Review: Traffic Frenzy
Score:
72%
Get the cars through, don't cause an accident, and if all else fails, call up a B2 bomber. Managing the traffic in LA is as boring and as death-defying as it sounds, but here comes Traffic Frenzy to turn municipal management into a tasty little game.
Version Reviewed: 1.0.0.0
Buy Link | Download / Information Link
The core of the game is simple. You control a number of traffic lights on one section of road. You need to stop and start the traffic on this road via the lights so the vehicles can travel from one side of the screen to the other without crashing into the uncontrollable cars that are crossing their paths. Touch the lights to change from red to green and back again, and get your timing just right.
It's as simple as that, no complicated levers or patterns, just set the lights as required. It's worth noting that multi-touch is supported so you can easily toggle multiple lights using both hands, dual tapping or multiple-fingers - the choice is yours.
In a sense, Traffic Frenzy is a tactical game. You need to thread the cars coming down the roads you manage through an almost random stream of traffic. It's not a tactical game in the traditional sense of looking at something, working through the logical options, and then implementing a plan - this is far more fast paced, but you still need to make decisions, and balance the risks and rewards of holding traffic until there is a larger gap you can get all the traffic through, before the traffic backs up so much that you lose the levels.
Traffic Frenzy allows you to play over twenty five junctions in Los Angeles. The first twenty four of these are standard levels, with a fixed number of vehicles to get through the lights and to the other side. The final level is a 'how long can you go' endurance challenge which increases the length of play-time the game can advertise, but unlike some endurance modes this feels more like one to be endured and not a challenge to rise up to.
Completing the regular levels will reward you with a number of coins. These are used in-game to purchase 'continues' in the game. When you have a crash you can either start the level over again (and the 'cars to get through' target counter will reset to zero), or you can purchase a 'Keep Playing' for 100 coins. The roads will be cleared but the target counter will retain your previous successful drives. It sounds like a nice touch to the game, but it diminishes the difficulty level of the title when you can have multiple lives per level.
There's nothing to stop you going back to the older levels and playing through them to get enough coins to make the later levels easier (in fact it's encouraged), but having this option feels a cop-out to make the game accessible and reduce the overall difficulty. It's not even that the coins are used to earn income for the developer. If you run out you simply have to complete more levels - there is no freemium buy-in that lets you top up the in-game currency with cold hard cash. This is very old school design, I just wish the developers had taken extra lessons in being brutal with the players.
As well as the ability to continue a game, you also have a number of power-ups that you can use. Two of them are based around the speed of the traffic, you can slow down the opposing traffic (leading to larger gaps in the traffic you can drive your vehicles through), or you can speed up your vehicles driving down the roads and over the junctions. These are subtly different in operation, so you should have an experiment to see which suits your style of play. The third power-up is the Bomber, which can fly over and clear all the traffic out of your way. It's a temporary measure, especially on later levels, but it's one that gives you some vital breathing space when you are playing.
While Traffic Frenzy starts off rather gently, with the first few of the twenty five levels passing in a flash, later levels add in the complexity of multiple roads to control, traffic flowing in all directions, greater volumes of traffic both to drive through and to avoid, more traffic lights to manage... it all gets rather hectic by the end of the twenty five levels, but I do wish that the game, as released, had more levels. The first few levels to warm you up to the concept shouldn't really count, and it's over far too soon.
To be fair, the 25 levels are marked as being 'Los Angeles' and level packs for 'Austin' and 'Las Vegas' are on display, but labelled as 'coming soon'. They're not here yet, and it's always a bit of a gamble waiting on extra downloadable content, but Traffic Frenzy is a free download so at least it is not a monetary gamble.
Traffic Frenzy is a simple game to play, and it can feel rewarding getting the cars through the traffic. Strangely there's less feeling of a reward when a level is over - the second the bumper of the last car hits, the congratulations screen pops up. It's a jarring effect, and after the smooth graphics and UI flow into the game it seems a mis-step to have such a transition at the end of each level.
Developers Games2Win have a strong gaming title here, but a few tiny tweaks could significantly improve the impact of the game. A little bit more thought in the transitions between the games, some more work on the use of coins and power ups (and how they are earned), and make the level packs available as soon as possible. Or even start with the three level packs listed in the game (to give you 75 levels) and don't tease any extra availability until you can give a confirmed date... these all would have a positive impact on the experience.
Traffic Frenzy is worth the download, but it's a "B+ could do better" from me.
Reviewed by Ewan Spence at