X Rumble could easily be mistaken for Namco's more famous son.

But it's not, and unless you were already a fan of Rally-X Rumble’s dodgy controls and derivative gameplay, you may not get on with this less famous child.