When Temple Run came, it was unique had its own taste which was like no other but, later, different games adopted or basically copied the same game style and Temple Run was used as a standard, as a tool for benchmarking them. Now ‘endless’ has become a category, which isn’t even a small one and contains many subcategories too, expanding every single moment. We have seen endless runners, riders, climbers and even drivers. Now we cannot say that these new games are copying Temple Run because Endless is a category instead of being related to a single game, no doubt Temple Run remains as the pioneer of endless but the question that arises is ‘which one is the best?’ Almost every developer try to mold the basics to give their game a uniqueness but is everyone capable of giving a perfect execution? No, of course not. Let see if today’s game has that execution, the core we are looking for!!
Today, we take a look at Mutant Roadkill, which is yet another endless game, developed by Glu, and is available for iOS and Android. The noticeable differences this game features are the use of car instead of a runner and in this time you aren’t the one being chased but instead you’re meant to and kill!! and I liked this part. This game grows around the term freemium which means it’s free-to-play but few things, special ones, can only be bought by using in-app purchases. Mutant Roadkill is available for Android and iOS devices and has almost five millions downloads in android only. With 4.3/5 stars users rating, I found Mutant Roadkill a mixture of pros and cons, which you can find out by going through this review.
Mutant Roadkill is setup in an overused theme of post-apocalypse era and, instead of zombies, there are mutants everywhere, rich mutants! You’re one of the few survivors, and you are in search of money. When whole world is in chaos all you need is money and certainly mutants has it. What a story it is! Yeah I know it’s kind of illogical and there’s no background information on how all this happened, all you need to that it happened and now you have a car which you’ll use to kill them and get the money.
The game starts off with a nice slow-motion action packed jump, blasting through a billboard and/or few mutants before coming on the main track. A short tutorial will guide you about the controls. This game features tilt to steer controls and with some frequent swipes to follow up track’s direction when required. There isn’t any option for on-screen touch controls, which many, including myself, would have loved. The controls feels like the major dragging force behind the otherwise would have been better gameplay. On your path you’ll have to avoid collisions with obstacles which includes wrecked cars, school busses and trucks of varying length but make sure that you driver over and kill as many mutants as possible. The mutants are of different types which appears with increasing difficulty. Starting ones are simple and they would just stay still or move slightly, then you’ll find ones who can jump and attach themselves onto your car’s either side to trip it over but you can always scrape them off using wrecked vehicles. After these you’ll face mutants with claws, which can destroy your car if not scraped within time, and bombers, make sure that you avoid these because they will explode on collision.
There are two different currencies of this game. The first and basic one is coins, this is used mostly to upgrade powerups and to purchase not-so-special cars. You’ll get the coins but at a slow rate which will be somewhat bearable if you’re looking for minor upgrades but forget the ones which require thousands of it. The second but the premier currency is Glu Credits, as based around the term freemium, the most attractive things can only be purchased by these. There are three ways to obtain Glu Credits. First one is during gameplay through crates that you’ll get after completing missions. Secondly you can use in-app purchases. Lastly you can get them from watching videos, installing different games and applying on different sites/forums.
On the roads you’ll find different powerups. There is also a meter which, when filled, gives a random powerup. Whenever you kill a mutant you’ll get coins and the powerup meter will take a step up. There is a combo system too to give your meter a quick fill. It’s been a time that I haven’t seen not-temple-run style powerups and this game puts a stop to that time. The powerups are interesting and adds a fun factor to the overall game. All powerups has five upgradable levels and the amount of currency required to upgrade also increases with level. Powerups are:
Coin Bags: Collecting this powerup will give you coins and the amount depends upon this powerup’s level. Initially you’ll get fifty coins which increases to two hundred with next upgrade and so on. This is one of the two powerups that requires Glu Credits.
Driver Weapon: This weapon is extremely useful as it attacks those mutants only which attaches with your car. It’s not time based but has limited ammunition. Upgrading these will increase ammo as well as the damage power i.e. from single pistol to dual pistols. Upgrading this powerup requires coins only.
Nitro Boost: It gives your car temporary boost and makes your car immune to collisions. You can still kill mutants and get coins and powerup stars from them. This is a time dependent powerup and it’s time increases after upgrading. Upgrading this too requires coins only.
Turret: It’s another useful weapon, unlike Driver weapon, it doesn’t attack the attached mutants but instead shoots those which are on the path, before they can attach with your car. This one too has limited ammunition and upgrading this will again increase the impact power of bullets and number of bullets too. You’ll require coins to upgrade Turret.
Shock: Collecting this powerup will make your car protected with electric shocks for a limited time, so any mutant attached with your car will receive shocks which may eventually kill them as it’s depends upon mutants remaining health. Upgrading this will increase the intensity of shocks. Coins are required to upgrade these.
Repair: This powerup will replenish your car’s health and upgrading this will increase the probability of getting these powerups. This is the second upgrade which requires Glu Credits instead of coins.
Your car and mutants both have health bars. The mutants’ health bar increases with distance covered and to increase yours you’ll have to get a better vehicle. If your car wrecks you will have option to use revive to get it back to life. Revive can be used once per drive and cost of reviving increases permanently i.e. hundred coins for first revival and two hundred fifty coins for second revival irrespective of drive retries. After Revival, you’ll also get a short head start to help you get stable.
There are missions available to keep you busy. All the time there will be three missions available which will include likes of running two miles without killing a zombie and collecting eight hundred coins in a single run. You can check these mission from game’s pause menu or even the main dashboard. For every mission you complete, you’ll get to choose a crate once you’re done with your drive. There will be a total of six crate boxes with six different rewards in them. Rewards includes instant revive, quick meter fill for next drive, super bomb, one Glu Credit, coins and head start. You can also buy these from the store’s items section with addition of Coin Doubler which doubles total coins earned and is for ninety-nine Glu Credits, Bounty Hunter which triples the coins earned for every kill, and super head start through which you can start three miles ahead.
Every Vehicle has its own armor and handling rating. You can purchase and switch vehicles from store. There are eight different vehicles to choose from and seven of them needs to be purchased. Three out of these seven requires Glu Credits starting from one hundred fifty Glu Credits till six hundred Glu Credits for the strongest vehicle. Rest four requires simple coins and starts at two thousand five hundred coins for the cheapest possible till one hundred fifty thousand coins for the most expensive one.
This review is based upon 1.1.2 version of Mutant Roadkill which requires at least Android 2.1 (éclair) and iOS 4.3 for respective platforms. On paper, list of compatible devices is huge but the reality is somewhat different. Mutant Roadkill refused to start on my Xperia Z1 with lollipop but worked with bluestacks and Razr M with jellybean. This game doesn’t feature cloud saving neither with Google Play Games nor with facebook. No Google Play Games means there aren’t any kind of achievement in Mutant Roadkill hence no level uprising and also there aren’t any kind of leaderboards because of which this game might appear aimless to few.
Low currency generation is a weak point of this game which can be overcome using in-app purchases. You can get three thousand coins, which should be enough to remove you from starter car, for $1.99. If you’re looking to buy few other add-ons then you can get fifteen thousand coins for $2.99. For $9.99 you can get forty thousand coins and for one hundred thousand coins you have to pay $19.99.
The most expensive package cost a hefty $49.99 and returns with a bulk of two hundred fifty thousand coins. Glu Credits are much expensive. One hundred-ten Glu Credits will charge you $4.99. Second Glu Credits package gives two hundred-sixty Glu Credits for $9.99 and last package will gives you six hundred-forty for $19.99. There are also three bundles available which will give you multiple items. Ads will be removed if you purchase anything using your real currency.
Coins and gold are an essential part of Mutant Roadkill, but it costs real money to get these items through the app store. If you are like most people, you cannot afford to buy the golds and coins through the app store, and this is why we have decided to add Mutant Roadkill to our hack database. This means that you can get the coins and gold for free just by downloading our Mutant Roadkill hack tool, which is found right here on our website.
If you look at the image below, you will see just how simple the Mutant Roadkill hack tool is to use. All you have to do is enter the amounts of gold and coins that you want right there on the options menu.
First, download the Mutant Roadkill hack tool, which takes around 20 seconds, and then wait 20 seconds while it automatically installs. You will need to choose either iOS or Android, and then simply enter the coins and gold that you would like to have on your gaming account.
When you are ready to begin the process, click “Start” and the hack will take about 30 seconds to finish. Afterward, open up the game on your device and you will see the items have already been added to your account. Using our free Mutant Roadkill hack tool allows you to get all of the in-game items and upgrades you need in order to be successful in the game, and you won’t have to spend any money to do it.
While taking turn, you can try to lose attached mutants by turning to side opposite of attached mutant i.e. if the mutant is attached on left then turn right from the road corner.
If you have a head start then before starting the race put your device on the table this way your car will remain straight and will kill all mutants in the middle of the road.
Let’s start off with the graphics which is a positive part of this game. Glu is popular for giving brilliantly colored artwork. Although it’s not saturated as their other games like Dungeons & Dragons but perfectly matches with the theme of this game. The map changes from destroyed cities to barren lands and back to the first one. They have opted for cel-shaded graphics and placed their primary emphasis on vehicle; on which it’s mostly noticeable. They have included nice sets of weapons which appears good on vehicle. The world is neatly designed but lags a bit while appearing and overall game appears as old comic books which looks interesting.
The controls department is the second weakest link (IAPs being first) of this game. Making narrow turns and near misses with tilting is extremely difficult. There are very few chances that you’ll reach ten miles without any use of revival. They should have included touch to steer option. I had played this game using keyboard in bluestacks and I enjoyed it pretty much because I was able to precisely control vehicle but doing the same using gyro sensor wasn’t possible.
The User interface of Mutant Roadkill is plain, easy to understand and without any worth mentioning design. The sound department is intriguing with plenty of details, there are different background musics which will make sure that they don’t feel repetitive, other than these you’ll also continuously hear voices of ‘Perfect, oh yes!!’ and more. There are unique sound for different weapons, what else are you expecting from a music department of a game which isn’t made for Oscar?
The gameplay is impressive as long as you don’t spend much time on it because it gets repetitive due to several factors. No doubt there are missions and different unlockables but all of these things are useless if you cannot get them without using in-app purchases. The difficulty of missions increases which makes it impossible to clear them without those expensive cars and you’ll require them again if you want to change your taste.
I can rightly call Mutant Roadkill an intriguing game ruined by constant push towards in-app purchases, limited maps and poor controls. Other than these it almost has everything that you require to make a game your next favorite running game.
Artwork: Mutant Roadkill gets a 7.5/10 here. I really enjoyed the comic type cel-shaded of this game, everything appears attractive but limited maps weakens the overall experience which can be added via updates.
Music & SFX: This game gets another 7/10 here. Mutant Roadkill offers plenty of details in sound department. I’m not saying it lacks in quantity but the quality could have been better than this but still it’s satisfactory.
Story & Originality: I’ll give this game a 6/10 here. Like many other endless games, Mutant Roadkill too failed to provide any logical and interesting story. There isn’t any background information on how earth faced this apocalypse nor the developer is able to justify why Mutants are rich!!!
General Gameplay: Mutant Roadkill gets a 7/10 again here. This rating would have been more than this if the controls weren’t lacking which keeps this game short of providing memorable experience. If we remove the controls from the equation then the gameplay is totally enjoyable and a bit different than other endless runners.
Addictiveness: I’ll give this game 6.5/10 here. Only if there weren’t any constant pushes towards wasting money on this game and it included more maps than just one then this game would have been loved by many including myself. These two issues makes the game repetitive because of which users loses interest in it.
Overall I’ll give Mutant Roadkill a 7/10 and I’ll recommend this game to those only who are looking for quick short burst.