Cartoon Sprint
Cartoon Sprint, created by Goldfish is a game that’s all about running 100 meter, 200 meter, and 400 meter sprints and hurdles. In this game your are a faceless stick figure who’s out to be the fastest sprinter and hurdler in the world. Each of your races are saved and ranked so you can see where you stand against your previous bests, your fellow countrymen, and the rest of the world. To get your stick figure high stepping toward the finish you’ve got to furiously tap your fingers on red buttons that light up in various combinations. You’re ability to quickly tap the red buttons when they flash determine how fast or slow you run. Each successful press is a +1 in speed and each unsuccessful one is -1. To jump hurdles you’ve got to tap the screen immediately before reaching the hurdle. Between pressing the red buttons to get your guy to sprint and pressing the screen to jump the hurdles, finishing quickly and flawlessly can be a real challenge.
When you start out the game you’ve got a pretty bare bones runner. They’ve got mid level skills and are competing against clearly better athletes. But, as you continue to play the game you have the opportunity to enhance the capabilities of your athlete by increasing their power, stamina, response, and technique. If you play the game long enough you can groom your stick sprinter from a dud to a stud and can give anyone in the world a run for their money!
It took me quite a while to get the hang of Cartoon Sprint, mainly because the instructions in the game are terrible. Everything in the app is written in broken English and is extremely hard to understand. For example, here are a few snippets from the help page:
“You can fast running to a hit when this button lights”
“You clear a semi-final to want final round”
“In hurdles game, you can to jump when just a touch”
As you can imagine, I was even more confused after reading the instructions than I was before. Eventually through trial and error I grasped the concept of the game, and let me tell you, it’s not easy! I played and played and played and never finished better than 4th place. Hurdles are by far the most difficult. Just picture how this works. You’ve got lights on either side of your screen that you’ve to got press in the order in which they light up just to run. While concentrating on pressing those lights with both hands as quickly as you can you’ve got to simultaneously tap the middle of the screen to leap a hurdle. I seriously felt like I needed a third hand to be good at this game.
I really wanted to like Cartoon Sprint. I used to play Nintendo when I was a kid and really loved the track and field games. They were one of my favorites. However, between the poor instructions, the less than user friendly interface, and the extremely awkward game-play this app begs me not to play it. I really like the idea of the leaderboard and comparing my sprinting skills to others in my country and around the world, but I just don’t enjoy the game enough to want to try. This game could be improved a bunch if its instructions are rewritten and the interface is designed to be much more user friendly. Cartoon Sprint might’ve been a cool idea, but unfortunately it just doesn’t deliver. If you’re tempted to try this app so you can see what I’m talking about, there’s Cartoon Sprint Lite available that you can download for free.
Pros:
- Global leaderboard
Cons:
- Awkward game-play
- Terribly written instructions
- Just isn’t very fun
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Posted by Ryan Johnson
on 03 9, 2010
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