There are a few titles that have come to define the mobile gaming space. Candy Crush Saga is one of them (God save us all). Bejeweled is another. Then, of course, there’s Temple Run.
Not content with dominating the iOS App Store, Imangi Studios has now brought its endless runner to Microsoft’s Windows Phone, with uneven results.
If you’ve never played Temple Run before, the premise is pretty simple. A variation on the ubiquitous Endless Runner genre, you basically spend your time swiping the screen in different directions in order to avoid the various upcoming obstacles that come your way, all while being pursued by a giant monkey… thing that has taken umbrage at your theft of a golden idol. Swipe down on the screen to slide under a wall of flame; swipe up to jump over fallen debris; lean the phone left or right to avoid falling down bottomless pits - the controls are simple and uncomplicated and though it sometimes feels that there’s a degree of lag or that the phone doesn’t always recognize your inputs correctly, for the most part they work pretty well.
While you’re doing all of this, you’ll collect power-ups that will boost your speed, provide you with a shield, or act as a magnet that draws coins to you.
The coins… my God, the coins. You need them for everything.
To start with, your special abilities (activated with a double-tap on the screen) are pretty weak. The coin magnet, for example (probably the most useful power-up in the game) will expire pretty quickly. But as your stockpile of currency increases, you’re able to spend them on upgrading your special abilities - making them last longer, or making your boost take you further along the game. You can also spend them on unlocking additional characters, though these are merely cosmetic - aside from the odd appearance of Olympic athlete Usain Bolt, who can be unlocked for a small fee via an in-app purchase and comes with an additional ability.
Aside from coins, there’s also another currency - gems. Though only occasionally spawning in the game’s randomly-generated environment, gems allow you to resurrect yourself after a failed run for a second attempt, or can be used to fast-track your upgrades. You can also receive them as a reward for completing various daily and weekly challenges - reaching a certain score in a single run perhaps, or lasting for a certain distance before dying.
Of course, it wouldn’t be a free-to-play game without microtransactions, and Temple Run 2 certainly has plenty of options for people who want to get along without spending the time playing the game. For £0.79/$0.99 you can get 5,000 coins. 5,000 might sound like a lot, but when some of the unlockable characters cost 250,000 coins it’s a mere drop in the ocean. Thankfully though, you earn coins at a pretty decent rate and the game is never obnoxious about trying to force you into spending real money. So long as you’re patient, you can easily earn enough coins to upgrade your abilities and unlock new characters by playing in short 5-minute bursts.
Temple Run 2 isn’t something you’ll sit for hours playing while held in its rapture; It’s a game that you’ll play in short, 5-minute bursts while waiting for the bus to arrive, or while shivering in the cold winter wind while having a cigarette. It’s also not a game that does anything original, or has any particularly brave ideas. It doesn’t particularly progress the series from its first incarnation - gameplay remains pretty identical, and the graphics haven’t advanced in any serious way. It often feels as though it’s a sequel for the sake of it, simply existing to generate more cash for the developer.
It’s also a game with a number of technical bugs on Windows Phone 8. A couple have been fixed - thankfully the game no longer demands that you rate it after every run, even when you’ve rated it before - but others remain. If your phone goes idle and the screen locks, upon going back into the game the sound often inexplicably cuts out, requiring you to restart the application. As I mentioned before, the controls sometimes feel as though the game has misinterpreted your swipes, sending you flying through the air face-first into a tree when you actually wanted to turn a corner. None of these bugs are particularly game-breaking, but they are there.
So why can’t I stop playing it? It doesn’t do anything new and it doesn’t do anything particularly interesting; but for some damnable reason, whenever I step outside for a cigarette (yes, I’m a dirty smoker - sorry), I find myself playing Temple Run 2. There’s plenty of more worthwhile pursuits on Windows Phone that I could be playing; I could be having a bash on Carcassonne, or Rayman Jungle Run. But no; I keep going back to Temple Run 2.
The simple fact of the matter is that for all its faults and lack of inspiration, Temple Run 2 is a pleasant enough experience with just enough polish and addictiveness to keep you going back for more. Imangi studios has crafted a title that doesn’t need to exist, but one which at least passes the time between meatier gameplay experiences.
Let’s just hope that their next title is something with a little more inspiration behind it.
Dale Morgan
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