Media Lounge - Crime Spree Review - Fun Remake of an Old Classic
Tuesday, 19th October 2010: Clones of arcade classics have had mixed success in the Minis program, with games like Urbanix and BreakQuest receiving acclaim and other games like BrickBreaker and Labyrinth being complete critical flops. This time, it's Gameshastra's turn to rehash an old classic with their Rally-X clone Crime Spree.
The aim of Crime Spree is fairly simple: your job is to race around each maze and collect bags of money within the time limit while avoiding the police who are chasing you. There are two different game modes to play, Arcade and Survival. In Arcade mode, you complete each level by collecting your target amount of money bags within the time limit. Each level will become more difficult with more police cars, more money bags to collect and less time in which to complete each stage. With Survival mode, your aim is to collect as many money bags as possible, and although there is no time limit to worry about, you will have to avoid more and more police cars that will appear the longer you play.
There are a few power-ups to collect throughout both modes of the game to help you complete each level. For instance, you are given three barrels of oil at the start of each stage to help give the police that are chasing you the slip. There is also a power-up that gives you a sudden burst of speed and also a few other power-ups to find.
Although there are a few different maze varieties, the design of each level is the same and will eventually become very boring to look at. The controls are fairly basic with only the X button and D-pad or analog nub needing to be used, leaving the game very easy to learn but hard to master. Surprisingly the developers have actually included a second backing track if you get bored of the same song playing in the background all the time, but you may get bored of both very quickly. Even though there is also a high score chart for both Survival and Arcade modes, it feels a little pointless and boring just trying to beat your own high scores.
Those of you who are fans of Rally-X or any of its clones will definitely find some joy in Crime Spree, but unfortunately the game does get a little boring after a short amount of time. If you are looking for a blast from the past or to relive some of those earlier days of gaming, then Crime Spree is for you, but if you are looking for something new, you won't find it here.
